This text is part of the special Energies notebook
Not a day goes by in Quebec without talking about energy transition and climate change. However, our production and especially our energy consumption have changed very little over the past ten years.
In 2022, Quebec produced 216 TWh of electricity and imported around thirty at low cost from the Churchill Falls hydroelectric power station in Newfoundland and Labrador. This more than meets his current needs. It also buys enough oil and natural gas to meet its domestic demand. There is therefore no very short-term energy challenge in Quebec.
“On the other hand, when we take into account our desire for decarbonization and especially the approach chosen to achieve this, that is to say electrifying rather than reducing consumption, there we have big challenges,” underlines Pierre-Olivier Pineau, holder of the Chair of Energy Sector Management at HEC Montréal.
With his colleague Johanne Whitmore, principal researcher of the chair, he wrote the most recent State of energy in Quebec. Published in February 2024, the work once again confronts us with our contradictions. Despite all our talk about the importance of the energy transition and our ambition to reduce the consumption of petroleum products by 40% in 2030 compared to 2013, our habits change little.
Always more cars
Consumption of gasoline, diesel and other petroleum products has almost reached its pre-pandemic level in 2022. And at the Canadian level, gasoline sales for the first nine months of 2023 had surpassed those of the same period last year. last year. The vehicle fleet continues to grow. From 1990 to 2021, the number of personal vehicles jumped by 57% in Quebec, while the population increased by only 23%.
Certainly, sales of electric cars are increasing. They represented 13% of new vehicles in 2022. However, the share of sales of SUVs and other gasoline-powered trucks continues to increase. They accounted for 70% of the market in 2022, compared to 24% in 1990. Even among electric vehicles, sales of SUVs and other trucks exceed those of cars.
“To reduce the consumption of fossil fuels, we must reduce the number of vehicles, but that is not what is happening at all,” notes Johanne Whitmore. It’s like a person who has cancer and knows they need to quit smoking to have any hope of being cured, but doesn’t. »
She points out that efficient public transport is essential to combat car dependence, as is increasing access to shared cars. She would also like to see incentives to promote these modes of transportation. “Governments subsidize the purchase of electric vehicles, but there are few rewards for citizens who take other means of transport than the car,” she laments.
Focus on efficiency
Automobiles are not the only ones suffering from overweight. Living space increased from 48 m2 per person in 2000 at 58 m2 per person in 2018, according to Natural Resources Canada. During the same period, the occupied air-conditioned floor space increased by more than 45%. The improvement in energy efficiency, although considerable, does not compensate for the increase in population and the increase in the size of housing.
“The addition of new vehicles and inhabited space cancels out a large part of the technical gains which increase the energy efficiency of buildings and cars and which should, in theory, allow us to reduce our consumption,” explains Pierre-Olivier Pineau.
The State of Energy also demonstrates a significant gap in electricity consumption between the richest and poorest households. Those whose income exceeds $150,000 actually use 92% more electricity on average than those whose income peaks below $40,000.
The industrial sector continues to show a certain deficiency in terms of energy efficiency. Nearly 60% of the energy consumed by this sector is lost. The comparison with Germany presented by the chair leaves you speechless. There are five installations certified for the international energy management system standard (ISO 50001) in Quebec, compared to 5,523 in Germany.
Necessity is law, apparently. “In this country, very high energy costs, particularly since it had to reduce its gas supply from Russia, motivate companies to optimize their energy efficiency, which is not the case in Quebec , where energy remains abundant and relatively inexpensive,” emphasizes Johanne Whitmore.
Canada is also lagging behind in energy productivity, that is to say the wealth created per unit of energy consumed. This increased by 74% from 1971 to 2022, a rate lower than the world average of 88% and far behind the United States (+ 183%) and Germany (+ 161%).
The mirage of replacement
Will renewable energies allow us to reduce the environmental repercussions of our consumption without reducing it? Not sure at all. “As we consume a lot, we will need to produce an enormous quantity of renewable energy to meet our future needs, but things are progressing very slowly,” warns Pierre-Olivier Pineau.
Canada is indeed struggling to get liquid and gaseous renewable fuel sectors off the ground. Renewable natural gas (RNG) projects suffer from delays and cost overruns. Challenges arise in terms of biomethanization, among other things because Quebecers underuse the brown bin or throw anything into it. To fuel this process, we need well-collected raw materials, which is not currently the case.
In 2021, wind turbines produced 6% of the primary energy available in Quebec, just like biomass, while RNG only generated 0.2%. Oil and non-renewable natural gas accounted for 48% of our energy. Emissions linked to energy production, transportation and consumption cause approximately 70% of all emissions in Quebec.
“The solutions, such as reducing the use of automobiles and the surface area of our homes and increasing our energy efficiency, we know them, but we are slow to deploy them,” recalls Pierre-Olivier Pineau.
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