Hydro power’s promise

Atlantic Canada’s premiers — with a big helping hand from visiting Quebec Premier François Legault — were thinking big this week.

The highlight of the St. John’s meeting was easily the dream of someday providing all of the region’s energy needs with plentiful, economical and renewable hydroelectric power from northern Quebec and Labrador.

There’s no question the capacity is there. Quebec already has more hydro power than it can currently sell. Newfoundland’s controversial 824-megawatt Muskrat Falls dam and generating station is expected to start producing power — which that province doesn’t need — by March. And plans for another massive hydro megaproject in Labrador, Gull Island, are already well advanced and only need buyers to proceed.

For Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, where fossil fuels like coal and fuel oil still play vital roles in power generation, hydro’s allure is obvious. That’s also true for P.E.I., since New Brunswick supplies most of the Island’s power needs.

Besides the relative stability of hydro power’s pricing compared to more cost-volatile commodities like fuel oil and coal, switching from fossil fuelderived energy to electricity generated from a clean, renewable source like hydro would clearly be an improvement in the fight to curtail climate change.

Hydro power is not without its own controversies, of course. The negative environmental impact from flooding land with new dams, along with the cultural upheaval for Aboriginal communities living in those areas, are serious problems that have historically received too little attention.

So any further development in Labrador must address those concerns.

At the premiers’ meeting, Premier Stephen McNeil said Nova Scotia would welcome buying more hydro power from Newfoundland and Labrador, saying it would benefit consumers and help attract businesses to the region..

But as the Atlantic premiers unanimously — and rightly — said, the first step toward fulfilling that dream is upgrading the region’s electricity transmission network.

Last week, Hydro-Québec and NB Power signed three deals, the third of which seems to relate directly to building up regional transmission capacity. New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs, speaking in St. John’s via teleconference after his flight was cancelled, said the deal will mean better power interconnections at the Quebec border as well as significant new power lines throughout his province.

Power interconnections at the Nova Scotia-New Brunswick border, which now allow for a maximum transfer of 350 megawatts, also need to be upgraded. The premier's office said on Thursday that, "We will be building on existing research done by utilities and provinces on what’s required to fix transmission bottlenecks and should have preliminary information in the spring."

The premiers agreed to move “expeditiously” on affordable, renewable clean power generation, improve the transmission network and — as an obvious consequence of the first two goals — reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Sounds good. Now the public needs to see more of the details, including costs and timelines.