Hydro-Québec has become so much of a state within a state, at home, that it must also think that it has the right to do what it wants in the United States.
But this week, we saw a second failure in less than four years to get its transmission lines across the United States. In Quebec, Hydro is just not used to being told no, to say it politely. But elsewhere, it is different.
And that risks calling into question the will of Prime Minister François Legault to make Quebec “the green battery of Northeast America”.
In Quebec, the crown corporation has always been able to count on the government, of whatever political stripe, to prove it right, even when the courts or a body like the BAPE wanted to change its plans.
As for the opponents, they had no chance. Remember the struggle of the town of Saint-Adolphe-d’Howard – and its mayor at the time, the indefatigable Lisette Lapointe – who challenged the decision to run a transmission line over the top of a Mountain. In the end, Hydro-Québec did as it pleases.
Which brings us to the United States, where Hydro-Quebec has just suffered a new setback to get its transmission lines through. The “green battery” has trouble connecting …
First, there was the Northern Pass project, which aimed to establish a transmission line of more than 300 km in New Hampshire.
From the announcement in 2011, and despite the promises of economic benefits from the project – then estimated at US $ 1.6 billion – citizens mobilized. They were not so much against Quebec electricity as against the inevitable pylons that support the high voltage line.
Pylons which could reach up to 40 m in certain sectors and which, according to opponents, would forever destroy the landscape of the White Mountains.
Two new routes were proposed in 2013 and then in 2015, in particular, in a final attempt to have the project accepted, nearly 100 km where the lines would be buried. But without convincing the opponents.
In 2016, the project was submitted to the New Hampshire Site Evaluation Committee, somewhat the equivalent of our BAPE. 1er February 2018, he voted unanimously against Northern Pass, believing that the inconvenience to the environment and tourism outweighed the benefits.
Hydro-Quebec and its American partner challenged the decision in court, but in July 2019, the New Hampshire Supreme Court unanimously ruled in favor of the opponents and the project was abandoned.
We are witnessing a repeat of this scenario in Maine, where opponents of a new 233 km transmission line have successfully put the issue to a referendum. On Tuesday, nearly 60% of voters rejected the project.
Hydro-Quebec has already indicated that it and its American partner would challenge this decision in court, saying that they had already started the work and that they had obtained all the required permits.
The problem is that in addition to the delay and costs that this appeal entails, victory in the courts of Maine is just as uncertain as it is in New Hampshire.
And there is still a certain image problem for Hydro-Quebec to argue that a referendum has no value. And it will be recalled that Prime Minister Legault has already rejected a pipeline project for lack of “social acceptability”.
Hydro-Quebec is not wrong to say that the referendum campaign gave rise to all kinds of disinformation and that gas companies, fearing to lose their market, financed the campaign of the opponents.
But the result is the same. In both Maine and New Hampshire, we saw the victory of a motley coalition of environmentalists, deer hunters, cottage owners and anglers who did not want pylons in their landscape.
Obviously, the solution would be to bury the transmission lines, but that costs more and would make the project less profitable or even more profitable at all, according to its promoters.
The problem is that a little further west, we are building a transmission line of more than 500 km between Montreal and New York, entirely underground with a cable under Lake Champlain and the Hudson.
Quebec has wanted to sell its electricity to New York for a very long time. But that only became a real possibility once the project with underground and submarine cables could be put forward.
Now put yourself in the shoes of the citizens of Maine and New Hampshire who see New York State entitled to the ultimate in technology when they have to settle for pylons destroying the landscape. It is as if we told them: “In New York, they are rich and we are going to bury the line, the others will have pylons. »And, during that time, the« green battery »is still not connected …