Pierre Fitzgibbon assures that he will be “parsimonious” in granting electricity to companies wishing to feed on the Hydro-Québec network. Of the 23,000 megawatts (MW) of requests for hydroelectricity, at most 10,000 will be granted, he said on Tuesday, even as another high-ranking member of the state company left his post.
Questioned in the morning at the entrance of a parliamentary committee, the Minister of Economy and Energy again pledged not to “sell electricity at a discount”. In a brief filed Tuesday morning in a parliamentary committee, Hydro-Quebec quantified the private supply requests at 23,000 MW, which would theoretically require the addition of 13 Romaine complexes.
“The 23,000, we have to agree, there are several things in there. For example, there is a green hydrogen demand of 9000 MW. It won’t happen, ”said Mr. Fitzgibbon in a press scrum. “It’s a bit like the list of Christmas presents. »
According to the Minister of Energy, this list may include “duplication”. “I think we’re going to end up, probably, at 8,000, 10,000 MW,” he said.
Hydro-Quebec has all the means to increase its capacity to meet these needs, according to Mr. Fitzgibbon. “First, Hydro-Québec has already [prévu] increase supply. Second, wind power, you can do a lot,” he said.
Last Friday, during the pre-sessional caucus of the Coalition avenir Québec, he again pleaded for “energy sobriety”, but Prime Minister François Legault had ruled out enshrining it in a law. The state-owned company intends to save 8 terawatt hours of energy by 2029 by “intensifying[ant] its energy efficiency efforts”
“The best way to limit infrastructure is to have the most efficient consumption possible,” said Dave Rhéaume, Vice-President for Integrated Planning of Energy Needs and Risks at Hydro-Québec, in the parliamentary committee. .
The latter took part on Tuesday in the study of Bill 2 “aimed in particular at capping the rate of indexation of the prices of the domestic distribution tariffs of Hydro-Québec and at increasing the framework of the obligation to distribute electricity “. The legislative text notably provides for allowing the Minister of Energy to choose the projects that will benefit from Québec hydroelectricity.
New start
Even as commission work unfolded on Tuesday, Hydro-Québec’s executive vice-president, Éric Filion, announced his departure from the state-owned company. A news confirmed a few minutes later by the vice-president of sustainable development, community relations and communications, Julie Boucher, then by a press release. “He told us that he had new professional challenges, that he had been working at Hydro-Québec for seven years and that he chose to take up these new challenges,” she told the press. parliamentary.
“I think it’s not bad at Hydro-Quebec,” said Tuesday the interim leader of the Liberal Party of Quebec (PLQ), Marc Tanguay, when asked about this new resignation. “There is eel under rock,” added the solidarity co-spokesperson, Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois.
The announcement of Mr. Filion’s departure comes barely twenty days after that of the upcoming resignation of the president and CEO of Hydro-Québec, Sophie Brochu. The president of the board of directors, Jacynthe Côté, will also leave soon.
” [Hydro-Québec] is weakened,” said PQ MP Pascal Bérubé on Tuesday. “But there, the appointment [d’un nouveau p.-d. g.] Shouldn’t take long, I imagine. “Marc Tanguay pleads for a new incumbent who will have” free rein “. “We are going to hope that the person who will be appointed to head Hydro-Québec will have all the independence… obviously, the qualifications, the qualities required, [mais] independence,” he said.