Hydroelectricity alone will not be able to decarbonize Quebec, and the bill which will be tabled by June will set the table for a “discussion” on the mix energy of Quebec.
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This was supported on Friday by the Minister of Economy, Innovation and Energy, Pierre Fitzgibbbon, during an event organized by the Chamber of Commerce of Metropolitan Montreal.
“Transparency”
“We’re going to have to talk about mix energy and transparency. But we never had that discussion. Our plan will say: what is needed to decarbonize net the province in 2050? And it won’t just be hydroelectricity, we will realize that there are other sources of energy that we also need,” he declared in a crowded room at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel.
Among the “other” sources of energy, the minister spoke, for a rare time, of natural gas. “In Quebec, we currently consume the equivalent of 7,000 megawatts of natural gas. To think that there will be no more natural gas tomorrow morning, that won’t happen. “We would have to build five complexes like the Romaine just to replace natural gas,” he imagined.
New thermal power plant?
The newspaper revealed in February that Hydro-Québec raised the possibility of using the Bécancour natural gas power plant (400 MW) and a “new thermal power plant” during discussions with Pierre Fitzgibbon’s ministry.
Nuclear power will also be “indispensable”, according to him. “Unless there are new technologies developing in the future, nuclear is going to be a necessity. The world will not decarbonize without nuclear power. The experts are unanimous. Or we will say no, and in that case we will have to build twenty dams.”
The minister is banking heavily on his integrated energy resources management plan (PGIRE), which will be unveiled during the presentation of the bill on the energy sector next month.
“This plan will allow Quebecers to realize that to decarbonize, if we want to be consistent, we will have to take actions that will have a social and ecological cost, and we will decide whether or not to do it,” he said.
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