Are you prepared to turn on your dishwasher, washer and dryer at night to meet your the government’s call for energy sobriety? Are you ready to change the time you take your shower or when you give the children a bath?
Yet this is what could be asked of us. The objective is noble: to avoid peaks in our electricity consumption and to spread our use over the whole of the day or night, in order to generate collective energy savings.
Because it must be said, the narrative surrounding hydroelectricity has radically changed over the past few months. We were told for years that we were swimming in such excess energy that we didn’t know what to do with it. We exported so many that we had too many!
However, for the past few months, the message has been quite different. Capacities seem increasingly limited, to the point where we cannot support energy-intensive investment projects. Moreover, Quebec had to give up seeing the Volkswagen plant settle on its territory for lack of electricity, according to the Minister of Energy and the Economy. The awakening is brutal.
It’s like you always thought you were rich like Croesus, bought yourself a big cabin, a nice car and all kinds of stuff, only to find out you weren’t going to have enough to pay for your groceries on next month. It hurts. But it could be because you misplanned your spending, didn’t look at your bank statements, and didn’t consult your financial planner. You have been irresponsible and today you are going to have to tighten your belts.
Have successive governments been willfully blind? Difficult to conclude. One thing is certain, they were all very proud to announce to us the export agreements with the American States, to prohibit the sale of gasoline-powered vehicles as of 2035 and to remind anyone who will listen that we were pampered, blessed by the gods and rich in our hydroelectricity.
But it is especially to Hydro-Quebec that you will have to ask questions. How is it that we did not sound the alarm sooner, that we did not call for the launch of new projects to develop our energy capacity, beyond sobriety, to support our ambitions, particularly economical in this sense. The interim CEO did not even show up for the study of appropriations in parliamentary committee. That says it all.
Many feel betrayed today. And unfortunately they are probably not wrong.