TOP OFFICIALS AT HYDRO-QUEBEC said on Wednesday in Boston that the company’s Northern Pass project represents the best, most complete solution to New England’s need for clean energy.
Eric Martel, CEO of Hydro-Quebec, confidently predicted that Northern Pass will win needed permits in New Hampshire next year and be up and running by 2019. Steve Demers, a vice president at the company, said a number of projects are in the works to import Canadian hydroelectricity into New England, but none of them are on a par with Northern Pass.
For example, a project called the New England Power Link is fully permitted to run a transmission line from the Canadian border to Ludlow, VT, where it would feed 1,000 megawatts of electricity into the regional power grid. In contrast with Northern Pass, which at times has faced strong opposition in New Hampshire, the New England Power Link has encountered far less resistance because its power line would run underwater across Lake Champlain and be buried underground for the rest of the route.
Demers said the New England Power Link is a great project, but he noted it still needs to firm up a deal with Hydro-Quebec to supply power for the line. Demers said negotiations on a deal are ongoing, but he and Martel both mentioned Hydro-Quebec’s loyalty to Northern Pass and the company’s partner on that project, Eversource Energy.
“Northern Pass is ready to be built and it’s a complete solution,” Demers said, noting that other projects still have many variables in play.
The Massachusetts House passed energy legislation earlier this month that calls for local utilities to negotiate long-term contracts for large amounts of offshore wind and hydroelectricity. Many corporate partnerships are expected to bid on the hydroelectric contracts if the legislation is signed into law. Like Northern Pass, many of those corporate partnerships are actively lobbying officials in Massachusetts.
Some have suggested the best approach would be a transmission line that would bring a combination of onshore wind power and hydroelectricity into the region, with the hydroelectricity serving as a backstop for when the wind isn’t blowing. The House included a preference but not a mandate for this approach in its bill, which is awaiting action in the Senate.
Martel, in an interview at the offices of the Quebec Government Office in Boston, said the Northern Pass project would deliver 1,100 megawatts of just hydroelectricity. While acknowledging the benefits of a hydro-wind project, Martel said Northern Pass would offer benefits to the entire electric system and serve as a backdrop for renewables on a region-wide scale.
The hydroelectricity procurement included in the House bill is half what Gov. Charlie Baker called for in his original energy legislation. Matthew Beaton, the governor’s secretary of energy and environmental affairs, has urged the Senate to up the size of the hydroelectricity procurement.
But Martel and Demers noted that the region may secure additional hydroelectricity through a clean energy procurement process run by Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island that is expected to result in contract awards in the next few months.
Martel said Hydro-Quebec competed in that procurement, offering power from Northern Pass using what is being called a delivery commitment. Under the delivery commitment, he said, Hydro-Quebec would agree to supply a fixed amount of power each year to the region. The price of the power would not be set by contract, but instead be set at whatever the market price is in the region.
The Hydro-Quebec officials said most of the power under the delivery commitment approach would be delivered in the winter and summer peak-demand months for electricity and the rest would be delivered when electricity prices are surging. The arrangement would give Hydro-Quebec attractive prices for its power, while holding down price spikes in the region.
Hydro-Quebec, owned by the government of Quebec, recently released a strategic plan that calls for doubling the company’s revenue to $27 billion and increasing net income to $5.2 billion over the next 15 years. The plan calls for courting data centers, or computer farms, to come to Quebec to take advantage of low-cost hydroelectricity. Hydro-Quebec is also counting on electricity exports to boost net income by $300 million.
There is no guaranty that when we run short on natural gas during peak demand, Quebec will provide the power we need to avoid blackouts and brownouts. When we need power, they need power. Quebec wants to avoid spilling water over their dams when demand is low. That is when they will lower the price to dump excess electrify to New England.
Deals like these are forcing the early retirement of our coal and nuclear power plants, that are guaranteed to supply nameplate capacity winter and summer, giving ISO-NE the impossible task of avoiding blackouts with intermittent and variable wind and solar power, backed up by natural gas, piped in from Pennsylvania, and excess hydro power from Quebec with no guarantee of availably.
I don’t see where ISO-NE has been consulted, I cannot believe the engineers at ISO-NE will endorse such a plan!
Just to be perfectly clear. Resistance in NH to Northern Pass is stronger than ever. If power is running over NP wires in 2020 I’ll eat my hat, my parka, my Bean boots and my roll of duct tape — which is pretty serious stuff around here. It is astonishing that in all the discussion of Canadian hydro meeting Massachusetts’ energy goals, your neighbors to the north are apparently unworthy of consideration. Do you not understand the devastation this project would inflict on New Hampshire? Do you not know that EVERY major environmental group in our state opposes this project — CLF, AMC, Sierra Club, Forest Society, Audubon, Nature Conservancy. These groups all want cleaner energy. They also recognize that the environmental cost to NH is simply too high to justify using our state as your energy colony. Tell Hydro and Eversource to do the right thing and bury all of Northern Pass. Otherwise, after the lengthy permitting period (whose outcome is by no means assured), whichever side “loses” will, I guarantee you, be appealing to the NH Supreme Court. You will not see Canadian hydropower flowing via the proposed Northern Pass line in 2020, and you don’t need corrective lenses in order to see that. Massachusetts needs to realize that this is not just about you and your energy goals, and stop acting like we don’t exist. It IS about us and we will never back down. Never.