Let’s wait before signing any contract and think about several elements. Feasibility, first. We are not yet producing this electricity. We don’t yet know where it will be produced or how we will go about it.
How are we going to plan for the manpower needed for such projects, remembering that we just promised 1250 MW to our New York City neighbors…almost the equivalent of Manic 5 (1596 MW) , for 25 years, and in full shortage.
You must not move too quickly; let’s deepen the risk analysis. It worries me for my children that we have not reviewed the calculation and social projection model used by the government to generate the result announcing the energy needs in ten years in order to create wealth.
This worries me first of all because we can forget important elements in the rush to get all these agreements achieved at once. Because we do not know, basically, how and who would benefit from the profits generated by the eleven companies or industrial companies which would use this promised electricity. We do not know who the shareholders or managers would benefit from this vision: the Quebec population, or foreigners? In the event of unforeseen cost overruns caused by unskilled labor, causing deadline extensions, who would absorb this debt?
Muskrat Falls
The best example of incomplete risk analysis is the Muskrat Falls hydroelectric megaproject, where managers were in a hurry to release contracts rather than completing the analyzes in progress and listening to the recommendations which concerned in particular the feasibility and at risks. Costs exceeded 20 billion rather than the 6.2 billion planned. These are 824 megawatts, the hydroelectric power station project built in Labrador, which was delivered in eleven years rather than the four years announced, mainly by foreign labor.
The approximately 500,000 inhabitants of Newfoundland are in debt over their heads, a disaster. A major provincial commission of inquiry was held there, and the managers were castigated, but what’s the point, after the fact, it won’t repay the debt.
In Quebec, we are aiming for ten times more electricity.
So let’s look straight away at the risks of the model, and review it before committing to these few companies. Prediction models are calculations made by computer and produce results based on inputted parameters. Is the Quebec government’s resource development project, even avoiding a fiasco like that of Newfoundland, based on the extension of the consumer society in which we live? So I come back to the calculation model underlying the forecasts.
Let’s wait before we get started. We have the opportunity and the duty to integrate many additional parameters into the artificial intelligence software used to ensure that we take into account both the wisdom of elders and the well-being of our children and that of future generations.