Does New England need Quebec to decarbonize?
Perhaps of interest to those in New England:
As many are probably aware, there is an ongoing debate regarding the importation of power from (Hydro) Quebec to the New England grid, namely Massachusetts and New York. See this for overview:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/effort-to-trade-gas-for-hydropower-in-northeast-meets-resistance/
Since decarbonizing the grid is so often mentioned here as a solution to reducing operational carbon of housing, I am curious how folks feel about this issue.
Is this hydro actually low carbon?
Can New England quickly and effectively implement other, better (more local, fewer drawbacks?) low-carb energy initiatives? What would those be? Etc.
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It’s cheap power with long-term (usually multi decade) contracts. There are already several interconnections, notably the highgate converter and a large (gigawatt) link into New York. I think there may be a third too. The interesting part is that the hydro Quebec system is not synchronous with the eastern interconnection, so connections between the systems have to be by way of HVDC ties. HVDC systems offer some other benefits too, such as the ability to very rapidly adjust to system conditions which can help stabilize systems running with large amounts of less stable or less predictable energy sources (such as wind power).
Regarding any “gas for hydro”, that’s just economics and how stuff gets paid for. The hydro Quebec power is currently substantially cheaper than the local generation in the northeast, the problem tends to be the very large rural areas with low demand that are between the hydro Quebec system and the load centers nearer the Atlantic coast.
Large amounts of gas are already been sent from the us to Canada. The vector pipeline through Michigan was recently reversed to start carrying gas from the us to Canada instead of from Canada to the us. The issue is that much of Canada’s gas supply is in the west (Alberta, etc), but much of the demand is in the east. There is limited pipeline capacity between. The us gas is offsetting and/or supplementing Canada’s own supply and is not necessarily being used as additional supply.
Bill
I took the 'trade gas' to mean the reduction of local gas power generation in favor of the hydro. But either way, the tough part of it for me is in:
1) deciding how clean and low carbon the hydro is
2) deciding if this power is beneficial to New England (and New York) or if local projects can carry the weight of supplanting current high carbon generation.
I'm in Maine where there's a fairly strong opposition to the proposed DC link going from HQ to southern ME, thereby entering the grid for Mass to tap. Most of the loud opposition seems to be about the transmission corridor itself, but in my mind, the greater question and concern is whether the hydro itself is all that great.
It's a bit too in-depth maybe to get into here, but if anyone else has looked into this hydro in particular and has feelings on it's 'green credentials,' I'd be interested. The short version of the concern is that it has very large impoundments, which release carbon, displace populations, and raise other (potentially serious?) ecological concerns ( like warming the St Lawrence waterway / Gulf coast of Maine).
Assuming that this power falls somewhere on the 'better than some but not great' scale of ideal, the second question becomes, can New England supplant current high carbon generation within its own borders quickly and effectively? Solar and wind seem to be what's on the table, but are they up to it? If not, how does this hydro stack up to continued gas generation, etc?
The project to bring Hydro Quebec power to MA through ME has lots of opposition. Central Maine Power is Maine's largest power transmission and distribution utility. CMP won the competition to bring about 1200 MW of power to MA.
But pretty much everyone hates CMP for a variety of reasons, most quite valid. Add the fact that lots of Mainers hate MA for whatever reason and you end up with widespread opposition.
My understanding is that Quebec Hydro has excess capacity, so selling the excess to MA would be a net benefit to the planet, reducing fossil fuels used for power generation. But not everyone agrees.
At the same time as the project goes through the various regulatory steps necessary to get it built, there is a bill in Maine's legislature to seize CMP's assets and turn it into a publicly owned utility.
It doesn't help that CMP is owned by Avangrid, which is mostly owned by Iberdrola, a Spanish company.
I just googled to see what electricity cost in Quebec out of curiosity. Its the cheapest in North America according to Hydro Quebecs website. I had no clue it was that cheap.
They claim 1000 kwh in Canadian dollars cost 73$ in Quebec compared to Boston at $334!
If one fightes hydropower from Quebec, we will end up with local gas plants
solar and wind cannot supply the entirety of the demand, and hydro is a good constant load.
There are multiple reasons why Canadian hydro may not be 'green' but I find it hard to argue that it is not low carbon.
I am not trying to say I like the look of more transmission lines, but hydro helps create more solar and wind, and we are going to need to replace the nukes that are going out of service.
