(Montreal) The thermal power station which supplies more than a third of downtown Montreal with heating, hot water and air conditioning will be electrified, a “laudable” initiative, but which serves as a “diversion” from the greater challenges ahead. , estimate environmental organizations.
Quebec is awarding a $10 million subsidy to Énergir urban heating and air conditioning (ÉCCU), which operates the thermal power plant located at the Bonaventure highway exit, for this $24 million decarbonization project.
“We are helping Énergir to help us achieve our objectives” of reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, declared Minister of the Environment, the Fight against Climate Change, Wildlife and Parks Benoit Charette, Tuesday, making this announcement at the opening of the Montreal Climate Summit.
Énergir will replace a “huge gas boiler” dating from 1962 with two electric boilers and will increase the performance of its heat recovery and valorization system from fireplaces with heat pumps, explained its executive vice-president for Quebec, Stéphanie Trudeau.
The company will also install smaller, more efficient gas boilers, which will only be used around 100 hours per year during periods of peak electricity consumption.
“We are very, very convinced that the benefits associated with [au projet] are as important as investments,” said Mr.me Trudeau.
The project, which should be completed by early 2027, will reduce the plant’s greenhouse gas emissions by nearly 10,000 tonnes per year.
“It is the equivalent of decarbonizing a city of 35,000 inhabitants,” explained Minister Charette. This is major! »
In service since 1976, the thermal power plant supplies large buildings in the city center such as Place Ville Marie, the Central Station and the École de Technologie Supérieure, totaling nearly two million square meters, through one of the largest underground heat distribution networks in Canada.
Commendable, but disappointing, say environmentalists
The initiative is “laudable,” believes Équiterre’s director of government relations, Marc-André Viau, who deplores, however, that Quebec is subsidizing a fossil energy distributor.
“We give money to a company so that it can job that it should do itself, that is to say not produce GHGs”, he says, estimating that this money would be better invested in the production of renewable energies or in efficiency and energy sobriety.
“It’s good news that we are electrifying, because that’s what we have to do,” also believes the head of Greenpeace Canada’s climate-energy campaign, Patrick Bonin, but he believes that it is This is a diversion.
It’s a drop in all the pollution that Energy generates with the new connections [au réseau gazier] that it grows and the existing devices that it renews and which will pollute for decades.
Patrick Bonin
Quebec could have opted for regulations forcing the electrification of the Énergir thermal power plant rather than paying it to do so, believes Mr. Bonin, stressing that the needs are “glaring” in terms of collective transport and adaptation to climatic changes.
This “measure” demonstrates that the government does not take the climate crisis seriously, asserts Patrick Bonin, who criticizes Minister Charette for appearing at the Montreal Climate Summit with “nothing or almost nothing to announce, apart from a partnership with a gas”.
Third Montreal Climate Summit
The Montreal Climate Summit, which is held Tuesday and Wednesday in the Old Port of Montreal, is defined as the annual climate meeting of the Montreal community. Organized by the Montreal Climate Partnership, which brings together around a hundred economic, community, institutional and philanthropic organizations wanting to contribute to the metropolis becoming carbon neutral by 2050, the summit aims to raise awareness of solutions and measure the progress of progress made. For its third year, the summit this year offers various conferences, including an exchange between the mayor of New Orleans, LaToya Cantrell, and that of Montreal, Valérie Plante, on Wednesday. A series of announcements is also planned.