Feds support N.S., N.B. plans to kick coal

A bevy of federal ministers joined with the premiers of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick in Ottawa on Monday evening to announce they’re all friends again and will start working together to get the region off coal.

While federal Energy Minister Jonathan Wilkinson had a few million dollars for aspects of the provinces’ plans to both be off coal by 2030, he had no funding yet for the $1.95-billion grid intertie the premiers were there to pitch.

“One way is to essentially throw stones at each other across the federal-provincial fence and not make a lot of progress,” Wilkinson told reporters. “The other is to embrace the challenge and sit down and try to find pathways through which we can actually get to the objectives that we share. 

“I want to acknowledge the partnership with (Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston and New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs) on sitting down and actually choosing that progressive and thoughtful path. That’s how Canada makes progress.”

Monday’s announcement was short on details, but it did mark federal support for the Nova Scotia Clean Power Plan, unveiled to the media last week.

The plan drops the $9-billion idea to tie Nova Scotia’s grid with Quebec’s, dubbed the Atlantic Loop. Instead, it will see us bet heavily on onshore wind farms, some increased solar and a 500-megawatt intertie between Onslow and Salisbury, N.B., through which Nova Scotia could buy power from New Brunswick when the wind’s not blowing.

There was also $11.5 million for grid-system monitoring improvement and automation in Nova Scotia, $7 million for predevelopment work on New Brunswick’s plan to green its grid with small modular nuclear reactors and $3 million for studies on whether its remaining coal-fired plant in Belledune can be converted to biomass.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau pushed the Atlantic Loop this summer while speaking at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish.

“(Volkswagen) looked carefully across North America, and one of the reasons they came here was because, in their mission to build clean cars, they are making sure their manufacturing uses clean electricity,” Trudeau said of the company, which the parliamentary budget officer has estimated would receive $16.3 billion in government subsidies in exchange for building a plant in southwestern Ontario.

“We want to see investment like this coming to Atlantic Canada, too. This is what our commitment to building the Atlantic Loop is all about.”

Houston was quick to point out at the time that the feds were only offering an interest-bearing loan for about half the project’s cost. 

Reporting by The Chronicle Herald showed that Quebec doesn’t have the generating capacity to meet its existing domestic and export commitments, let alone supply Atlantic Canada.

Questioned about the Atlantic Loop on Monday, Wilkinson didn’t acknowledge his government’s recent efforts to push the project.

“I think the amount of electricity available from Quebec is perhaps a little more constrained than people may have thought a few years ago.”

– Federal Energy Minister Jonathan Wilkinson

“The Atlantic Loop, people will recall, was an idea that actually came from Atlantic Canada, and the federal government engaged in that conversation,” Wilkinson said.

“I think the amount of electricity available from Quebec is perhaps a little more constrained than people may have thought a few years ago.”

Wilkinson called the grid intertie between Nova Scotia and New Brunswick a “modified Atlantic Loop” and committed that the federal government will look at ways to financially support the project through existing mechanisms.

For their parts, premiers Houston and Higgs said their plans to green their grids by 2030 are focused on keeping energy affordable.

“I think the fact that we’re all on the same page on what’s possible is really important,” Houston said.

“Then we move on to the discussions to make sure it’s affordable. So we’ll work closely with the federal government to keep affordability at front and centre of everybody’s mind.”