I would say it is not a perfect solution, but when your goals align with those of the petro industry, it is, to my mind, worth thinking about what one is opposing
The electrification of New England that is necessary to combat global warming emissions (electric cars, heat pumps, etc.) will require massive new power generation, and thus also new transmission lines. The opposition to the CMP / Hydro Quebec transmission in Maine crosses the political spectrum, but there will be a day of reckoning for environmentalists who oppose the transmission line on environmental grounds - Hydro from Canada would be but a drop in the bucket for our overall new energy needs.
This report puts it in proper context. https://brattlefiles.blob.core.windows.net/files/17233_achieving_80_percent_ghg_reduction_in_new_england_by_20150_september_2019.pdf?fbclid=IwAR1fOOxAD0D2eghn1uE-Lw3RHyNbG_L9NrgSL9Slf3TmLdAyefskWyKljwE
It is worth noting that hydro Quebec is planning to sell excess capacity on this link, so they don’t need to build any more dams to generate the power — the plants are already in place. It’s also worth noting that neither wind nor large-scale solar are without their own impacts in terms of land use. Thinking “hydropower is less green because it needs a flooded reservoir” is ignoring the fact that wind turbines require large amounts of clear land and are hazards to birds among other issues. I would actually argue that in many ways hydroelectric projects are less of an impact than large scale wind farms.
New transmission lines will be needed in New England regardless of where the energy is coming from. Wind power does NOT tap off existing lines wherever they are, it doesn’t work that way. Large scale wind farms have essentially a separate power grid for the wind turbines that that connects back to the main grid in one or two places. Large scale wind farms really aren’t distributed in the way that many people think they are.
Based on my own industry experience, nationalizing (not sure if that’s the correct term if the state does it and not the federal government) the power transmission network in Maine is unlikely to improve reliability and lower costs. Government management of these systems tends to result in less efficient operation and higher costs. That’s not to say that the current operator isn’t having their own problems, but thinking the government can “do it better” is usually fallacy.
Bill
The idea that wind turbines are a major cause of bird deaths is a total canard. Wind turbines cause a small fraction of the bird deaths due to fossil fuel generated electricity per GWh. Car strikes and building strikes dwarf even those numbers. And the number one issue for avian deaths by a long shot: The best thing you can do for bird deaths is to keep your house cat indoors, and spay and neuter feral ones.
Curtailment of wind power due to remote nature of most turbines in New England can be managed with grid-level battery storage, conversion to hydrogen, or even pumped hydro.
It should be mentioned that LD1646 does *not* propose a government owned utility in Maine, rather a consumer owned utility, for which there is plenty of precedent (even some smaller ones in Maine), and whose records on both service and cost are quite competitive.
The accounting still matters. If the MA Attorney General's ( and Acadia's) accounting concerns are addressed cheap and fairly green hydro from Quebec could be a big and easy-to-see piece of meeting the legislated and RGGI decarbonation levels for the New England states.
But it's not the only solution, and time waits for no project. It may become a moot point if the delays run too long, but I'm expecting at least some of those transmission line projects will get built before the decade is out.
>"The idea that wind turbines are a major cause of bird deaths is a total canard. "
Nice contextual double entendre on the use of "canard"! :-)
(If that one flew by anyone, search Google Images on "canard mort", a common expression used idiomatically the same way as it's translation into English is. )
Improper foundation siting of onshore wind has a bigger potential for affecting bird populations than the numbers of birds being batted out of the sky. The offshore wind has an even lesser affect. The whole bird mortality thing is a disinformation campaign promoted by fossil fuel interests. That's not to say that it can be ignored, but it's a manageable (and for the most part managed) risk. Take it from the bird-preservationists:
https://www.audubon.org/conservation/audubons-position-wind-power
The major expansion of wind power in New England in the coming decades will most likely be off-shore, where the capacity factors are expected to be well north of 50% (that analysis was even before the release of GE's Haliade-X, a class of wind turbines that should have even higher capacity factors) with a seasonably favorable higher capacity factor during the energy-use intensive heating season. While birds can still get cricket-batted for a sixer off shore by these truly garanguan turbines, nesting habitats aren't much disturbed by offshore wind.
>"Curtailment of wind power due to remote nature of most turbines in New England can be managed with grid-level battery storage, conversion to hydrogen, or even pumped hydro."
It remains to be seen how smart the policy choices on that will be. A lot of curtailment could be relieved by smart EV charging long before (ratepayer purchase & paid for) grid-scale storage enters into the mix. The economics of hydrogen conversion are currently iffy at best (even when the energy inputs are "free"), but not impossible if injection into the existing natural gas infrastructure is utilized in lieu of compressed storage, but there are still a lot of details to work out.
