Faced with the scale of future wind developments in Quebec and the upheavals they may cause, voices are being raised for the establishment of a generic BAPE for the wind sector.
“They call me the Gaul. I ask a lot of questions and it’s disturbing,” says Sylvain Pillenière, municipal councilor of Lotbinière, during a meeting with The duty at the Lorka farm.
Mr. Pillenière is part of the Vent d’élus group, made up of around forty local elected and former elected officials concerned about the installation of wind turbines in agricultural areas and about municipal democracy. The group has concocted a proposed resolution which must be adopted in various municipal councils. Those of Hérouxville, Saint-Camille and Sainte-Monique have done so until now in whole or in part, thus taking a position in favor of a generic BAPE for the wind energy industry.
The resolution highlights the numerous citizen concerns raised in various municipalities. We also read that “the cultivable territory represents only 2% of the territory” and that “any reduction in the cultivable territory threatens food security and autonomy”. We also hope that “the issues surrounding wind power development in inhabited and agricultural areas are clarified”.
Future wind projects, just like those of the past, must be examined on a case-by-case basis by the Bureau d’audiences publique sur l’environnement (BAPE). But Vents d’élus believes that the overall and cumulative repercussions of the entire sector on the environment, communities and the economy deserve to be evaluated through a generic mandate from the BAPE. In the past, the BAPE has carried out generic mandates on subjects such as the shale gas industry, pork production and the management of final residues. In 2023, more than a hundred signatories to a letter called for an even broader BAPE on Quebec’s energy future. This idea was rejected by the Minister of the Economy and Energy, Pierre Fitzgibbon.
“A generic BAPE would be a very good idea. But there should be a moratorium. We put a stop to it and, following the analysis, we put the wind turbines in the appropriate places, like the hydroelectric basins,” judged François Véronneau, a concerned and involved citizen of Saint-Pie.
The CEO of Hydro-Québec does not believe that a generic BAPE is a good idea in the wind turbine file. “We cannot reasonably have a blanket approval, because the BAPE process should be aligned with the specific elements of each project,” commented Michael Sabia last Thursday during a press conference about the BAPE’s wind strategy. state company.
Avoiding failure through acceptability
Furthermore, the latter affirmed that the need for social acceptability is one of the main factors motivating the change in model announced last week. The “locomotive” of aerial development will now be large projects involving more than hundreds of wind turbines coordinated by Hydro-Québec, probably away from populated areas. Mr. Sabia, however, did not rule out the possibility that projects involving a few dozen wind turbines carried out by private companies, like those which have taken place until now, would be added in a complementary manner. To achieve this “fundamental” social acceptability, the CEO believes that we must rely on municipal elected officials and on the councils of the First Nations concerned, since they have a “privileged channel of communication” with citizens.
The true scale of this acceptability is the entire community, according to Yann Fournis, professor of regional development and political science at the University of Quebec at Rimouski. “We must not only check with the mayor, but validate that the mayor is an authentic representative of his community,” he stressed.
“If the community is torn apart, it is a failure,” judges Mr. Fournis. There is a certain technical logic which makes [que certains promoteurs] want to first formalize a project and try to get it through. » This way of doing things must be abandoned in favor of negotiation, he believes.
Opaque approaches and negotiations in the shadows tend to cause citizens to turn away and the opposition to quickly organize, which “undermines the possibility of social acceptability and encourages disputes”, believes for its shares Louis Simard, professor of political studies at the University of Ottawa. He adds that in principle, “the company has nothing to hide”.
Furthermore, individual studies by the BAPE of future wind projects could also change things. In at least one case, that of Saint-Valentin, the project was abandoned in 2011 even though the report highlighted a lack of social acceptability. The effects of the project on birds and the loss of agricultural heritage were also raised by the BAPE.