(Quebec) There is no energy crisis in Quebec, according to Minister Pierre Fitzgibbon, even if one of his colleagues maintains the opposite.
Last week, the Minister for the Economy, Christopher Skeete, spoke of an energy crisis in Quebec during a session at the National Assembly.
On Friday, the Liberal opposition accused the CAQ government of lacking “clarity and vision” on future electricity needs and Mr. Skeete then replied that the Liberals, “on their side too, have no answer how we are going to resolve the energy crisis in Quebec”.
“Energy crisis? No, ”clarified Mr. Fitzgibbon, in a press scrum on Wednesday morning, before going to question period.
I think Quebec has the energy it needs.
Pierre Fitzgibbon, Minister of Economy, Innovation and Energy
However, the Minister added that the future needs of the industries that have been listed exceed the current production capacities of Hydro-Québec. However, he wanted to be reassuring for the future.
“But we can manage that,” he hastened to add.
What future ?
The debate on Quebec’s energy future has been well underway since the election campaign and has taken a new turn with the premature departure in January of Hydro’s president, Sophie Brochu, followed by those of other leaders of the hydro company. ‘State. The opposition then spoke of a “crisis” at Hydro-Québec.
Although Premier François Legault spoke extensively about Hydro-Québec and future energy needs, notably at the end of his party’s pre-sessional caucus in January, he never used the term “crisis” to describe the current situation.
He has constantly mentioned the need to build new dams to provide the electricity needed to decarbonize Quebec’s economy, that is to say achieve zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, an objective to be achieved by 2050 in accordance with international commitments. However, industries were still emitting 30% of Quebec’s GHGs in 2020.
Mr. Legault ventured to estimate that it would take four or five more dams to provide electricity, without saying where they would be erected, while Hydro is still in the process of updating its list of rivers that have the potential to be harnessed.
100 terawatt-hours
The head of government indicated that Hydro-Quebec’s electricity surpluses are melting visibly and that it will take 100 terawatt-hours to completely decarbonize Quebec by 2050.
For its part, Hydro-Quebec revealed that the list of supply requests for possible large corporate projects would represent a total power of 23,000 MW if they all went ahead, hypothetically. This is equivalent to 13 times the complex of the Romaine.
“The ambition of the government means that there are currently more than 25,000 megawatts of requests from different companies,” Mr. Skeete confirmed in the exchanges.
Liberal Energy Critic Gregory Kelley accused the government of lacking “clarity and vision”.
In his exchange with Mr. Skeete, he recalled that Mr. Legault mentioned the figure of 100 terawatt-hours, while a report spoke of 137 terawatt-hours, and that the Minister of the Economy “says 150”.
“Even though we would say: ‘between 100 and 150, we don’t really know.’ This is not a good answer. This is why there are people who are currently expressing why it is so important to have a national discussion. »