Storage and transport of hydrogen as anhydrous ammonia doesn't pencil-out very well from a net energy use/cost point of view (simply overbuilding and curtailing more wind &/or solar is cheaper), but if anhydrous ammonia(a commonly used fertilizer) is the end product it may be cheaper (and definitely greener) to use otherwise-curtailed renewables rather than natural gas for making it. In remote villages with unreliable or ultra-expensive fuel infrastructure the use of anhydrous ammonia for hydrogen as energy storage for renewables might still make sense on a local level, but not in New England.
Pumped hydro has other environmental impacts to consider too, especially new pumped hydro. New dams have a CO2e footprint from the induced methane production of the lakes behind the dams, and a substantial up-front CO2 impact from making concrete. In New England there are other environmental reasons for REMOVING many existing dams, and siting a new dam simply for pumped hydro energy storage isn't very likely to pass net environmental impact muster.
>”but if anhydrous ammonia(a commonly used fertilizer) is the end product it may be cheaper (and definitely greener)”
I’m going to have to disagree with you there Dana. I have a customer that does heat treating and uses MASSIVE amounts of anhydrous ammonia in their industrial process (think tanks the size of buses). It is a deadly poison and a blistering agent. I’ve had to go through a little of their safety training to work in their building. The stuff makes a cloud when released, and the cloud can kill you in addition to causing blistering and serious damage to mucous membranes such as those in your respiratory system as well as your eyes. This is a much more dangerous chemical than more conventional fuels, even hydrogen. I would certainly not say the use of this compound is “green”. Most other fuels if spilled or leaked can cause problems, but they don’t have the same immediate toxicity issues that ammonia does.
BTW, I didn’t mean to imply bird kills is the big issue with wind farms, it was just an example of one issue. My point was that wind farms have environmental impact just like hydroelectric installations, just of a different nature. Wind farms need large, clear (not forested) areas, they make sound, and they wreck the landscape visually. There are examples of this in and around Shenandoah (the town in Pennsylvania, not the valley) as one example. As Dana mentions, offshore wind farms are much more promising and have fewer negatives aside from more complex wiring issues and likely more complex maintenance as well.
I wouldn’t class methane generated by decomposition in pumped storage facilities as an “emission”, either. If handled correctly, the reservoir can be a regular lake with fish and an entire aquatic ecosystem. Typical hydroelectric systems have reservoirs that support aquatic life, they are not stinking pools of decaying gunk.
Anyway, my main point was that any type of electric generation will have some amount of impact and none of them are without negatives so it is unfair to focus on only one issue with any of them.
Bill
Windmills don't "wreck" the landscape for everyone. I think they're beautiful.
>>”but if anhydrous ammonia(a commonly used fertilizer) is the end product it may be cheaper (and definitely greener)”
I’m going to have to disagree with you there Dana. I have a customer that does heat treating and uses MASSIVE amounts of anhydrous ammonia in their industrial process (think tanks the size of buses). It is a deadly poison and a blistering agent. "
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NH3 made using natural gas isn't any less hazardous than NH3 made using excess renewables.
How is it greener to make it using natural gas?
It was predicated on "...if anhydrous ammonia(a commonly used fertilizer) is the end product...", after all. As an energy transport & storage mechanism (or burned as motor fuel ) it pretty much sucks, even on an energy basis, without factoring in the other hazards (which are still manageable, even "down on the farm".)
NH3 is the highest volume chemical traded in the world today (as fertilizer on large farms), and has a large handling & storage infrastructure already in place, which is why some of those who drank the hydrogen cool-aid are all over it as a means of storing & transporting hydrogen (even though the conversion efficiency math is abyssmal.) It has somehow gains traction in some quarters in Australia as a means of exporting Aussie sunshine to fuel Japanese hydrogen fuel cell cars, but I don't quite get why.
Definitely not a fan of NH3 for energy, but I even know some gas-guys in Alberta & WA with an NH3 side biz who are now thinking shipping NH3 by rail car from Alberta for distribution to farms WA/OR makes less sense than tapping local PNW excess wind & solar for making than NH3 even on fairly small scales. (Haven't seen a revised biz plan in more than 2 years now, but I'm still in contact with them.)
>"I wouldn’t class methane generated by decomposition in pumped storage facilities as an “emission”, either. If handled correctly, the reservoir can be a regular lake with fish and an entire aquatic ecosystem. Typical hydroelectric systems have reservoirs that support aquatic life, they are not stinking pools of decaying gunk."
