Converting all buildings in Montreal that run on natural gas to electricity “is not at all realistic,” Hydro-Québec recently asserted. The Crown corporation now adds that it would have difficulty meeting demand, even if it were only for new buildings.
Hydro-Québec, which has to deal with already congested electricity transmission and distribution infrastructures in the city, is concerned about the consequences of the full electrification of new buildings, especially in the commercial sector, where natural gas connections remain the norm.
“In Montreal, the electrical network is already very busy. So that any addition of consumption, in particular when it has a significant impact at peak, such as space heating, can represent a challenge”, explains Cendrix Bouchard, a spokesperson for Hydro-Québec, in response to the question of Duty on the consequences of the potential banishment of gas connections in the city of 1.8 million inhabitants.
Last month, a commission of elected officials from the City of Montreal recommended banning “as soon as possible” the connection of any new building to the natural gas network. She also proposed the “phasing out” of fossil fuel furnaces in existing buildings. The Mayor is currently evaluating these recommendations with a view to adopting a “zero emission” building by-law.
Decarbonizing Montreal’s existing building stock is a major project: the gas distributor Énergir has more than 74,000 customers in the city. Switching them to electricity would require a power of around 4,500 megawatts during extreme cold, or 10% of current demand in Quebec. “This would compromise electrification projects and economic development,” argues Mr. Bouchard.
Ending the use of fossil fuels — and therefore regular natural gas — in new buildings, however, is a more modest project. During its last annual exercise, the gas distributor connected 470 new customers in metropolitan France. This number is also down (-45%) compared to the previous five years.
Normand Mousseau, scientific director of the Trottier Energy Institute and professor of physics at the University of Montreal, finds that Hydro-Quebec’s lack of ambition in the matter of building decarbonization is “pitiful”.
He believes that the Crown corporation should already be building electrical transmission infrastructure to meet the needs of Montreal’s energy transition. “The main obstacle to building decarbonization in the province is Hydro-Québec,” says Mousseau, who addressed the issue in a report published last year.
According to him, the responsibility for mitigating peak power demand should rest on the shoulders of the owners of new buildings, and this should be achieved without fossil fuels. Geothermal energy, thermal storage and demand modulation are part of the arsenal of solutions.
The role of renewable natural gas
Hydro-Québec fervently hopes that the new Montreal regulations will not block the door to its dual-energy program, developed with the gas distributor Énergir. Most of the time, subscribers to this program heat their building with electricity, but they have to switch to natural gas during very cold weather. Across Quebec, the two partners believe they can convert 100,000 Énergir residential customers to dual energy by 2030, and reduce their natural gas consumption by 70%.
Is the dual-energy program consistent with total decarbonization of the building sector? Énergir believes so. The merger would, according to the gas distributor, go through renewable natural gas (RNG). It is a natural gas that comes from organic matter rather than underground. Its contribution to the greenhouse effect is theoretically low.
The proportion of GNR in Énergir’s network is currently very small: this year, it is only 1.2%. Note that the renewable gas is mixed with regular gas in the pipes. Subscribers can buy GNR by paying a surplus, but, in practice, they receive the same mixture of natural gas – with a very high fossil content – as the rest of the customers.
However, GNR’s share in the gas network will increase in the coming years. Quebec regulations require that in 2030, at least 10% of the natural gas distributed in the province be renewable. According to Élaine Arsenault, a spokesperson for Énergir, this will make it possible to supply all subscribers who join the dual-energy program — unless other customers, industries, for example, come forward first to buy everything the available GNR.
In 2021, residential, commercial and institutional buildings in Montreal consumed 900 million cubic meters of natural gas; their combustion generated 1.7 million tonnes of CO2. Énergir promises that energy efficiency, the injection of RNG and the deployment of dual energy will reduce Montreal emissions by 1.3 million tonnes of CO2 annually by the end of the decade.
In the roadmap “Towards zero-emission buildings in Montreal by 2040”, presented by Valérie Plante last May, connections to the gas network were not prohibited. However, owners of new buildings who decide to have them connected were required to commit to buying GNR. The recommendations of the Commission on water, the environment, sustainable development and large parks now take issue with this aspect.