Once more, just as the captain of the french team of handball would thank his team-mates, I am grateful to Jean-Thomas Bernard, professor of economics at Laval University and Alain Thivierge, Professor of Environment and Geography at Collège François-Xavier Garneau as well as Claude Dumas, president of TM4, Quebec company producing electric motors for cars and permanent magnet generators for wind turbines. The three of them informed me on the topic of this article.

Quebec produces 95% of its electricity from hydropower. This province is one of the biggest producers of hydroelectricity in the world. This energy is generally considered as quite clean. Indeed, during the operation, there is almost no pressure on the environment and very little greenhouse gases are emitted (no fuel required). In addition, the hydraulic energy is renewable and above all storable (which is a unique feature), so it is a very enviable energy. But like any other source of energy, drawbacks exist : changes in the landscape (deforestation) ; relocation of populations (human beings and animals) ; concentration of mercury released by decaying plants ; up to one half of the energy can be lost in transport (up to 1000km between the place of consumption and the production site).

The lifetime of a dam is very long (about a century), but cost and construction time are very high.

The abundance of this energy leads to a price of electricity extremely low, which has important consequences. The most obvious one is that the electricity consumption per capita is very high in Quebec, which is also caused by the second consequence : the presence of many industries in the area to take advantage of the low cost of electricity (including much of the aluminum industry).

The second renewable source of energy used is the wind. Quebec has set up the objective of developing a wind capacity equal to the tenth of its hydraulic capacity (which would be 4000 Mw) by 2015.

Wind (and solar) energy requires subsidies to be profitable. There are two types of grants : (federal) production subsidies ; feed-in tariff (like in Finland), a price is guaranteed for this form of electricity, which means it is just the consumer who pays more for use of wind power.

In some states or provinces of North America, to promote renewable energies, a certain percentage of electricity from renewable energy is required (just like a minimum percentage of biofuels is sometimes imposed in the distribution of gasoline). In Canada, some provinces also impose a certain percentage of local production in the electricity distributed.

Recently,wind energy was almost profitable, its price approached the hydropower’s. But the development of shale gas in North America reduced the price of natural gas and increase the wind’s.

There are quite a few windmills in Quebec, only the amount required, but there are more in Ontario to replace coal plants. The residents welcome this energy for its cleanliness, but nobody wants it close to houses (NIMBY). The real obstacle for the development of this kind of energy is actually the opposition of people, especially because of the turbine noise.

In some areas where the dams are too far away from cities, wind energy replaces the hydraulic because it becomes less profitable due to higher energy losses. Actually, hydraulic energy is always more profitable than wind power despite the transport, but hydropower is simply preserved to be exported to the United States because the returns will be higher.

In summer, Quebec sells energy to the United States for air conditioning needs. In winter, sometimes, the province needs to import electricity from the United States when it is very cold.

Claude Dumas (CEO of TM4) gave me the idea to make a very interesting link between the hydro and wind power. One of the weaknesses of wind energy is that wind is unreliable (sometimes, there is no wind), while the hydroelectricity can be stored. Therefore we can consider these two energies as complementary : valves are closed (not all, of course) when it is windy and they are reopened when the wind stops blowing. I think it is a very strong argument for the development of wind power in Quebec. The high costs remain to be managed...

See you soon, Be green, Ben