Again Ed Martin - President of Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro - is again out talking about how and maybe when we ship our liquid gold from Labrador to Central Canada. Is there anything that one can say to our leaders - to prevent them from shipping away our future. "No more Giveaways" the Premier says - but his actions do not demonstrate that. If you ship raw energy to Ontario you are giving away our best future renewable potential.
Developmental Electricity Pricing Programme (DEPP) - is being used by South Africa to attract energy intensive industry. The first success story is a 2.7 billion dollar aluminum smelter owned by ALCAN.
If you are interested in the amount of power used by a customer like this - 1180 MW's!
Considering the government is talking about 2500 MW's on the Lower Churchill - it does not take much imagination to see that a few industrial projects would chew up that amount.
When the government has at least 2000 MW's of committed industrial and domestic use - then it is ready to consider the development. Simply shipping it to Ontario is not good enough. Considering the energy used by government to beg for a route through Quebec only to deliver our liquid gold to Ontario - our Premier should consider using that same effort to attract industry to Labrador.
3 comments:
Sue I am spot on with you on this issue. Keep it here - let industry come here!
But I assume the govt's idea is that they'll take all the money they are going to make and offer incentives on electricity and other forms of power (bunker C - perhaps) to attract industry here and keep the ones that are here.
I'd like to know what you think about that. Are there other provinces or counties that do this now?
Thanks
As much as I aree with you on this one sue it is kinda like putting the horse before the cart.
You can't build it unless you have a market because you won't be able to raise the capital.
You can't have it sit idle once it is built and wait for the industry to come.
Personally I like the Kitimatee business model maybe with a few tweaks to suit us. get the industry to invest in it's construction in exchange for a guaranteed cheap share of the output. That way you kill two birds with one stone raise capital (diversify your risk)for the construction, and attract industry at the same time.
I would think that Lab West Iron ore company with it's contract from the twin falls cheap power deal up for renewal soon they would be a good candidate for this type of enterprise as would Voisey's bay and INCO seeing as they have a committment to build a processing plant somewhere in the province they will need a reliable source of cheap clean power for that venture.
Not really sure how you would go about doing something like this would it require RFP's?
Like you mentioned in another entry keep the cheapest energy for ourselves and sell the wind energy from the height of lands project to ON/QC and the US with a guarantee of supply by having the Lower and Upper as back up for down times in the wind production.
No it is not putting the cart before the horse - if you post RFP's for industrial development - you can arrange commitment prior to the and during the development. That is what's done in many jurisdictions.
If industry believes that Newfoundland and Labrador will simply continue to export the power - they will wait until we deliver the power to Ontario or Quebec.
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