Electricity sector in Canada
A second model involves a Crown corporation as a large generator or in transmission, alongside an investor-owned distributor, as in Newfoundland and Labrador, Yukon, the Northwest Territories and, to a lesser degree, Prince Edward Island.
Also, major hydroelectric developments trigger federal environmental assessment processes,[19] as the Government of Canada has the power to regulate waterways and fisheries.
One such company is Rio Tinto Alcan, which owns and operates 7 hydroelectric generating stations in Quebec and British Columbia, with a combined installed capacity of 3,300 MW.
In Canada's most populated province, Ontario Hydro has developed 11,990 MW of nuclear capacity between 1966 and 1993, building 20 CANDU reactors at 3 sites: Pickering, Darlington and Bruce.
New Brunswick and by extension, Prince Edward Island, which buys 96% of its power from the neighbouring province,[29] has a diversified mix, including a nuclear reactor and hydroelectric dams.
[36] The grids generally follow north-south orientations since most population centres in Canada are concentrated in southern regions along the American border while the largest hydroelectric stations are located in sparsely inhabited areas to the north.
For instance, in 2009 Ontario spent $2.3 billion on a series of transmission projects aimed at connecting new renewable capacity fostered by the Green Energy Act.
[40] In Alberta, the AESO recommended in 2008 the construction of a $1.83 billion, 240 kV looped system in the southern part of the province to integrate up to 2,700 MW of new wind generation.
[2] The generation sector in Alberta is dominated by TransAlta, ENMAX, and Capital Power Corporation, a spin-off of Edmonton's municipally owned company EPCOR.
[45] Despite tougher new emission measures announced by the federal government in June 2010, industry officials believed the province will continue using coal to generate electricity into 2050.
[66] In the last decade[clarification needed], the government-owned utility has faced problems with the failure of a plan to switch two of its large thermal facilities to Orimulsion, a heavy bitumen fuel produced by PDVSA, the Venezuelan government oil company, and a 2-year delay in the mid-life refit of the Point Lepreau Nuclear Generating Station.
], a couple of options are discussed to modernize New Brunswick electricity infrastructure, including a plan to build a 500-MW intertie with Nova Scotia[70] and a preliminary agreement with France's Areva to evaluate the feasibility of a second nuclear generating station at the Point Lepreau site.
The Lower Churchill's two installations at Gull Island and Muskrat Falls will have a combined capacity of over 3,074 MW and have the ability to provide 16.7 TWh of electricity per year.
Formerly a government-owned company, it was privatized in 1992 by the conservative government of premier Donald Cameron, in what was called at the time the biggest initial public offering (IPO) in Canadian history.
[78] NS Power has a generating capacity of 2,293 MW:[77] 5 thermal plants fired with a mix of coal, petroleum coke, fuel oil and natural gas, provide the bulk of the 13 TWh yearly supply.
[77] Over the years, NS Power has been blamed by Nova Scotia residents for its poor maintenance record and its failure to quickly reconnect customers after storms.
The government opened the competitive market on May 1, 2002, but heat waves and droughts in the summer of 2002 caused wholesale prices to soar to peaks of $4.71/kWh in July and $10.28/kWh in September.
Faced with bitter complaints from consumers, the Ernie Eves government announced a price freeze for small customers while leaving the wholesale market intact, on November 11, 2002.
[2] Although Eves was praised for the pause in generation market deregulation the cancellation of Hydro One's initial public offering and his handling of the 2003 North American blackout, the Progressive Conservatives were defeated by Dalton McGuinty's Liberals in the provincial election of 2003.
[100] In April 2009, the Ontario legislature passed the Green Energy Act establishing feed-in tariffs for power from renewable sources and streamlining the approval process for new generation sites.
[101] Two months after passing the bill, Ontario announced the suspension of a competitive process for the purchase of 2 new nuclear reactors at Darlington, citing the price tag, later evaluated at $26 billion.
[102] Critics of the government strategy stress the Act will increase the price of electricity and undermine the system's reliability,[103] while pitting some local residents against wind developers.
According to the document, a residential customer using 1,000 kWh per month would pay 17.29 cents/kWh, a rate two and a half times higher than the one paid by consumers in Montreal, Winnipeg or Vancouver.
[43] In November 2009, Premier Robert Ghiz hoped to reduce the price of electricity while limiting atmospheric emissions by opening talks with the government of Quebec for a long-term supply agreement.
Benefiting from low generation costs, favorable interest rates and high export prices, Hydro-Québec paid $10 billion in dividends to the Quebec government between 2005 and 2009.
[124] Qulliq Energy plans to build a small hydroelectric project at Jaynes Inlet, not far from the territorial capital, Iqaluit, which is currently served by two diesel generators.
[126] While Canada reduces the carbon footprint in the US by exporting 10% of total hydroelectricity, more than half of all Canadian homes and businesses burn natural gas for heat.
The project, which received a $770 million grant from the federal and provincial governments, involved storing the captured CO2 through geological sequestration and enhanced oil recovery.
[133] In March 2010, SaskPower has announced its own carbon sequestration project at the Boundary Dam Power Station,[134] the province's largest coal plant.
In British Columbia, the provincial government ordered BC Hydro to remove the 50-year-old gas-fired Burrard Generating Station from its roster of baseload plants.
