Olivia Woods
According to researchers, Quebec will not reach the climate goals they previously outlined, as it recently failed to fulfil its 2020 greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction target. The province’s energy industry is also failing at developing policy ambitions.
Chair of energy sector management at HEC Montreal, Pierre-Olivier Pineau, on Thursday, published a paper called ‘The State of Energy in Quebec 2022’. The paper states that after the pandemic caused an 11% drop in petroleum sales in the province in 2020 compared to 2019, consumption will recover to 2019 levels if the economic recovery and sales of high fuel consumption cars continue.
The majority of the rise can be attributed to the growing use of large cars and freight transportation. Compared to 44% of sales in 2010, light trucks, including sport utility vehicles (SUVs), accounted for 71% of total sales in 2020.
According to Statistics Canada data, sales of petroleum products have recovered in 2021 and are nearly back to pre-pandemic levels. In August, Canadian gasoline sales even surpassed those of 2019.
The study also points out that Quebec’s power use is heavily reliant on the weather, with each degree of cooling in the winter requiring almost 400 megawatts (MW) of additional electricity production.
According to the publication, predicted a surplus of 40 terawatt-hours (TWh) annually in 2019. Some ways they could use to eliminate these surpluses by 2029 are through new export contracts, increased demand, and electrification, to name a few options.
As for biofuels and hydrogen, the report highlights that the two sectors are growing at different rates. Plants that produce biofuels are either closed or idle as green hydrogen initiatives continues to grow.
Original source material for this article is taken from here.
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