BOSTON — Quebec hydropower already supplies about 12% of New England’s electricity and its exports are expected to grow considerably over the next decade. So there was plenty to talk about at the 24th U.S./Canada Energy Trade & Technology Conference last week.

The Massachusetts Energy Diversity Law, passed over the summer, commits the state to acquire 9,450 GWh of new large-scale hydropower contracts annually by 2027 — a 73% increase from the nearly 13,000 GWh that ISO-NE imported from Quebec in 2015.

“For the first time, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is designating large-scale hydropower, like the kind we generate in Quebec, as a source of clean energy that can help meet the objectives of the Global Warming Solutions Act,” Hydro-Quebec CEO Eric Martel said during a keynote speech. That law commits Massachusetts to a 25% reduction in greenhouse gases by 2020.

Matt Beaton, Massachusetts’ Secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs, said expanded imports will both reduce emissions and help maintain system reliability.

“We have always looked kindly on the import of hydroelectricity and recognize that it is one of the few resources that help us reach all three of the targets we are trying to accomplish: It’s a reliable resource, it’s affordable and it’s one that helps us meet our climate goals,” he said.

Entergy’s decision to close the 680-MW Pilgrim nuclear plant in 2019 is a major setback for the state’s climate goals, said David O’Connor, senior vice president for energy and clean technologies at ML Strategies.

“The Pilgrim nuclear plant by itself produces 85% of the [carbon-free] energy consumed in Massachusetts,” O’Connor said. “When it goes away, there’s going to be a dramatic alteration of the carbon profile in the state.”

Krapels | © RTO Insider

Ed Krapels, CEO of transmission developer Anbaric, is looking at what he called the Greater Northeast — including New England, New York, Quebec and Ontario — where a massive buildout of renewable generation is needed to achieve climate reduction targets.

“For us, we look at this as a 5,000- to 10,000-MW transition, so there’s room in that for many different things. Distributed energy will be a large part of that, as well as batteries, solar microgrids, all of that will have a big impact. But we still have bulk power needs,” he said.

Anbaric is proposing stand-alone transmission development, as well as collaborations with wind generators to pair with hydropower in cross-border projects throughout New York and New England.

Marcy Reed, president of National Grid Massachusetts, joked that although she heads an electric utility, she spends most of her time talking about natural gas.

“You talk about a balanced approach. We need pretty much everything. We need renewables, we need efficiency, energy storage, natural gas; we need a full platter of solutions to get us where we ultimately need to be,” she said.

National Grid was a partner in the failed Access Northeast pipeline development, whose proposed funding mechanism was rejected by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in August. (See Eversource, National Grid Withdraw Requests to Bill for Pipeline.)

Natural gas analyst Richard Levitan said the failure of pipeline projects to overcome litigation and community opposition leaves the system vulnerable in the winter, when gas generation must compete with gas heating for fuel supplies.

ISO-NE has incentivized generators to provide dual-fuel power sources, but that fails to solve the underlying problems, he said.

“The Winter Reliability Program is chipping away at a fundamental problem of the region’s great reliance and growing reliance on natural gas,” he said. “Is it enough? Well, this winter it probably is enough, if ISO-NE’s 50-50 load forecast materializes. And that the pipeline and storage infrastructure linking us to the Marcellus region is fully available and nothing bends or breaks.”

Over the longer term, the addition of solar and wind resources presents serious challenges that are only now starting to be addressed, said Peter Rothstein, president of the Northeast Clean Energy Council.

Rothstein said the modernized grid that’s needed to enable renewable integration and two-way power flows must join the conversation along with cleaner generation.

“We can deploy a great amount of solar resources over the next five or 10 or 15 years, but we’re going to hit a wall and it’s going to become inefficient and not at all cost-effective, so we have to modernize the grid,” Rothstein added.

Election Talk

The election of Donald Trump as president creates much uncertainty, many speakers said. But they agreed that clean energy will likely lose federal support and climate issues will be confronting a hostile federal administration.

“If you look at the election, it’s easy to get discouraged because we need a lot of policy support, and it’s not going to be there,” said Joshua Paradise of Current, GE’s LED, solar, energy storage and electric vehicle business. “But as a skeptic [of conventional wisdom] as I think of what’s happened, this train [of strong support from the states and the public] has left the station. … We’re already at the tipping point.”

Jon Norman, vice president of business development for Quebec-based Brookfield Renewable, was a bit more circumspect. He said he feared climate change deniers becoming more entrenched in government under Trump.

“It’s unquestionable that the need for state action is far more urgent than it was [before the election]. And that need for action has to happen and I don’t think we can delay it until we have all the right answers [on technology]. But I’m optimistic, especially in New England because you have states with very aggressive targets and they’re taking actions to implement them.”

What appears likely is that the federal governments of the U.S. and Canada will take divergent paths on global climate initiatives. Former Prime Minister Stephen Harper was aligned with fossil fuel interests and was hostile to international climate accords, said Monica Gattinger, director of the Institute for Science, Society and Policy at the University of Ottawa.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau “has taken a very balanced approach to energy. On fossil fuels, [Trudeau’s Liberal Party] is quietly supportive. They’re visibly supportive of clean renewable energy,” she said. “When it comes to the environment, from a bragging perspective, they wanted everyone to know Canada was back in Paris last year [for the 21st Conference of Parties’ climate agreement], and with a commitment to moving on a carbon tax.”

— William Opalka