‘The benefits are going to be significant’
West coast wind megaproject expected to create 6,800 jobs
In the bright office building lobby in downtown St. John’s Wednesday afternoon, World Energy GH2 CEO Sean Leet greeted reporters with a hint of a smile.
He was matter-of-fact, rarely responding to questions with emotion, but he did say that Project Nujio’qonik’s release from further environmental assessment on Tuesday by the provincial government was “hugely significant.”
“The world is watching our province, and watching our country,” Leet said.
“We're in a unique position on a global scale. We have the potential to be one of the first commercial-scale green hydrogen projects to deliver green hydrogen to the world.”
With that potential comes jobs — more jobs than there will be people to do them, Leet said.
“The benefits are going to be significant. The reality is there's not going to be enough resources — and that's human resources, and companies available — to do all the work that's required to stand up this industry, and I'm not just speaking about our project, but there's other exciting projects alongside of ours as well. So, we need everybody to be able to participate to make this a reality,” Leet said.
“We’re in a unique position on a global scale. We have the potential to be one of the first commercialscale green hydrogen projects to deliver green hydrogen to the world.” Sean Leet World Energy GH2 CEO
The company expects that the first phase of the west coast wind energy project will create about 2,200 construction jobs, about 400 permanent full-time operations jobs, and another 4,200 indirect jobs.
Leet said the company currently directly employs 27 people in St. John’s and about 10 people in Stephenville.
To date, the amount spent on the project is approaching US$100 million, and the cost of the project’s initial phase is expected to be US$4.5 billion, he said.
World Energy GH2 plans to erect more than 300 turbines on the Port au Port Peninsula and in the Codroy Valley area, plus transmission lines and a hydrogen-ammonia plant in Stephenville.
Once complete, the first phase is expected to produce about 400,000 tonnes of green ammonia for export. Annually, it’s expected to produce about 210,000 tonnes of green hydrogen which is Rfnbocompliant (renewable fuels of non-biological origin), therefore meeting Europe’s criteria for green hydrogen, according to a company press release earlier this year.