Saturday, May 06, 2006

Quebec's energy plan

Having received some feedback that a previous post could be taken as being anti-Quebec (which I'm not!) I've decided to post this instead.

I think that the recently announced Hydro-Quebec plan could be great for Quebec, Ontario, and the climate. Having more energy available from Quebec will surely help Ontario with it's plan to get rid of the coal-fired generating stations.

I especially like the energy efficiency targets:
"Between now and 2015, Quebec's government plans to increase the province's overall energy efficiency target by a factor of eight from the current levels. That is expected to save consumers about $2.5-billion a year, and avoid putting about 9.4 million tonnes of greenhouse gas in the air annually."

For comparison, our yearly emissions from all of Canada is close to 750 million tonnes. But it's a great start. Imagine if all the provinces had similar projects - we'd be a lot closer to our Kyoto targets.

Quebec may be getting some federal funding to help with climate change projects soon (see the end of the article) - we should be expanding this type of funding to all of the provinces.

The wind power projects could also be good, provided they are constructed in locations that have minimal impact on migratory birds.

Some of the hydroelectric projects, however, are more controversial in what the resulting environmental impacts will be.

No comments: