The Government of Quebec’s Climate Action Plan may have cost billions of dollars over seven years, but the results have been “appalling”, concludes the Chair of Energy Sector Management at HEC Montreal. And the new Quebec strategy for reducing greenhouse gas emissions reproduces many of the elements that led to this failure, which does not bode well for the years to come.
By 2020, the Government of Quebec hoped to be able to reduce the province’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 20% compared to their 1990 level. The most recent data available, that is for 2019, show however, emissions have fallen by just 2.7% in almost 30 years.
Part of this failure stems from the poor results of the 2013-2020 Climate Change Action Plan (PACC), according to an analysis to be released Thursday by the Chair of Energy Sector Management at HEC Montreal.
Such an “overall assessment” has still not been published by the Quebec government, but the one drawn up in the report offers the most complete portrait available to date. The duty was able to obtain the embargoed document.
Expenditure of 5.8 billion
In concrete terms, despite “actual cumulative expenditure” of $5.8 billion under the PACC, including $4.6 billion in “actions” related to GHG reductions, it has reduced emissions by only 1.78 million tonnes (Mt) on an annual basis. This is a 13% “contribution” to achieving the 2020 GHG reduction target.
“If these actions were never directly aimed at reducing GHGs by 15 Mt [pour atteindre l’objectif de 2020]their goal was still to reach 2.6 Mt. They therefore largely failed to reach their goal, while their expected contribution was itself well below the Quebec target,” reads the document. of the Energy Sector Management Chair at HEC Montréal.
While affirming that it is “laborious” to take stock of the actions of the PACC “due to the scattering of information”, the document underlines that the reduction of 1.78 Mt is “very probably overestimated because of ‘very questionable reliability of the results’. “The evaluation of PACC actions has indeed suffered from reliability issues: the results are often neither verified nor standardized, or even reductions have taken place outside Quebec”, deplore the authors, Johanne Whitmore, Pierre-Olivier Pineau and Jacques Harvey.
Despite these problems of access to information, they were able to observe that barely 27 of the 203 actions and sub-actions of the PACC made it possible to reduce or avoid GHG emissions. Five actions have contributed to 80% of the PACC’s emission reductions. These include the “Industrial Ecoperformance” (370,000 tonnes), “Rouler vert” programs, including charging stations (220,000 tonnes), “Rénovert” (170,000 tonnes) and “Chauffez vert” (170,000 tonnes). ).
Repeated mistakes?
Even if the PACC has proven to be largely ineffective in the fight against climate change, the government has decided to renew “at least” 13 of the PACC actions aimed at reducing GHGs in the Plan for a Green Economy 2030 (PEV) , while “increasing their budget by approximately 290%,” according to the Chair of Energy Sector Management at HEC Montréal.
However, “nothing in what has been done since the abolition of the Green Fund Management Board (CGFV) [en 2020] does not suggest that greater transparency and greater efficiency in these actions are or will be present”. The council set up in 2017 had revealed that only 71 of the 185 actions of the PACC were to be maintained; the Legault government abolished the CGFV in 2020.
The Minister of the Environment then again became responsible for the Green Fund, which was replaced by the Electrification and Climate Change Fund. An “advisory committee” has also been set up.
Despite these government measures and the $6.7 billion planned by 2026 in the EPI, the analysis report published on Thursday estimates that Quebec is heading for another failure. “It is in fact possible to believe that similar results will be obtained with the EPI 2030, given that best practices in energy efficiency, energy management and reduction of GHG emissions are not put forward. . »
According to forecasts by the Legault government, Quebec should be able to reach the 2030 GHG reduction target, a decline of 37.5% compared to 1990. The measures announced so far with the EPI should allow reduce GHG emissions by 12 Mt, or approximately 40% of the target to be reached in 2030.
But Pierre-Olivier Pineau considers that these figures are too optimistic. “Based on the performance of the PACC, the EPI should deliver at best 50% of the planned 12 Mt, or 6 Mt, on an annual basis. We really need to provide for radically different additional actions, but also much more serious governance and monitoring than what has been implemented to date,” he warns.
The analysis therefore suggests implementing measures that will “reduce motorized travel” and improve “vehicle efficiency”. In the industrial sector, “decarbonisation plans” are needed, while it would be important to impose a “gradual increase in building energy consumption and emission standards”.