Amid calls for a hydroelectric renaissance in Quebec, the most attractive options lie outside its borders

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Until a few months ago, it seemed Quebec’s storied era of hydroelectric development was truly over.

But that was before Premier François Legault and other senior officials within his government revealed ambitions to build four or five new dams – necessary, they said, to achieve the province’s greenhouse gas targets while at the same time satisfying surging demand for power.

This caught Hydro-Québec, the Crown utility that would actually do the work, on the back foot. “Our crews are reviewing hydro potential in Quebec, considering different aspects such as feasibility, social acceptability and economics,” Francis Labbé, a spokesman for the utility, told The Globe and Mail in an e-mail. But it is “too soon” to reveal which projects the province might pursue, he wrote.

This state of unpreparedness reveals how dam-building initiatives can fall victim to shifting priorities. In the middle of the past decade, Hydro-Québec vowed to study the feasibility of various major hydro projects across the province’s northern regions and announce its next big dam project by 2020. But that never happened.

Hydro-Québec’s latest strategic plan, which covers 2022 through 2026, envisions growing power-generation capacity through refurbishing existing dams and building wind turbines. The most it says about new dams is that they might “be required at some point in the future.”

But now that there’s a renewed sense of urgency, Hydro-Québec is hardly starting from scratch. Mr. Legault’s edict could breathe new life into old proposals explored (and often shelved) years or decades ago. The more fully those opportunities were investigated, the more likely they are to have cost estimates, preliminary technical work and environmental impact assessments collecting dust.

So while it’s impossible to guess with confidence where Hydro-Québec might erect new dams, a good place to start forming theories is on the scrap heap of history.

New hydro development is by no means unimaginable in Quebec. The province’s geography is uniquely suitable: a single dam complex can harness watersheds that drain hundreds of thousands of square kilometres. A 1992 journal article said that of 50,000 megawatts of unharnessed hydroelectric potential remaining within the province at that time, nearly 19,000 megawatts were commercially exploitable – equivalent to the output of more than 30 typical coal-fired power plants.

Hydro-Québec’s most recent drawdown on that balance was the Romaine Complex, a 1,550-megawatt project that began construction in 2009. It consists of four generating stations on the Romaine River, on the north shore of the St. Lawrence River. In stark contrast with contemporaries such as British Columbia’s Site C and Labrador’s Muskrat Falls, that project was delivered largely on schedule and on budget.

River energy potentials in Quebec

In kilowatts

100 to 500

500 to 1,000

1,000 to 5,000

5,000 and over

Hydro plants in Quebec and Labrador (100 MW+)

Existing

Previously proposed

NUNAVUT

Ungava

Bay

Labrador

Sea

Hudson

Bay

QUEBEC

Great Whale

N.L.

Twin Falls

Muskrat

Falls

Churchill Falls

Gull Island

Magpie

Nottaway-

Broadback-

Rupert

Petit-Mecatina

Tabaret

PEI

N.B.

ONT.

N.S.

U.S.

MURAT YÜKSELIR / THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCE: NATURAL RESOURCES CANADA; HYDRO-QUEBEC; GOVERNMENT OF NEWFOUNDLAND AND LABRADOR

River energy potentials in Quebec

In kilowatts

100 to 500

500 to 1,000

1,000 to 5,000

5,000 and over

Hydro plants in Quebec and Labrador (100 MW+)

Existing

Previously proposed

NUNAVUT

Hudson

Bay

Ungava

Bay

Labrador

Sea

QUEBEC

Great Whale

N.L.

Twin Falls

Muskrat Falls

Gull Island

Churchill Falls

Nottaway-

Broadback-

Rupert

Magpie

Petit-Mecatina

Gulf of

St. Lawrence

Tabaret

PEI

N.B.

ONT.

N.S.

U.S.

MURAT YÜKSELIR / THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCE: NATURAL RESOURCES CANADA; HYDRO-QUEBEC; GOVERNMENT OF NEWFOUNDLAND AND LABRADOR

River energy potentials

in Quebec

In kilowatts

NUNAVUT

100 to 500

500 to 1,000

1,000 to 5,000

5,000 and over

Hudson

Bay

Ungava

Bay

Hydro plants in Quebec

and Labrador (100 MW+)

Existing

Previously proposed

Great Whale

QUEBEC

N.L.

Twin Falls

Churchill Falls

Muskrat Falls

Gull Island

Nottaway-

Broadback-

Rupert

Magpie

Petit-Mecatina

Gulf of

St. Lawrence

Tabaret

PEI

N.B.

ONT.

N.S.

U.S.

