Hydro fairy tales and lullabies

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 09/08/2023 (1149 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

When many of us were small, fairy tales of magic and adventure captivated our imagination and calmed our worst fears with happy endings.

With the daily bombardment of news about our troubled planet during this summer of fire and smoke, heat waves and floods, we long for someone to tell us a hopeful story or sing us a comforting lullaby.

This week, Premier Heather Stephenson and Manitoba Hydro’s past and present chairpersons tried to do just that. With a lullaby about a happy energy future in Manitoba in two documents, Manitoba’s Energy Roadmap (MER) and Manitoba Hydro’s Integrated Resource Plan (IRP), they spun a yarn to ratepayers that the government has a plan for cost-effective electricity long into the future. Both plans have been years in coming and years later than mandated.

Unfortunately, reading the plans tells a very different story.

In one of the most bizarre energy statements ever, Hydro wants to spend hundreds of millions of dollars building new fossil fuel turbines to create the electricity Manitobans will use to replace fossil fuels in our buildings and vehicles. Yes, you read that correctly. Burning more fossil fuels will reduce the burning of fossil fuels. Decades of investments creating one of the lowest carbon energy grids in North America will be seriously undermined by this colossal mistake. The children listening to this fairy tale are left scratching their heads along with the rest of us.

Not surprisingly, achieving zero–carbon emissions by 2050 is off the table. The most aggressive scenario Hydro can even contemplate is a 42 per cent reduction by 2042. This delusional lack of urgency is compounded by the Hydro Chair’s comment that “we’ve got two to five years to look around the world and pick the best solution for our unique situation.”

Costs to ratepayers will increase as will emissions thanks to more electricity imports. All of our provincial and U.S. state neighbours have significant amounts of carbon in their grids, and even the Hydro storyline admits to a “greater exposure to import price risks.”

Building owners will face rising costs because in this fable it makes sense to first pay thousands of dollars for air-source heat pumps when we still rely on natural gas, rather than switch to a zero-emission option such as ground-source geothermal that provides year-round carbon-free heating and cooling like the geothermal systems operating Hydro’s own award-winning office tower downtown.

In a hydro-electric utility where drought is a severe risk, other renewable energy sources are reduced to minor characters. Instead of a resilient mix of energy sources, solar farms are not considered in any scenario. Building more wind farms was emphasized in the premier’s news conference but is a minor player in her government’s “energy roadmap” and the IRP. The aforementioned geothermal systems are projected to provide only four per cent of total heating and cooling by 2042, leaving customers vulnerable to future price spikes and rising carbon taxes.

Deep retrofits to homes and businesses would save money, strengthen our economy by reducing fossil fuel imports, and create significant employment opportunities, but this storyline contains no significant investments and no mention of district-based energy systems. Hydro needs to increase Efficiency Manitoba’s budget to dramatically scale up retrofits and geothermal throughout the province.

Electrification of transportation is projected to supply almost 75 per cent of the carbon reductions in the province. This transformation is well beyond the mandate and capacity of Manitoba Hydro to regulate. There is also no discussion in these documents of the significant incentives required to electrify our transportation sector, as evidenced by the results in other jurisdictions in Canada and throughout the world.

The reports presented this week are a lacklustre, unimaginative and cautious glimpse into the government response to a fast-changing future, suggesting only incremental policy changes, no meaningful delivery targets and regrettably, no intention of meeting the IPCC emissions targets. The fairy tale is exposed as a nightmare.

As a past board member of Manitoba Hydro and local business owner, I am shocked that Manitoba Hydro is planning to fall back on strategies that increase carbon in the atmosphere and unnecessary costs for Manitobans. Shame. How can these even be considered a serious option? For the good of our economy, our children, our communities and our planet Manitobans must oppose this.

There is another way.

Over the past few years, Manitoba’s Climate Action Team has developed a compelling document entitled: The Road to Resilience. This pathway outlines, in detailed metrics, meaningful and cost-effective actions to achieve zero-carbon emissions in Manitoba from space heating and vehicle transport by 2050. The most important of these are progressive building energy codes, deep energy retrofits and district geothermal systems — along with new wind power and energy storage while ensuring a reliable electricity system, creating thousands of more jobs, providing financial savings for Manitobans and a more resilient, stable and profitable Manitoba Hydro. For information on this see: https://climateactionmb.ca/road2resilience/

This can be our fairy tale with a happy ending.

Dudley Thompson is an architect and was a previous board member with Manitoba Hydro serving on the Audit and Finance Committee and is currently a member of Sustainable Building Manitoba. He was also the professional advisor to Manitoba Hydro in the development of Manitoba Hydro Place, one of the most energy efficient office buildings on the globe.