Hydro plant owner says NSP doesn’t know
One of Nova Scotia’s small independent power producers can’t believe Nova Scotia Power Inc. hasn’t done any studies on integrating alternative energy into its grid.
"I thought it was absolutely extraordinary that they haven’t done any studies," Neal Livingston, owner of Black River Hydro Ltd., said Tuesday in an interview.
Livingston’s 220-kilowatt hydroelectric plant near Mabou has supplied electricity to the provincial utility since 1984.
On Tuesday, he grilled Nova Scotia Power on behalf of the Margaree Environmental Association at a provincial Utility and Review Board hearing in Halifax on a proposed $208-million biomass energy project in Port Hawkesbury.
The power company would own the plant NewPage Port Hawkesbury Corp. would operate it.
It would burn 650,000 tonnes of wood waste a year to generate enough electricity to power 50,000 homes and help Nova Scotia Power meet provincial renewable energy targets.
Half of the waste wood would come from NewPage’s sawmill and papermaking operations. The rest would be harvested, with half of that coming from Crown lands under a 25-year deal NewPage negotiated with the province.
Livingston said he pushed the power company eight years ago to hire experts to create a model of how much renewable wind power it could take on its system as an alternative to greenhouse gas-producing fossil fuels.
"They haven’t spent a dime on it," he said, suggesting that the electrical utility is more interested in profits than in the environment.
"Biomass is, in some ways, the most profitable thing for them to do. They’re in the business of making money, and with a big biomass plant, they can make more money."
The proposed plant would increase greenhouse-gas emissions rather than reduce them, he said.
"It’s not going to reduce coal burning and they haven’t done any work to figure out how much wind they can put on their system."
Livingston said the provincial utility is using a wind integration study paid for by the provincial Energy Department.
"I think, in the last month, we’ve gone backwards 10 years relative to the province having any significant impact on pushing the utility to do anything," he said, pointing to a recent government rollback on mercury emission targets.
Nova Scotia Power said the targets would result in rate hikes.
Robin McAdam, the power company’s executive vice-president of sustainability, said the utility couldn’t draw any conclusions about wind power integration until it had wind facilities in place.
The company is in the process of setting up wind power data-gathering models, said Mark Savory, vice-president of technical and construction services.
McAdam said he didn’t think the biomass plant would increase provincial greenhouse-gas emissions.
"I don’t see how it can."
But he couldn’t say to what degree the plant would contribute to a reduction in the burning of coal, an issue he said would be determined by price.
Livingston also questioned whether Nova Scotia Power would take over Crown forest leases NewPage holds if that company failed.
The province is capping forest biomass generation at 500,000 tonnes above the current level and will review biomass as a source of electricity after 2015.
The hearing continues today. It is scheduled to move to Port Hawkesbury for a tour of the proposed plant site Friday.
No comments:
Post a Comment