At the start of the first mandate of the Coalition avenir Québec, the CEO of Hydro-Québec, Éric Martel, had informed the new Premier François Legault that the Crown corporation would have electricity surpluses for the next 20 years. . We now know that its forecasters were royally mistaken, because barely five years later, the outlook is completely different.
It’s annoying because forecasting electricity demand in the medium and long term is a critical responsibility of Hydro-Québec. Increasing electricity production is not done by shouting scissors. The state corporation had, moreover, accustomed us to overestimating the demand for electricity, which resulted in costs that we could have done without. But we have to agree that running out of electricity is worse.
Large dam projects require lengthy planning, and their construction usually extends over 15 years. The deployment of the wind sector is faster, but it is not instantaneous. Before the Chamber of Commerce of Metropolitan Montreal on Friday, the Minister of Economy, Innovation and Energy, Pierre Fitzgibbon, indicated that he intended to quadruple the installed wind power capacity by 2040. to reach 16,000 MW. Nothing less. Last March, it launched a call for tenders for 1,500 MW of wind turbines which must be connected to the grid in more than four years, in December 2027 and December 2029.
Faced with the industry’s enthusiasm for green energy, Hydro-Québec is caught off guard. And this, both for existing customers, we are thinking of aluminum smelters, for example, and for new implementation projects. The state-owned company can no longer meet industrial demand, so much so that the Legault government has given it the power to choose which new projects of 5 MW or more will be connected, when it could not exercise a right of refusal. than for very large industrial consumers of 50 MW and more. And projects of 50 MW and more, Minister Fitzgibbon said he had 50 on his table.
The prospect of these surpluses led to the signing of two mega-supply contracts which reserve for the State of Massachusetts and the city of New York, for 20 and 25 years respectively, nearly 10% of the electricity produced by Hydro -Quebec at present. Obviously we are biting our fingers today, although the Legault government consoles itself by saying that the contracts include interconnections which may be useful for the import of electricity. But that’s small consolation. It is obviously out of the question not to respect these signatures. The best that could happen is that the contract with Massachusetts is canceled due to disputes over the transmission lines crossing Maine. However, you shouldn’t count on it too much.
Based on surpluses, even imaginary ones, Hydro-Québec was reluctant in the past to offer energy efficiency programs worthy of the name, apart from measures to reduce consumption during winter peaks. After all, for any energy savings, it was sales that she was depriving herself of. Even its sole shareholder, the Quebec state, did not see its interest in it. The situation has now changed.
The cheapest electricity is the one we don’t consume, repeats Pierre Fitzgibbon. Hydro-Québec announced in early April that it was tripling its energy efficiency targets. It is now aiming for 25 TWh within ten years. This means that it is willing to invest in “negawatts”. What was called unrealistic by its engineers, and the figment of the imagination of environmental activists, is now possible and highly desirable. In itself, it is quite a conversion.
But to replace fossil fuels with electricity and thus decarbonize Quebec, we will obviously need much more than these 25 TWh in energy efficiency. In its last strategic plan, Hydro-Québec warned that it would have to increase by 50%, or 100 TWh, the volume of electricity it will have by 2050. And that is without counting the major industrial projects that could the day. It will take a lot, a lot of energy: “Is it 100 TWh? 150 TWh? More ? asked the minister.
Obviously, producing or saving such volumes of electricity seems utopian. Already, ensuring that electricity supply will be sufficient, if only for the present decade, is a challenge. The Legault government is unable to tell us how Quebec will manage to release such volumes of renewable energy within 25 years. We cannot, however, throw stones at him: no one is in a position to do so.