GREY:XEBEQ - Post by User
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Resilience19on Oct 26, 2021 4:53pm
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RE:Quebec's cheap power lures Europe's green hydrogen buyers
RE:Quebec's cheap power lures Europe's green hydrogen buyersThis all falls on the heals of Quebec's Premier Legault announcement, last week, that aim to turn Quebec into a hydrogen powerhouse (alongside its current strategic hydroelectric powerhouse). Hence, the stars are aligned for the province to position itself as North-Eastern America's renewable battery. In the context of climate change, they could hardly asks for a better timing to capitalize on massive hydroelectric investments initiaited in post-WWII.
kulewater wrote: Quebec's cheap power lures Europe's green hydrogen buyers
Sandrine Rastello, Bloomberg News
The abundance of cheap hydro-electric power that made Quebec a haven for cryptocurrency miners and data centers is now attracting other potential power-thirsty buyers: European green hydrogen producers.
“We have people right now in Europe who want to decarbonize: They are very interested in coming to Quebec to produce green hydrogen from green electricity, to put that on a boat, and go back,” Sophie Brochu, the chief executive officer of power utility Hydro-Quebec, said in an interview. “They are ready to pay a fortune to decarbonize.”
With the world confronting the challenges of transitioning to cleaner energy this winter as natural gas shortages cripple countries from the U.K. to China, Quebec is in a enviable position. Home to 50 power-intensive data centers for companies including Amazon.com Inc. and Microsoft Corp., the province also has large contracts to export its clean electricity to New York and Massachusetts.
Provided the U.S. projects proceed -- there’s been strong opposition to one of two new transmission lines in Maine -- Hydro-Quebec no longer foresees the kind of excess capacity that made it eager to add cryptocurrency miners and data centers clients just a few years ago.
“Appetite for our electricity has never been higher,” said Brochu, who took over the government-owned company in the early weeks of the pandemic. “We’re not saying ‘Oh my God, where do we push our electricity right now?’”