Quebec will need more and more electricity, which will cost more and will have to be consumed differently, forecasts Hydro-Quebec in a new strategic plan which announces an increase in the production capacity of the state-owned company.
Posted at 11:00 a.m.
Updated at 11:00 a.m.
“We can no longer function with yesterday’s ideas in today’s world,” sums up the president and CEO of Hydro-Québec about the government corporation’s new strategic plan for the next four years. made public on Wednesday.
As soon as she arrived at the head of the state-owned company in April 2021, the new CEO announced that she was working on a new one to replace the one just published by her predecessor Éric Martel.
The first observation of Sophie Brochu’s first game plan is that Quebec will need 100 terawatt hours of additional electricity to achieve carbon neutrality in 2050. This is more than 50% times more than the current production capacity of Hydro- Quebec.
“The game has changed,” says Hydro-Québec, which is no longer promoting its abundant and inexpensive energy. There will be no more energy available for cryptocurrencies, specifies Sophie Brochu. Electricity is in high demand and meeting this demand will cost Quebecers more, predicts the state corporation. New electricity supplies cost 11 cents per kilowatt hour, compared to 3 cents per kilowatt hour for existing generation, the document said.
To minimize future rate increases, Hydro-Québec wants to double its energy efficiency objective to 8 terawatt hours, which is the equivalent of the production of the Romaine facilities.
To achieve this, Hydro-Québec will extend variable pricing to all of its customers. The pricing structure will be modified accordingly. “We’re going to have to change our habits, but we’re going to help our customers to do so,” says Sophie Brochu.
Produce 5000 megawatts more
The Crown corporation plans to increase its production capacity by 5,000 megawatts over the next few years. More than half of this additional electricity, or 3,000 megawatts, will come from wind farms, in which Hydro-Québec is ready to invest directly, rather than proceeding through calls for tenders from private promoters as it has done until now. now.
Hydro-Québec can finance these wind investments at a lower cost and limit the impact of these new supplies on electricity rates, explains the company.
Existing Hydro-Québec hydroelectric facilities will also be modernized with the aim of increasing their production by 2,000 megawatts by 2026.
Additional investments will be needed to realize these projects. Hydro-Québec forecasts that its annual investments will increase from $3.7 billion currently to $5 billion per year over the next few years.
These additional 5,000 megawatts will be far from enough to meet the increase in demand expected by 2050, but it’s work for several years, explains Sophie Brochu. “We have it for several years and until then, we will see how the demand evolves,” she explains. Technologies that we cannot even imagine today could become solutions to meet needs, she believes.
At the same time, Hydro-Québec is not ruling out the construction of new hydroelectric power stations in the longer term, i.e. after 2026. An update of the hydroelectric potential that remains to be developed is essential, according to Hydro, since “we could need new hydropower generation capacity in the future”.
Furthermore, the international aims of the previous strategic plan have disappeared. “We are no longer in it at all,” says Sophie Brochu about her predecessor’s international expansion plans. We already have so much to do at home”.
Instead, Hydro-Québec seeks acquisitions and partnerships in neighboring networks to increase its expertise and increase opportunities for energy exchange.
The 2022-2026 strategic plan focuses on the completion of two long-term export contracts with Massachusetts and New York. The state corporation also plans to maintain its current profitability, or some $4 billion in net profit per year.
The previous plan aimed to increase profits to 5.2 billion in 2030.