It is an odd energy plan indeed that inexplicably downplays this province's best chance to loosen the bonds of fossil-fuel serfdom.
You'd think that the opportunity to import up to 600 megawatts of hydro power from Newfoundland and Labrador via subsea cable — almost a quarter of Nova Scotia Power's generating capacity — would rate more than a passing mention in Nova Scotia's updated energy blueprint, made public earlier this month.
Even in the press release accompanying the unveiling of Nova Scotia's 2009 Energy Strategy, the Newfoundland option was strangely forgotten.
"We have opportunities in wind, tidal, biomass and natural gas," said fledgling Energy Minister Barry Barnet. Are we missing something here?
We know that importing power from the Lower Churchill Falls project is not a done deal. But it is the subject of complex, serious negotiations between Nova Scotia Power and its Newfoundland counterpart which could come to fruition later this year.
Conceptually and logistically, Churchill Falls is further along than the plan to use in-stream turbines — technology that has yet to be fully developed — to tap the Bay of Fundy tides. So why not talk it up?
Churchill Falls' potential for Nova Scotia is also the equivalent of tidal power and wind power put together (300 megawatts each). In short, this renewable-power trifecta, if it materializes, could meet almost half of Nova Scotians' energy needs and dethrone imported coal and oil, which today account for 88 per cent of what we burn to keep the lights on.
Understandably, the province does not want to count its chickens before they're hatched. On the other hand, it seems to have more faith in the offshore, and in its ability to keep hatching eggs, than it does in the possibility of NSP laying a big one in a historic deal with Newfoundland. The 2001 edition of the energy strategy was overly bullish on the prospect of increased natural gas supplies. The 2009 version is also betting on the continued expansion of natural gas, a cleaner burning fossil fuel, for domestic and industrial use in Nova Scotia. That would further reduce our dependence on oil and coal.
But the strategy never addresses where this natural gas will come from, given that supply from Sable is dwindling and offshore exploration is moribund at the moment. There are high hopes that producing a comprehensive geological map of Nova Scotia's offshore will spur prospecting.
Equally ambitious is the target to make Nova Scotia 20 per cent more energy efficient by 2020. A new, arm's-length electricity conservation and efficiency agency will get up and running this year. Within a decade, it's expected to help Nova Scotians save so much power that it would eliminate the need to build another 400-megawatt power plant.
While end-user efficiency is key, the real challenge of the future will be delivering power efficiently from an ever-diversifying supply. This will require a major upgrade in our transmission grid, so that Nova Scotia can import, export and move electricity around the province at will.
In this age of infrastructure investment, the electrical highway should be a bigger government priority than asphalt for our roads.