Manitoba and clean energy challenges

Julia-Simone Rutgers’ excellent July 11 article “Gone with the Wind!” raises the very pressing urgency of developing Manitoba’s future green energy requirements. This in spite of the strong oil and gas cartel’s promotion of “energy” as only oil and gas and pipelines. To explain this more clearly, a historical review of Manitoba’s green energy past is helpful.

I joined Manitoba Hydro’s planning department as a young electrical engineer in the early 1970s. Since the Second World War, the demand for electrical energy in Manitoba had been growing at seven per cent per annum, or doubling every 10 years. This was mostly met with hydroelectric generation, with exceptions in Brandon, Selkirk and downtown Winnipeg.

Back then, Manitoba Hydro estimated that all the hydroelectric generation in the province would be used up by the end of the 1990s.

So, planning at Manitoba Hydro began to develop nuclear power generators out near Lac Du Bonnet.

Two nuclear power engineers were hired from what then was Ontario Hydro (who already had nuclear power generators operating). Manitoba Hydro undertook a study for what large transmission lines would be required into Winnipeg. A site was chosen in the Rural Municipality of Springfield, just east of the Winnipeg Floodway. Land was purchased there and was eventually used for Manitoba Hydro’s high-voltage, direct-current Bipole III converter station completed in 2018, nearly four decades later.

Why did the electricity load growth in Manitoba slow down?

The greatest factor was the replacement of vacuum tubes in radios, TVs and computers by transistors, which allowed huge reductions in energy requirements. Manitoba’s electric energy demand dropped to about three per cent per annum from the seven per cent per annum in the early 1970s.

The times they are a-changin’ again.

The demand for data centres requires great amounts of energy. The slow but definite move to electrical vehicles is also a factor. Manitoba has announced its interest in a data centre.

Data centres, such as the one Alberta’s proceeding with, will receive some of their electric energy from the grid, but also using the data centre’s own gas-turbine generators. In doing so, they will add to greenhouse gas emissions at a time when climate change is of increasing concern.

The Manitoba government is renewing the possibility of developing the Conawapa hydroelectric project on the Nelson River. The former Progressive Conservative government, under Brian Pallister, shelved Conawapa as being too expensive. Its cost today could be in excess of $18 billion. This is a significant amount, considering that Manitoba Hydro is a $32 billion corporation that is $26 billion in debt.

There is very good reason to continue expanding Manitoba Hydro’s increasing electric energy requirements with clean energy, but at reasonable cost.

Wind and solar farm generation with battery energy storage systems are the lowest-cost way to move forward on this.

In addition, a significant east-to-west transmission grid from Manitoba to B.C. would be a significant, cost-effective way forward using existing rail and road rights-of-way for the transmission lines — of which some could be underground.

In doing so, maintaining the support of our citizens is also critical as Rutgers’ article so clearly points out.

Farmers who allow wind turbines on their land may negotiate ongoing compensation for doing so. Small modular nuclear reactors should also be explored — the first in North America is under construction at the Darlington Nuclear Generating Station in Bowmanville, Ont.

For Manitoba, generating large amounts of low-cost, clean electric energy is the best way forward, all things considered.

Dennis Woodford writes from Winnipeg.