Provincial strategy closes door to new big-scale wind developers, Minas Basin Pulp and Power says
A HANTSPORT firm that wants to build a large wind farm is hopping mad that Nova Scotia Power has been given the responsibility for half of the new renewable energy projects that the Dexter government announced last week.
Minas Basin Pulp and Power says the government’s new electricity strategy closes the door to any new large wind-power developers.
Nova Scotia Power is to be responsible for half of the new renewable energy projects to be built between 2013 and 2015. The targets require 100 megawatts from Nova Scotia Power and 100 megawatts from large wind developers. Minas Basin vice-president John Woods said the government has handed those projects to Nova Scotia Power, and the rest of the electricity will probably be supplied through adding turbines to the province’s largest operating wind farm, RMSenergy’s 51-megawatt facility west of New Glasgow, and Shear Wind’s 60-megawatt project in Antigonish and Pictou counties that is to start producing later this year.
"A major problem with the large wind component is that the only opportunity over the next five years for major wind is 200 megawatts, (and) half of that is given to Nova Scotia Power, who have shown over the past years they don’t deserve this privileged position," Woods said.
"So, conceivably, there is no opportunity, zero opportunity, for large wind developers in Nova Scotia. It means we have no industry."
Woods said the province’s new strategy to quadruple the amount of power it generates from renewable sources by 2020 is a step in the right direction, but any new opportunities for wind-power developers will not come until after 2015.
"The problem is the large-scale wind industry — that’s the one that’s being closed out on this strategy," Woods said.
He said he will lobby the government to open the marketplace to more large wind-power developments by seeking changes in the proposed renewable energy legislation to be debated in the legislature this spring.
"There’d hardly be any reason to muster your forces and do the analysis, even submit a proposal . . . because it has been won already by the two existing farms," Woods said.
Nova Scotia Power defends the government’s decision to award it a large portion of the work.
The government’s electricity strategy requires large-scale wind-power projects to be low-cost, and the privately owned utility can deliver, a Nova Scotia Power vice-president said.
"As a regulated utility, we have access to money at very favourable terms," Robin MacAdam said. "The energy business is a capital-intensive business. When you have access to money at low cost, then you can develop projects at low cost, and that’s to the benefit of ratepayers." RMSenergy president Reuben Burge supports the government’s recommendations.
"I think until we understand the impacts and how the grid will work with more electricity on it, going farther would only put us into a gold rush and to projects that wouldn’t be a benefit to the province anyway," he said.
RMSenergy’s $100-million wind farm at Dalhousie Mountain in Pictou County started producing power late last year after the company signed a contract to supply wind-generated electricity to Nova Scotia Power.
Burge said "going too far, too fast" in installing more wind turbines across the province could result in labour shortages within the renewable energy industry.
"We would have to outsource all of our labour, and products and experience," Burge said.
Premier Darrell Dexter said the province could further expand its targets and look for more suppliers. "As we get out years into this strategy, if we find that we are having unprecedented levels of success, then of course we will look at those goalposts and see if we can move them," he said. "But I think the intent here was to present a plan that would gain broad-based support."
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