Think back to last December.
A couple of Nalcor guys bragged about the company’s strategy of importing electricity when they needed during the months when prices were low and then exporting our own electricity when electricity prices were high.
Brilliant idea. It worked for Hydro-Quebec for most of the past 50 years.
There’s only one problem: it won’t work any more.
Back in that December post linked above – the Hollowmen of Nalcor – SRBP explained the reasons why the Nalcor plan was dead before it started. Now the Financial Post has reported on the recommendation of a report commissioned by the Quebec government.
The Quebec report recommends that Hydro-Quebec put a hold on its current hydro projects, including whatever is left of the four dams scheduled for the La Romaine project. Hydro-Quebec can only get about three cents a kilowatt hour for its exports into the United States. The shale energy revolution has altered the American markets so fundamentally that the Quebec committee can’t see it ever going back to the way things were.
For its part, the Parti Quebecois government under Pauline Marois plans to follow the same path as the Conservatives in this province. They are going to keep building, no matter what. The reasons are apparently the same as the ones in Newfoundland and Labrador. that is, the construction projects are more about using publicly money to prop up the economy in parts of the province rather than in spending money wisely.
-srbp-
