(Quebec) Premier François Legault will be in Newfoundland and Labrador on Thursday and Friday to negotiate the renewal of the contract for the Churchill Falls hydroelectric dam in Labrador.
He made the announcement during question period at the National Assembly on Tuesday. He will discuss with his counterpart Andrew Furey.
The electricity supply agreement from Churchill Falls expires in 2041 and its renewal is one of the cornerstones of the Legault government’s energy strategy.
However, this contract is at the heart of an old dispute that has lasted for decades between Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador, which feels cheated and has tried in vain to have the contract broken in court.
At the caucus of his party’s elected officials last January in Laval, the Prime Minister let it be known that he was going to begin discussions shortly and that he was going to have to find out fairly quickly whether Quebec could continue to count on the energy of Churchill. Falls. Otherwise, it will be necessary to erect more dams, already that his government is talking about building four or five.
It should be noted that the CAQ government foresees an increase in the demand for electricity over the next few decades due to the decarbonization of the Quebec economy, aimed at reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to zero.
Hydro-Quebec’s electricity surpluses are melting visibly and it will even take an additional 100 terawatt-hours to completely decarbonize Quebec by 2050, the Prime Minister has already mentioned.
On Monday, Mr. Legault met with senior Hydro-Quebec executives to prepare for negotiations. He made it known via Twitter. In the photo he also published, we did not see Sophie Brochu, the president of Hydro who announced in January that she would resign on April 11 before the end of her term.
The Churchill Falls power station is managed in partnership with Hydro-Québec, which buys its energy at a fixed rate, after having taken the risk of financing the construction of the structure in the 1960s.
Newfoundland and Labrador wants to revise the agreement because it feels it was disadvantaged when it signed.