Quebec, like Mass., facing electricity challenges of its own

Hydro-Quebec says it won’t back away from contracts with Mass., New York

By Bruce Mohl 0 Comments May 23, 2023

THE RUMBLINGS from Quebec sound ominous, but officials at Hydro-Quebec say the provincial utility’s power supply contract with Massachusetts is rock solid.

The contract was signed more than four years ago. No electricity has started flowing yet because of repeated delays associated with the Maine transmission line slated to deliver the electricity to the New England power grid. Those delays appear to be coming to an end, just as talk in Quebec has become more pointed about an upcoming shift from power surpluses to power shortages within the next three to four years.

“Our surpluses have melted like glaciers under the sun of climate change,” said Pierre Fitzgibbon, Quebec’s energy minister, at a luncheon with a business group on Friday.

For years, Quebec has been viewed as a place where hydroelectricity is cheap and plentiful. Residents paid far less for electricity and energy-intensive businesses flocked to the province. But now Quebec is looking to decarbonize and realizing it’s going to need a lot more power to electrify its transportation and building/housing sectors.

Hydro-Quebec currently has 40 wind farms producing nearly 4,000 megawatts of energy, but the utility wants to increase its capacity to at least 16,000 megawatts by 2040. It is setting very ambitious energy efficiency targets, upgrading its existing generating facilities to increase output, and exploring the building of new power-generating dams on the Little Mecatina River, a process that could take 10 to 15 years.

But it remains unclear whether those measures will be sufficient. “To achieve decarbonization and develop our strategic sectors, we will need energy. Lots and lots of energy. Is it 100 terawatt-hours? 150 TWH? More? As we look toward 2050, I know one thing: nobody really knows,” Fitzgibbon told the business group. “But one thing is for sure, the needs will be huge. And for the next 10 years, it will be tight and choices will have to be made.”

While Quebec is struggling with its decarbonization efforts, officials say there is no retreating on electricity export contracts Hydro-Quebec signed with Massachusetts and New York to help decarbonization efforts in those states. The power contracts, the officials say, have already been built into the utility’s electricity calculations for the next 20 years.

“Yes, we have enough energy, enough capacity to deliver energy to Massachusetts, to New England,” Hydro-Québec Chief Financial Officer Jean-Hugues Lafleur said earlier this month.. “When we signed the contract in 2018 we had enough energy, and we still have enough energy to supply the New England region.”

The officials also dismiss claims by a small group of Maine lawmakers opposed to the transmission line who have urged Gov. Maura Healey to back out of the contract with Hydro-Quebec.

Meet the Author

Bruce Mohl

Editor, CommonWealth

About Bruce Mohl

Bruce Mohl is the editor of CommonWealth magazine. Bruce came to CommonWealth from the Boston Globe, where he spent nearly 30 years in a wide variety of positions covering business and politics. He covered the Massachusetts State House and served as the Globe’s State House bureau chief in the late 1980s. He also reported for the Globe’s Spotlight Team, winning a Loeb award in 1992 for coverage of conflicts of interest in the state’s pension system. He served as the Globe’s political editor in 1994 and went on to cover consumer issues for the newspaper. At CommonWealth, Bruce helped launch the magazine’s website and has written about a wide range of issues with a special focus on politics, tax policy, energy, and gambling. Bruce is a graduate of Ohio Wesleyan University and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He lives in Dorchester.