Why Quebec is not prioritizing the climate crisis

In order to combat the climate crisis, Quebec political parties are currently escalating GHG reduction targets for 2030, while the 2020 objective, aimed at reducing CO2 emissions by 20% below 1990, was not reached. Unfortunately, the strategies currently implemented are not vigorous enough to achieve our objectives.

However, Quebec has a very great potential for energy efficiency that is rather unknown since its exploitation has never been considered a priority. Hydro-Québec has, for example, filed out of sight, on the Régie de l'énergie website, recent assessments concerning the technical and economic potential for energy efficiency, representing 24TWh of savings allowing a 14% reduction in Quebecers' electricity consumption in the next 5 to 10 years. These savings would come from improvements in the buildings heating, the use of hot water in industries and other miscellaneous uses. The implementation of these assessments could have a major impact since our energy consumption currently represents 70% of our GHG emissions, as demonstrated each year in the Quebec GHG emissions inventory report. Quebec would greatly benefit from prioritizing this type of action plan to curb its enthusiasm. Indeed, it is worrying to note that our province currently consumes 40% more energy than Norway and twice as much as Germany, while our climates and living standards are, in several aspects, comparable.

Quebec must quickly realize that these energy savings will be necessary to minimize the construction of new energy production and transmission infrastructures. While we want to electrify to decarbonize, export electricity to decarbonize and bring in energy-intensive industries to prevent them from polluting thanks to our green energy, it would be much more efficient and above all essential to start by doing everything here to reduce our consumption and release energy.

Source : L’actualité

 Photo : Le Devoir