MURAT YÜKSELIR / THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCE: NATURAL RESOURCES CANADA; HYDRO-QUEBEC;

GOVERNMENT OF NEWFOUNDLAND AND LABRADOR

Natural Resources Canada has published data and maps showing river current energy potential for all of Canada, including several unharnessed watersheds in Quebec’s northernmost regions. But there’s a lot more to developing a hydroelectric project than simply locating a powerful river – for instance, the expense of building transmission lines to major population centres, which becomes more difficult to justify with each additional kilometre.

“One of the ideas was to develop hydro power sites on the rivers that flow into the Ungava Bay – that’s way, way north,” said Jean-Thomas Bernard, an adjunct professor at the University of Ottawa who has long studied the economic aspects of energy use. “And the cost range I recall there was something like 12 cents to 17 cents” per kilowatt-hour. “That’s very expensive.”

In 1986, then-premier Robert Bourassa announced his plan to build the 3,090-megawatt Grande-Baleine (Great Whale) project in Northern Quebec. (Additional dams on the Nottaway, Broadback and Rupert rivers were considered during that same period.) Great Whale’s power was intended for export into the U.S.

But the Bourassa government wasn’t inclined to consult local Cree communities, who along with environmental groups organized a forceful campaign opposing the project. New York State cancelled multibillion-dollar contracts associated with the plan in the early 1990s, beaching Great Whale.

“This was a fairly large site,” Prof. Bernard said. “But I haven’t heard anyone mentioning that this site could be reconsidered. And also, I’ve been told that it would be fairly expensive.”

François Bouffard, an electrical engineering professor at McGill University who studies power system economics, said the transmission lines built for the Romaine Complex could prove crucial in determining Hydro-Québec’s next move.

“There’s actually a fair amount of room left in that transmission line,” he said. “Which basically means that they have the option of going and damming a few more rivers in that general area of Quebec.”

Among the waterways that could be pressed into service is the Petit-Mécatina, on the north shore of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, which was included in Hydro-Québec’s strategic plan for 2009-2013 at a proposed capacity of 1,200 megawatts. Also nearby is the Magpie River. According to the same plan, that river could generate a minimum of 850 megawatts.

But Hydro-Québec abandoned Magpie amid opposition from conservation and paddling groups, with a spokesperson in 2017 going so far as to vow “we won’t touch it.”

“They will never build that one for social acceptability reasons,” said Louis Beaumier, executive director of the Trottier Institute, an energy think tank.

There are reasons to wonder about the Legault government’s resolve. Raising the possibility of new dams in Quebec might be a ploy to gain negotiating leverage with its counterparts in Newfoundland and Labrador.

The two provinces are in the early stages of renegotiating a controversial 1969 agreement on electricity generated by the huge Churchill Falls generating station in Labrador. At 5,428 megawatts, it’s among the world’s largest hydroelectric dams. The terms of the agreement strongly favoured Quebec, which derived most of the financial benefits.

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Mr. Legault himself has said he wants alternatives in case the two provinces can’t come to terms.

But observers suggested Quebec’s best, cheapest options for adding new hydropower capacity lie in Labrador. Prof. Bouffard said another 1,000 megawatts could be squeezed from Churchill Falls simply by refurbishing and updating the project. Downstream from Churchill Falls is the proposed Gull Island site, at 2,250 megawatts, which Mr. Legault has spoken of co-developing with Newfoundland and Labrador in recent years.

Skeptics of a hydroelectric renaissance point to a host of complications that accompany building dams in the 21st century. Environmental permitting is far more complicated than it was decades ago, during the hydroelectric construction heyday. Experience has shown that transmission projects should expect considerable opposition and must offer demonstrable benefits to communities along their routes if they hope to overcome it. Utilities now typically enter into partnerships with local and Indigenous communities, but this can add significantly to costs.

Even a well-run dam construction project can take a decade or more. (Hydro-Québec began designing the Romaine Complex two decades ago.) The cruel hand of time can invalidate a dam’s economic rationale long before the turbines start spinning.

Mr. Beaumier said the Romaine Complex was built to supply export markets. “But between the inception of the project and now, there was the shale gas revolution that made the electricity prices drop in the U.S., at least in New England,” he said. “So the market for export just crashed … that market is not there any more.”

The problem isn’t new. Quebec’s La Grande Complex (part of the famed James Bay project) was a piece of a broader effort to attract heavy industry. “But then came the oil crisis, the economic recession, so all those industries didn’t come to Quebec,” Mr. Beaumier added.

Mr. Beaumier said that, rather than prematurely announcing major new dam projects, Quebec should first draw up a comprehensive assessment of future electricity demand. Only then should it contemplate the most attractive options for meeting it, he said.

“We have to make the case that [dams are] the cheapest option for additional capacity,” Mr. Beaumier added. “And right now, it’s not really clear.”

Editor’s note: In an earlier version of this article, the map of hydro plants Quebec and Labrador did not include Muskrat Falls. This version includes the corrected map.