All hydroelectric systems (except perhaps a every few in Iceland or northern Norway) whether pumped or not have significant methane emissions issue, even "pristine alpine lake" type hydro lakes. Any NEW lake creates a net methane increase- it doesn't need to look & smell like a cess pool or swamp. Just one recent study among a handful:
https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/66/11/949/2754271
and another:
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0161947
A popular press view referencing those studies:
https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2016/nov/06/hydropower-hydroelectricity-methane-clean-climate-change-study
The more artificial pond/lake you build, the greater the methane is released. There's no cheating the aquatic biology (unless using toxic metals to suppress that biology.)
I didn’t mean NH3 made one way or another was better or worse, I just meant NH3 from any source is not a particularly great material to be using for regular applications. NH3 is dangerous. Similar to hydrogen, but toxic instead of explosive.
The only way I could see hydroelectric reservoirs being different from natural lakes in regards to methane production is due to natural decay of non-aquatic stuff that got submerged, and that would eventually subside as those materials became essentially “used up” and completely rotted away. In any other way, a big pool of water is a big pool of water and nature isn’t going to care how it got there when the little critters colonize it.
There are many natural sources of methane as it’s a natural byproduct of decomposition. This is believed to be one of the reasons that some natural gas deposits “recharge” themselves over time.
Bill
"my main point was that any type of electric generation will have some amount of impact and none of them are without negatives so it is unfair to focus on only one issue with any of them."
I agree with ya there Bill. No free lunch here. Unfortunately, it sometimes feels like picking the lesser of evils.
Stephen described fairly well some of the reasons large numbers of Mainers have flocked to the NO side of new HQ to MA transmission, and most of the oft cited reasons to oppose the project don't hold water in my opinion. They usually amount to: people hate CMP; they think the transmission corridor is a bomb to the 'pristine' north-west Maine woods; they don't like the Democratic governor backing it; they don't like Mass or regional systems thinking, let alone global; and did I mention, they don't like CMP, and maybe Spain too? ).
So I've generally supported the project, even as someone who does value land of a 'wilderness' quality, or at least a working forest with minimal development. In my continuing research, it turned out that the hydro itself was perhaps the area of concern.
If we just talk about 'hydro' as an ambiguity, I'd agree with all that has been said about the need and desire to add more power to the NE grid. And transmission lines will be part of any solution.
https://www.nrcm.org/news/hydro-quebec-offers-misleading-claims-powers-climate-impact/
^ That article there lays out a few of the concern and makes some interesting claims. It's by far not the only article/source making those claims. Note that it mentions the amount of power HQ generates per-acre flooded is the lowest in the world.
I'm not sure how unbiased that author (or others) are but they make other claims such as: there is no documentation that there is indeed spillage, and in fact the limiting power (or energy not sure) output factor is generation.
Needless to say, there are A LOT of claims coming from both sides to wade through...
Another potentially serious claim (though not as widely reported) is that these large impoundments cause silt starvation of the gulf waters and that (along with other factors) is leading to issues and warming water (faster than , what is it 99% of other ocean). https://www.maine.gov/dep/ftp/projects/necec/public-interest/2019-02-14%20%20From%20Steve%20Kasprzak%20KaAttachment%202%20%20Hydro-Quebec's%20Dams%20Chokehold%20On%20The%20Gulf%20of%20Maine.pdf (I'm having trouble vetting this source)
Global warming may be the big fish to fry, but ultimately we're frying it to protect the environment and the way we interact with the environment. We obviously don't want to cut our nose to spite our face... Its hard to know when we are indeed cutting at our nose and when we're simply taking bruises in the name of the fight...
There is sometimes a push/pull between the sort of tree-granola-fish-dirt type of environmentalist and the enegry-nerd-tech-shiny sort of environmentalist. Ultimately, I think they shouldn't, and perhaps can't, be at odds if the name of the game truly is to thrive on this planet.
The reality of the situation is the New England region is short on electric generation capacity. That’s a fact, and part of the reason why the electric rates there are so high. It takes a while (years or longer) to bring new capacity online in any significant amount, which includes ANY type of generation on a large scale, including wind and solar. ANY new source will need new transmission lines to being the power from where it’s produced to where it’s needed, or at least to where sufficient existing transmission capacity is available to tie into. One way or another, new transmission lines will be needed and will be built — the only questions are when and where.
