(Quebec) Washing dishes at night, lowering the heating when the house is empty, dynamic pricing: everything is on the table to push Quebec towards energy sobriety. A “robust” bill will be tabled in 2023, reveals Energy Minister Pierre Fitzgibbon, who dreams of seeing wind farms in northern Quebec.
“I talk to you a lot about sobriety. To know a little about what is happening in the world, we are not sober. […] We can change, perhaps, the modulation”, launched Mr. Fitzgibbon Friday during a press briefing where he detailed his vision of the management and the production of energy in the future.
“I lived in China and I can tell you, when we arrived at the house in the evening, it was cold and we had to leave. [le chauffage]. There is a consumption habit,” he explained.
The Legault government has set its energy production target by 2050 at 100 TwH, or “half Hydro-Quebec”, to decarbonize Quebec and achieve its climate targets.
In the short term, Pierre Fitzgibbon included in a bill tabled on Friday – which limits the increase in electricity rates to 3% – the lowering of the threshold where Hydro-Québec is forced by law to “connect” a company , from 50 MW to 5 MW, as revealed The Press. A 5 MW project is the “Bell Center or a 150-bed hospital”, said the minister, it is not a “small project or a big house in Westmount”. The demand is too high for the supply.
It is Mr. Fitzgibbon’s Ministry of Economy and Energy that will decide whether the projects can obtain energy, based on two criteria: the benefits for the Quebec economy and the objective of reduction of GHG emissions by -37.5% in 2030.
In January, he will specify the content of these criteria, and he will then enshrine them in a law. “We will have to prepare a very tough bill, which will be much more important for Hydro-Québec and the Régie de l’énergie, and which will be tabled somewhere in 2023,” he said. . All rate schedules, which are currently regulated by the Régie de l’énergie, will be reviewed. “I have ideas, we’re going to consult, it’s not something we’re going to do in a gag order. We are going to consult because it is very, very massive, ”he said.
Wind farms in the north
But this bill could also include dynamic pricing — making consumers pay more during peak periods, for example, when demand exceeds Hydro-Québec’s production capacity. Because the “energy sobriety” proposed by Minister Fitzgibbon is at the heart of his strategy to release electricity for the decarbonization of Quebec, and it is this that will be achieved in the short term.
” We have [l’équivalent de la production d’électricité d’un] dam in sobriety, we have one or two dams in wind power, and we have a dam with [l’installation] new turbines [dans les anciennes centrales] explained the Minister, who at the start of his second term inherited the Coalition avenir Québec from the Ministry of Energy, annexed to the Ministry of the Economy.
“Companies that want power, maybe we’ll tell them: at the peak, you won’t get any. Or we’ll lower it. We too, consumers too, perhaps, we have to change our habits. Maybe wash the dishes, do it at midnight,” he said.
Longer term. Mr. Fitzgibbon relies heavily on wind power and says he is inspired by Denmark, which derives 50% of its electricity production from wind power. In Quebec, wind power provides only 5 to 10% of the energy cocktail.
Not necessarily new dams
“The best example is Denmark. Everything is in the north, and the world is in the south. There’s a big pipe that goes out and connects that. Do we want to do massive wind projects in places where it’s socially acceptable, and at the same time connected to the south, and that’s money. My intuition is that we should look at this seriously, ”he explained. And Quebec does not lack land, he said, citing the example of the city of Fermont, which could accommodate a wind farm.
Only at the end of this process will he be able to determine whether we need to restart the construction of large hydroelectric plants. He launched, as a fictitious example, that the construction of 10,000 MW of wind power in the north would make the construction of dams obsolete. The calculation will be made on a “question of cost”: what is the most profitable.