FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Tech

Why Montreal Households Are the Greenest in Canada (And Edmonton Is Failing)

A new ranking of Canadian cities according to who's greenest.
Montreal Image: Blok 70/Flickr

I lived in Montreal for a few years, and the winters there are truly frigid—clawing, face-bitingly cold. So you'd think that Montrealers would be using a whole lot of energy to heat their homes, in order to make the winters somewhat bearable. But it turns out that households in that city are actually the greenest and most sustainable in the country, according to a new paper. Montrealers are even ahead of Vancouver, which is much more temperate (winters there are downright balmy by Canadian standards).

Advertisement

And, sorry Edmonton, you came out at the bottom of the list.

In this study, researchers from the University of British Columbia looked at census data spanning 12 years (from 1997 to 2009) and ranked 17 major metropolitan areas according to how much carbon dioxide the average family—that's two or three people, who bring in an annual income of $81,000—pumped out in one year by using electricity, gasoline, and natural gas. Households are an important contributor to carbon emissions, they explain in the paper, contributing 46 percent of Canada's overall emissions in 2004.

Here's what they found: Family households in Montreal produced five tonnes of GHG, on average, per year, compared to 20 tonnes in Edmonton.

Montreal was followed by Vancouver (which emitted 7.2 tonnes per year), Winnipeg, Toronto, Calgary, all the way down to Edmonton.

A household's carbon emissions are influenced by the city it's in. A few factors seem to have a big effect, as these authors explain: The city's population density (greater density means that people have to rely on their cars less, and probably tend to live in smaller homes, too), moderate temperatures (you need less energy to heat your home), and whether the type of energy available in the province comes from relatively low carbon sources, or not.

All of this suggested to the researchers that Vancouver and Victoria should top the list—they get their electricity mostly from hydroelectric dams, not coal, like Edmonton. And they don't have harsh winters, like Montreal's, to contend with.

Advertisement

So why did Montreal rank first here? "The leading position of Montréal is somewhat of a puzzle," write the authors, UBC environmental economist Sumeet Gulati and Juan Fercovic, a former graduate student in food and resource economics.

The source of energy that the province relies on actually seems to matter quite a bit—more even than these researchers anticipated. Montreal households get a lot of their energy from hydropower, partly because Quebec has the highest natural gas prices in the country, they say. (The cost of natural gas is lower in BC, so households there use it more for heating.)

Meanwhile, the cities of Edmonton and Calgary have low density, terribly cold winters, and a coal-based electricity supply, which accounts for their poor results.

There are some important implications here. Governments are taking a hard look at various policies to bring down emissions, including Alberta, which is introducing a carbon tax in 2017, as the paper notes. And Quebec and Ontario are planning to adopt climate policies that include cap and trade. Beyond that, cities need to encourage greater urban density, and less sprawl, as they grow.

Raising the price of carbon-intensive fuels can also have a powerful effect, as Montreal shows—the average family of Montrealers consumes the least natural gas in the country, according to Gulati and Fercovic.

While cities debate who's most and least green, there's some good news for all Canadians: According to the paper, the average household across all cities, weighted by population share, saw a 16 percent drop in its carbon emissions over 12 years.

If we're going to hit the Paris targets, which aim to keep the global average temperature below 2 ℃ above pre-industrial levels, we'll need to learn something from Montreal's example.