By presenting his assessment of the CAQ government’s climate action last December, the Minister of the Environment, Benoit Charette, was able to show that greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in 2020 in Quebec had fallen by 26, 6% compared to 1990, the reference year. But do not be complacent, he warned. Most of this drop is probably due to the effect of the confinement made necessary by the pandemic and the resulting decline in economic activity. “It is really the next few years that will be revealing,” added the minister. He couldn’t say it better.
If you want to get a better idea of the real portrait, it is better to refer to the balance sheet of the previous year. In 2019, GHG emissions increased by 1.5%. In 30 years, Quebec has reduced only 2.7% of its emissions and even there, this result was “embellished” by the effect of closures in large industry and, to a lesser extent, by the improvement in certain industrial processes.
With good reason, much is made of the renewable energy that Quebec produces. But we now know that it is in limited supply. The 2023 edition of Quebec’s state of energyc, published by the Chair in Energy Sector Management at HEC Montréal, uses the term “energy intoxication”, which contrasts with the “sobriety” referred to by the Minister of Economy, Innovation and of Energy, Pierre Fitzgibbon.
For now, half of Quebec’s energy consumption comes from hydrocarbons, including 18 billion liters of oil used mainly for transportation. The report estimates that this level will continue until 2030.
Sales of “trucks”, which includes family vans, sport utility vehicles (SUVs) and pickup trucks, have increased by 253% between 1990 and 2021, can we read in this report. They now represent 71% of vehicle sales. This “truck” category has the disadvantage of putting in the same basket small SUVs powered by four-cylinder engines, which consume only one liter more per 100 kilometers than a compact car, and monster pickup trucks which, equipped with of V8, consume twice as much, i.e. up to 8 liters more per 100 kilometres.
Be that as it may, in his work which has just appeared under the title energy balance, HEC Montréal professor Pierre-Olivier Pineau points out that, since the 1980s, the energy efficiency of vehicles has improved by approximately 30%. However, instead of leading to a 30% reduction in fuel consumption, progress has resulted in a 30% increase in vehicle weight. The number of vehicles has also increased much faster than the population, notes the academic. In the United States, there were 614 vehicles per 1,000 inhabitants, a number that rose to 874 vehicles, an increase of 42%. And Quebec followed the same trend.
In the province, registration fees are higher for large cars. To the various gasoline taxes—a total of 29.2 cents and 3 cents more in Montreal to finance public transit—is added the cost of carbon pricing that refiners pass on to consumers, which represents almost 7 cents per liter right now.
The increase in sales of heavier vehicles, in particular these famous pickup which, for the vast majority of cases, are not required for work, shows that the current level of these taxes is not high enough to influence consumer behavior.
With the generalization of electric vehicles, revenues from gasoline taxes are set to fall. The Alliance for the financing of public transport in Quebec recommends that we study the feasibility of imposing a kilometric tax. This formula has the advantage of being related to the cost of road infrastructure. In Quebec, apart from a few rare tolls, this cost is assumed by society as a whole and not by users. However, it should not be thought that such a tax is easy to implement, as shown by the experiences of countries that have applied it in a limited way.
During the last elections, Québec solidaire had proposed imposing a tax on the purchase of gas-guzzling vehicles. However, this “orange” tax project that applied to both pickup trucks and family vans was not well received, to say the least. It is clear that Quebecers, in general, are not yet ready to change their way of life for the good of the climate. And we cannot say that the CAQ government is struggling to change that.