New capacity is going to be brought online to avoid big shortages. If there WERE currently big shortages, there would be popular outrage and demands that it be resolved IMMEDIATELY, which isn’t a good situation to get things done the best way, and there would still be problems for years. The utilities plan many years in advance so that new projects are completed and online before the capacity is desperately needed.
The alternative to the hydro Quebec connection isn’t wind or solar, it’s going to be natural gas fired generation. There really isn’t any question about that. More natural gas generation will cause additional natural gas supply issues in the already capacity constrained New England region, which will likely result in additional natural gas pipelines being built (which I think is going to happen anyway, but that’s a different issue).
The choice is pretty much the HQ link, or more natural gas plants. There isn’t any other option. The HQ link is probably the fastest option too in terms of how long it will take to bring online. The HQ plants are already built, any issues or impact they have has already happened a long time ago, so it’s really the lowest overall impact for the energy that is needed.
I’ve always had a problem with people that just want to block any new projects involving energy. Modern civilization depends on energy to exist. Energy demand has been increasing despite all the efforts towards efficiency improvements. The slope of the increase may have been reduced a bit, but it’s still a generally upward trend. The real question should be “we know we need the energy, where is the best place to get it from?”
Resistance to these large projects isn’t new. It’s been going on for decades. Things just seem to be more widely publicized a bit more now than they used to.
Bill
"The real question should be 'we know we need the energy, where is the best place to get it from?'"
I agree, and that is precisely the question I am asking.
I hope no questions/concerns of mine are being read as opposition to new energy (or even to hydro importation from Quebec). I also have some pretty big issues with a lot of the opposition coming out against this project.
Some of the concerns raised seem like legitimate concerns though, that are—at the least—worth investigating and putting to a tally.
Seeing as we're in the midst of a seemingly massive shift in the shape of our energy infrastructure, it seems like a good time to be double checking ourselves and making sure the way we're heading is properly oriented.
Of course there will be a lot of innovation, opportunities to shift direction, and the need for hold-overs to supply us with power before the gold-medal-winning solutions come to fruition. Perhaps the HQ hydro is a necessary hold-over/ base-source for the development of other means.
I do sometimes wonder if nuclear needs to be on the table, but I don't have a good grasp on the economic issues (expensive I guess) that play into the larger equation.
I agree the HQ link is a good idea. The need for it to be HVDC due to the asynchronous nature of the two grids also means the New England grid gets a big HVDC tie along with the grid stabilization advantages that offers. HVDC interconnects are one of the smartest parts of a “smart grid” and can help with the stability issues that come with interconnection to many other types of energy sources (distributed sources, variable sources like wind, etc.), so it has other benefits besides just the new energy source itself.
I agree nuclear really should be considered as well. The modern plants are much better/safer than the older designs and much of the costs is due to excessive regulatory burdens. There has been discussion on these forums about this before, often with myself and Dana (who also has some experience with these things), with him often having different opinions from some of mine. That’s a good thing though, everyone can learn from the different views that get expressed in the discussions. I wouldn’t be surprised to see him chime in here soon :-)
Bill
>"I agree nuclear really should be considered as well. The modern plants are much better/safer than the older designs and much of the costs is due to excessive regulatory burdens."
The small modular reactors (SMRs) look good on paper, but until they start building them it's hard to say whether they're going to be really cost effective, and there is still a fair amount of carbon-footprint-heavy concrete in most of those designs (though small fraction of what goes in to old-school nukes.)
But even building SMRs has a lot more in common with building infrastructure projects than anything like manufacturing, so the economic learning curves are going to be much longer than what's going on with solar, wind, or batteries. For now I'd be thrilled if someone could build even ONE that would be levelized-cost competitive with an old school light water reactor (LWR), let alone renewables.
The odds of those being built out in numbers/capacity (at any cost) fast enough to make a difference in climate change seem really long to me. The mid-range estimate of the levelized cost offshore wind in 2019 is cheaper than new LWRs, per Lazard's most recent LCOE analysis:
https://www.lazard.com/media/451086/lazards-levelized-cost-of-energy-version-130-vf.pdf
The levelized cost of storage has a learning curve too:
https://www.lazard.com/media/450774/lazards-levelized-cost-of-storage-version-40-vfinal.pdf
SMRs won't even be on those LCOE charts before 2025, maybe not before 2030, and it's not likely to beat the operating cost of existing LWR by then, whereas new solar and wind is entering that territory right now. Meanwhile the financial learning curves of wind & solar (and batteries) goes on pretty much unabated, and will all but certainly beat the operational cost of existing LWRs by 2025.