The Legault government may repeat that the Northvolt project is necessary for the “decarbonization” of Quebec, but there is nothing to conclude that this plant will lead to a direct reduction in the province’s greenhouse gas emissions, according to information collected by The duty and the opinion of three experts. The Ministry of the Environment is also not able to provide data that would support the thesis of a beneficial project for achieving our climate objectives.
Since the announcement of the project, the Minister of the Environment of Quebec, Benoit Charette, has said several times that this “gigafactory” will contribute to achieving targets for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. ) of the province. “I have objectives to achieve by 2030 for the decarbonization of the economy. And it’s a project that will help us achieve them,” he said at the beginning of the month in an interview with Paul Arcand.
According to the minister, Northvolt would therefore be necessary to allow Quebec to respect its GHG reduction target of 37.5% by 2030, compared to the 1990 level.
“I don’t have 18 or 24 months to lose. I am six years away from having to deliver extremely ambitious objectives,” Benoit Charette argued to The Press to justify the decision not to submit the project to an examination by the BAPE, the Office of Public Hearings on the Environment.
“Global” contribution
The Quebec Ministry of the Environment is, however, unable to provide data, a report or an analysis that would support the thesis of a beneficial project for achieving Quebec’s climate objectives.
“It is impossible to reserve the production of these batteries for Quebec, for several reasons,” responds the ministry by email. He also points out that “Quebec does not have a car assembly plant”. In this context, “the contribution to the reduction of GHG emissions will therefore be global”, he simply indicated after a week of email exchanges.
In a brief response, without supporting documents, the Ministry of the Environment estimates this “contribution” at 1.25 million tonnes of GHGs per year.
How will the Northvolt project specifically reduce GHG emissions produced in Quebec? “With the battery sector, we want to create an important and structuring research and development ecosystem in Quebec. We believe that, by 2050, this sector will certainly be able to have an impact on the reduction of our GHGs, both in Quebec and in North America and in the world,” argues the office of Minister Charette in a written statement. .
No reduction
Three experts on energy and climate issues consulted by The duty are, however, clear: the Northvolt project will not contribute to achieving the province’s climate objectives.
“The Northvolt project does not in any way reduce GHG emissions in Quebec,” says Pierre-Olivier Pineau, holder of the Chair in Energy Sector Management at HEC Montréal. “The government is not right at all to link the Northvolt project to the 2030 targets. They are two very separate things. The 2030 objectives should require changes in habits and consumption. Among these changes is greater electrification of transportation. This could occur with batteries made here or elsewhere,” he explains.
“The Quebec government’s transportation electrification objectives, which could contribute to reducing emissions, are in no way linked to the presence of Northvolt,” adds Mr. Pineau, emphasizing that “the Quebec government has never indicated that it would be necessary to produce batteries” to achieve the goal of having two million electric vehicles on the roads of the province by the end of the decade. “It may be a good industrial strategy for Quebec to have manufacturers like Northvolt. I personally believe it. But these are two separate questions, and the minister is making a mistake in asserting that Northvolt is necessary to achieve GHG reduction objectives in Quebec. »
Same story with Normand Mousseau, professor of physics and scientific director of the Trottier Energy Institute at Polytechnique Montréal. “It’s economic development, it’s not reducing greenhouse gas emissions. There is a confusion of genres which does not help. We are developing a new economic sector for the future, but this has no impact on Quebec’s greenhouse gas emissions in any way. »
“The decarbonization that Minister Charette is talking about is not about attracting new industries, but rather about supporting the decarbonization of the existing manufacturing fabric. This is how we can reduce our greenhouse gas emissions,” adds Mr. Mousseau. The industrial sector represented 32% of Quebec’s emissions in 2021, with 25 million tonnes of GHGs.
“Development logic”
“The project is not structuring for the decarbonization of Quebec, it is structuring for getting the battery sector off the ground in a cluster logic that clings to very long value chains, just a small part of which ended up here,” illustrates for his part Éric Pineault, member of the UQAM Research Chair on ecological transition at the Institute of Environmental Sciences.
“This is a development logic that we know well in Quebec: using our inexpensive energy to attract multinationals so that they install their units with energy-intensive industrial processes,” adds Mr. Pineault.
Northvolt did not want to specify where the batteries produced in Montérégie thanks to public financial support of several billion dollars will be sold. “We decided to establish our activities in North America in order to reduce our value chains and be able to serve this market,” the company indicated by email. “As a Western leader in battery manufacturing, our mission is to participate in the decarbonization of the planet in order to remove oil from the economy,” Northvolt also argued, emphasizing that its Quebec factory will produce “batteries low-carbon and environmentally friendly.
The company has already destroyed a large part of the wetlands and wooded areas on its factory site. It is now awaiting authorization to construct the first buildings of its industrial project, which is scheduled to go into production in 2026.