Propulsion Québec, the electric and intelligent transport cluster (TEI), would like to respond to the column published on June 27, 2022 in the edition of To have to by Jean-François Nadeau, entitled “The Electric Dream”.
In his column, Mr. Nadeau states: “In this poor collective horizon, the fabricated story of the greening of our travels thanks to the unbridled consumption of electric vehicles does not hold water. However, the key figures of the TEI industry in Quebec are factual arguments: 260 organizations, 3.3 billion dollars in turnover and 9,300 jobs in 2021, an economic weight that has not been taken into account. account.
The electrification of transport is not limited to individual cars. It is important to consider all types of vehicles. For example, medium and heavy vehicles represent 25% of the vehicle fleet, but contribute 66% of GHG emissions in Quebec.
Individual electric cars alone cannot achieve our GHG reduction targets. However, with the transportation sector alone representing 43.3% of Quebec emissions, we cannot subtract them from the equation either.
The electric transition would be a positive contribution to Quebec’s trade balance: in 2019, oil imports accounted for 48% of its deficit. Conversely, Hydro-Quebec’s profits, including electric vehicle charging, are redistributed to the Quebec government for the development of state services. A virtuous loop!
It is for these reasons that the Quebec ecosystem of electric and intelligent transport (TEI) is mobilizing to electrify all the vehicles on our roads and offer new mobility solutions.
In its latest report published on April 4, 2022, the IPCC states that electric vehicles “offer the greatest decarbonization potential in road transport provided they are recharged with low-carbon electricity”, which is the case in Quebec.
We agree with Mr. Nadeau on the need to rethink our consumption of mobility, in particular access to collective and public transport, regardless of where we live. However, it seems essential to us to shed light on the possible optimization thanks to intelligent vehicles and infrastructures and the optimal use of data in transport. They will simplify travel, encourage the use of public transport and limit the use of solo cars.
Finally, we would like to point out that our territory has soil rich in deposits of strategic minerals necessary for the production of batteries and that Quebec is making great efforts to produce its batteries locally in the near future, according to environmental and social standards among the toughest in the world.
In Quebec, hundreds of us are mobilizing so that the production of batteries is monitored over the various stages of transformation, from the mine to the electric vehicle, in order to guarantee their origin and characteristics. A pilot project is also in progress and offers a traceability system which makes it possible, throughout the production chain, to verify compliance with the environmental and social standards in force. It also makes it possible to control product quality, optimize production and manage its carbon footprint.
Some players in the TEI ecosystem already offer solutions for the reuse of batteries and their recycling in order to optimize the use of their components.
The electric transition is underway, and transportation consumption concerns all Quebecers: individuals, businesses, municipalities, governments, institutions. Everyone can count on an innovative ecosystem of 260 players at the cutting edge of technology to support them and decarbonize Quebec’s ground transportation. Shooting at the electrification of transport is, in our opinion, mistaking the target.
The replica of Jean-François Nadeau
What about the idea that the solution to the innumerable problems caused by the automobile for a century would be to replace their sole mode of propulsion? Electrification or not, the total number of individual vehicles and the resulting nuisances continue to increase at breakneck speed. Sales of large vehicles, SUVs, have never been so good. Individual electric vehicles, often just as large, are beginning to replace them without changing anything in the overall situation. Has the unbridled consumption of households been curbed?
In reality, chic electric vehicles are just one more thing offered to consumers’ appetites. It is an additional ration to feed the good conscience, like the smoky “fair trade coffee” will have been. Because how can we believe that by consuming just as much, but only slightly differently, we will save the planet from the drift that is swallowing it? Already, the idea that these individual electric vehicles, mass-produced, would produce “zero emissions” is pure smoke. In any case, 7.7 million of these electric vehicles would be needed on Canadian roads in 2030 if Ottawa is to meet its targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the transportation sector. In December 2020, there were barely more than 200,000, recalled this week my colleague Gérard Bérubé.
Do you really believe in changing the world by producing, selling and subsidizing more and more individual cars? We are sinking in the middle of a dream: that of succeeding, in spite of fundamental changes which are essential, in changing nothing fundamentally. And we make ourselves believe, in such a sad way, that automobiles and infrastructure could be “smart”, when we are collectively still so stupid.