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In terms of roads, science teaches that the multiplication of highways encourages the use of automobiles. Does the proliferation of hydroelectric dams also encourage unbridled consumption of electricity?
Camille Péloquin wonders if, in 2023, Quebec should not focus on reducing demand rather than increasing supply. “If we can burn energy or drive a car without constraint,” she emphasizes, “are we thinking less about our consumption? »
The question it raises is relevant today, with Hydro-Québec having announced, last week, an action plan which provides for huge investments to increase its production and build, among other things, new dams.
For Pierre-Olivier Pineau, holder of the Chair of Energy Sector Management at HEC Montréal, the premise deserves more nuance. Motorways do not themselves encourage car use: it is rather their freeness that makes them popular.
“For users,” he wrote to Duty, highways without tolls seem free, and this encourages their use. If they were to be charged for, this would put a brake on the growth of usage. »
The same goes for hydroelectric plants and electricity consumption. This depends more on “a combination of favorable pricing and regulation of buildings and equipment which does not always push for maximum energy efficiency”, underlines Pierre-Olivier Pineau.
Discounted electricity, sold at a price lower than its production cost, prevents consumers from seeing the real bill for their consumption. A kilowatt hour which costs 8 cents when the price of dam construction should set its price at 10¢/kWh or more, explains the professor, therefore fuels the “tendency to consume more”.
To reduce electricity consumption or the use of automobiles, it is better to “reflect the cost of infrastructure in tariffs” to “send a clearer signal to consumers”, rather than to reduce, or stagnate, capacity roadblocks or traffic routes.
Especially since the new dams will become necessary to serve the decarbonization of Quebec, adds Normand Mousseau, scientific director of the Trottier Energy Institute at Polytechnique Montréal.
“We are building these dams based on expected demand, not to allow greater consumption now,” he emphasizes. This electricity will help reduce our dependence on oil and gas, which represent half of the energy consumed in Quebec. »
In a Quebec climate, reducing consumption also often turns out to be quite costly. “If I install a heat pump in my home, I use electricity better. If I insulate my house better, I consume less, but it is not a panacea, he concludes, since it is very expensive. »