Transcon’s Michael Johansen on the latest twist in the Lower Churchill saga:
Creak, creak, creak … rattle, rattle, rattle … snap! Screeeeeeech … kerplunk!
Hear that? That’s the sound of the wheels once again falling off the Newfoundland government’s 30-year-old Lower Churchill campaign bus.
Meanwhile, the Chronicle-Herald editorial crew think that the Nova Scotia government should send the Muskrat Falls deal off to their utilities review board for an assessment.
They’re worried about getting stuck:
But from a Nova Scotia viewpoint, there are other options, like imported power from Quebec or access to swelling U.S. supplies of natural gas, that were not examined by the PUB. So it makes sense for Mr. Dexter to frame some reference questions of his own for our URB, to address whether Muskrat Falls is the best bet from a Nova Scotia perspective.
And for those who think there could be exports to help pay for Muskrat falls, guess again. Ontario is facing such a glut in generation that they may have to shut down some of their nuclear power plants temporarily. That’s significant because nukes give 57% of Ontario’s generating capacity and you can;t spool them back up quickly.
Last June 8, for example, … Ontario was exporting “everything we could to keep supply in line only to declare an energy emergency alert just 12 hours later. Demand climbed to the point where we were using every available megawatt in Ontario to meet that demand.”
- srbp -