Quebec’s energy policy needed to be updated and the government did it yesterday in the right way. It is heading towards renewable energy, towards clean energy, but it is also resolutely heading towards development.
Pierre Fitzgibbon presents a vision of sustainable development… because in this expression there is indeed the word “development”. Why insist? For the simple reason that a good part of the environmental movement has become radicalized.
Listen carefully to the speeches of the most militant environmentalists, you will now hear the theories of degrowth. Degrowth to save the planet! I am already telling you that they will strongly oppose the Fitzgibbon bill. Personally, I see degrowth as a guarantee of impoverishment.
- Listen to the Dutrizac – Dumont meeting via QUB :
Anti-development
Despite the record investments planned in renewable energies, despite the efforts to decarbonize industries and transport, these ecologists will be outraged. They will see it as a dangerous capitalist plan.
The signs of several activists in the demonstrations betray the reason for the anti-development bias. Activists against Northvolt, for example, brandished anti-capitalist messages. I do not believe that it has been demonstrated that China and Venezuela are models of ecology, on the contrary. Attacking capitalism in the name of the environment does not hold water.
These activists are amicably nicknamed watermelons. Green (ecological color) visible on the outside, red (communist color) hidden on the inside.
The Legault government is turning its back on this vision of things. Energy must once again become a strong economic engine in Quebec. And to get there, we will have to produce a lot more.
More dams, more wind power, more solar power, perhaps even a little nuclear power, the law tabled yesterday confirms the scale of the needs. Including its production and its purchases from private producers, Hydro-Québec has 185 TWh annually. By 2035, this will need to be increased by 60 TWh.
It is therefore necessary to generate in new capacity the equivalent of a third of current production. In ten years, that’s huge. And by 2050, yesterday’s announcement confirms that the equivalent of two Hydro-Québecs will be needed… that is to say, production must be doubled, nothing less.
Archive photo, QMI Agency
Mired
The bill provides mechanisms to accelerate the start of projects. Well done! Quebec is so bogged down in the study and approval processes that projects are compromised. Deadlines, stages, bureaucracy, we have created the conditions to increase the deadlines and costs of all our projects.
The only people who benefit from it are the professional demonstrators. Those who oppose all projects are taking advantage of the multiple stages to try to derail them. If we want to produce enough to electrify transport, industries, buildings, it is time to clean up that.
I also applaud the fact that we are giving a company the right to have electricity produced for its own needs by a private producer. If Hydro is unable to provide electricity, let’s have another option rather than killing the project.
