The pandemic will not have changed the overall picture: Quebec still consumes too much fossil fuel and government actions remain insufficient to hope to fight effectively against the climate crisis in the coming years. This is the conclusion that emerges from the 2022 edition of the report State of energy in Quebecwhich argues for the implementation of much stronger measures to reduce the province’s greenhouse gas emissions.
“The economic recovery of 2021 has brought the energy sector back to normal: the consumption of petroleum products has returned to levels equivalent to those before the pandemic”, notes the annual report produced by the Sector Management Chair. de l’énergie at HEC Montréal, which will be published on Thursday. Overall, “no major changes, in terms of energy, will persist following the upheavals linked to COVID-19”.
The situation is all the more worrying from a climate point of view as “the recent trends observed from 2015 to 2019 are problematic with regard to our energy and environmental objectives: energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) are growing, while we are aiming for the opposite”.
According to the most recent GHG emissions report for Quebec, that of 2019, these have fallen by barely 2.7% since 1990, while the target (abandoned in 2018) provided for a reduction of 20% to by 2020. The Legault government now hopes to achieve a 37.5% drop by 2030.
Always more vehicles
The climate failure of recent years can be largely explained by the 41% growth in energy demand from the transport sector since 1990. However, this sector still derives 97% of its energy from petroleum products.
According to’State of energy in Quebec, alone “the fleet of personal vehicles in Quebec has increased by 66% since 1990, an increase three times greater than the population growth of the province (+22%)”. The category of personal vehicles that has experienced the strongest growth during this period is that of light trucks, which includes sport utility vehicles (SUVs). Their number jumped by 319% on the roads of Quebec.
During the same period, the drop in energy consumption of cars was “more than offset” by a 197% increase in the consumption of light trucks, due to the increase in sales. These represented 71% of the market in Quebec in 2020, compared to barely 7% for electric vehicles (EV), which nevertheless benefit from “significant government subsidies”.
“About 15 light trucks were sold for every EV sold in 2020. These trends run counter to achieving GHG emission reduction targets,” the report says. According to data from the Institut de la statistique du Québec, no less than 140,203 new “light trucks” were added to the province’s vehicle fleet between 2019 and 2020. The total, in 2020, was thus 2,199,562, a growth of 170% in a decade.
Co-author of the report and holder of the chair in management of the energy sector at HEC Montréal, Pierre-Olivier Pineau believes that the “major trends” of recent years are likely to continue for at least “a few years”. “Petroleum product consumption could continue to increase in the medium term if sales of gasoline-powered light trucks continue to outpace sales of electric vehicles and vehicle inventory continues to roll as much. Despite the increase in sales of electric vehicles, there will be even more gas-powered vehicles, especially light trucks, entering the fleet in the years to come,” he explains to the Duty.
Failure in sight
However, things could change, particularly in the context of rising gasoline prices and economic repercussions, as the pandemic emerges. “The price of carbon will also discourage petroleum-based vehicles, while subsidies for electric vehicles “encourage their adoption”, he underlines.
In the current state of affairs, Mr. Pineau nevertheless considers that the GHG reduction target for 2030 is out of reach. “The government is only repeating ineffective programs to reduce GHGs: subsidies for electric vehicles, subsidies for energy efficiency, but without acting firmly on the structural causes: urban sprawl, growing buildings, growing car fleet in number and in size, transport of goods by truck increasing sharply”, he lists.
According to him, “we should limit human and urban sprawl, charge more for the kilometers traveled with a kilometer tax, introduce much higher registration fees for heavy vehicles, including electric vehicles, and develop transport with low energy consumption, like the train, and this, as much for individuals as for goods”.