Quebec needs to fix proposed law that seeks to avert 2027 power shortfall: Globe
CREDIT: Hydro-Québec
Hydro-Québec now estimates it will run out of surplus power by 2027, forcing the government’s energy department to reject some industrial development projects.
Quebec legislators must go back to the drawing board on Bill 69, which seeks to provide a solution for the province’s lack of a long-term power supply, the Montreal Economic Institute’s Renaud Brossard and Gabriel Giguère wrote in the Globe and Mail.
The bill was tabled by the Legault government at the end of June in response to the revelation that Hydro-Québec, which has a monopoly on the province’s power-generating capacity, used faulty assumptions to determine energy demand, and that it would run out of surplus power by 2027, Brossard and Giguère wrote.
The bill, which would allow independent renewable energy producers to sell directly to a single industrial client, doesn’t go far enough because it would make it unviable for those producers to sell to small and medium sized companies, leaving them at the mercy of Hydro-Québec, which may not be unable to provide for their electricity needs, according to Brossard and Giguère.
