Before Black is beautiful, there was this title of a book by Ernst Friedrich Schumacher which I read a very long time ago, but which is still relevant today. So I can’t help but take the keyboard to express myself on the subject of the hour: how to meet our growing energy needs?
Since James Bay, which was an extraordinarily interesting project, it seems that, for our government and for many Quebecers, electricity production must rhyme with big.
Do you know wave energy? You are probably familiar with run-of-river turbines. Did you know that the St. Lawrence River receives a current of cold water that comes from Labrador and that makes its way to the Saguenay against the current? Having sailed on the St. Lawrence between Tadoussac and the Gulf, I know that there are giants who do not sleep within it.
Why should wave energy be considered? For several reasons. Wave energy is almost permanent; producing electricity near the shore means producing near the customer instead of having to transport the energy over thousands of kilometres. The device that uses wave energy breaks its destructive power. However, the rise of the oceans threatens our coasts and the road infrastructures that run along them. It’s already started. In addition to producing electricity, we would therefore reduce our investments to protect and repair these infrastructures. In the Magdalen Islands, the entire territory could be protected by wave energy.
Indigenous peoples regularly remind us that the reservoirs created by dams are factories that produce mercury that poisons the fish they eat. […]
A turbine anchored at the bottom of the St. Lawrence and capturing the energy of the currents circulating there is less impressive than a large dam, but it would provide us with energy at a better price without the impacts that the First Nations deplore.
So, keep thinking.
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