Interview - Hydro-Québec

Sustainable Business Magazine speaks to Hydro-Québec about the pioneering La Grande River complex, the importance of reflection, and the company’s vision for its hydropower system to become a natural battery in the American northeast.

The story of Hydro-Québec begins more than seventy years ago. The early decades of the 20th Century in Québec had seen the development of an efficient and expensive electricity sector, dominated by the interests of a select group of privately-owned utilities. Recognizing this, demand for a public hydroelectric utility in Québec began to grow. It was in 1944 that the Government of Québec took the decision to nationalize power production within the state, leading to the establishment of Hydro-Québec as a public utility, responsible for the generation, transmis-

sion, and distribution of electricity in the Canadian province.

Fast-forward to 2021, and Hydro-Québec is the fourth largest hydropower producer in the world. From its base in Montreal, the company operates a total of 61 hydroelectric power plants across both annual and multi-annual operation, both servicing the power needs within Québec, and exporting hydro-power to neighboring Ontario, the Maritimes, and across the border into the United States. To do so, the company is equipped with one of North America’s largest transmission systems, boasting a total of more than 34,000 kilometers of high voltage lines.

With size comes responsibility. As a producer of clean and renewable energy, Hydro-Québec is acutely aware of the role it plays within a global fight against climate change. “We’ve enjoyed a long history of environmentalism,” explains Sandie Poliquin, Senior Environmental Advisor at Hydro-Québec. “The environmental department dates as far back as the 1970s, introducing environmental policies and good practices early on. It was in 1989 that we then officially adopted sustainable development into our company principles. That’s an important foundation: more than three decades on, there’s much we’ve learned, and we continue to learn each day. We’re proud that our sustainability efforts have been recognized by Corporate Knights Magazine, and to be the recipient of an Eco Vadis gold medal, with a sustainable approach that remains thoroughly integrated across our practices and our values.”

This year, Hydro-Québec is celebrating the 50-year anniversary of its pioneering La Grande complex. One of the largest hydroelectric developments in the world, the project is comprised of eight separate hydroelectric generating stations, and a total installed generating capacity of more than 16,020 megawatts. “This year provides an excellent opportunity to assess how far we’ve come in our approach to sustainability over recent decades,” explains Ms. Poliquin. “In its initial stages in the 1970s, La Grande was envisaged as the project of the century. As a company, however, we had little knowledge of the Northern Québec region that was to provide the project’s location. In the early 70s, there were no recognized impact assessment protocols, and no existing environmental regulation and legal requirements. Mappings were scarce, as

was general and scientific data on the environment, and we had to find novel ways of forecasting the environmental impacts of the project.”

To govern its approach, Hydro-Québec assembled a team of high-level specialists from around the world, including biologists and archaeologists with northern environment experience, to elaborate environmental protocols and begin what turned out to be a 30 years-long study of Québec’s northern region. “All the information and data we collected would be shared with the different specialists involved to create what we refer to as a ‘monitoring network’, providing us with long-term data,” explains Ms. Poliquin. “This was a feat that had never before been achieved: to build generating stations and reservoirs, and then to measure real-time changes. Even today, what we achieved on La Grande remains impressive.”

In the years since La Grande, several follow-up programs continue to improve techniques in measuring impacts and forecasting capabilities. “Perhaps no lesson to come out of La Grande was more important than our understanding of the need to engage local communities in the process of decision making,” says Ms. Poliquin. “Science tells us what to measure and what to mitigate. Through the years the value of pre-concerns of our host communities have become fundamental to our work – and sustainability commands us to address each set of issues. In La Grande, the James Bay and Northern Québec Agreement of 1975 put in place tables with the Cree communities as a form of initial engagement. But it was new to all parties, and overall, Hydro-Québec took an approach of information dissemination as opposed to community discussion. As a form of community engagement, there was considerable work yet to be done.”

Despite the challenges of La Grande, Hydro-Québec has taken the time to reflect on its experience, with the aim of transposing improved best-practice on projects that were to follow, an approach that has proved fruitful for the latest stage of La Grande, known as the Eastmain-1-A/ Sarcelle/Rupert Complex (EM1ASR). We understand the value of listening to communities” says Ms. Poliquin. “We also know that sustainability isn’t static. As a concept, it must evolve, because environmental issues change. Notions such as biodiversity and climate change, which are today top-ofthe-agenda, weren’t being discussed three or four decades ago, and it’s key therefore that we’re able to integrate these concepts across our operations. As the third phase of La Grande, EM1ASR is a whole different ballgame. At the start of 2002, we signed important agreements with the Cree Nation, with the aim of establishing a mutual beneficial economic relationship, and an important pillar for all our work since. But it was even prior to that, during the planning phase of the project, that our work really began – in our meetings with the Cree communities, and in the public information sessions with tally men and their families.”

Much of the change in approach owes itself to improvements in meaningful partnership and added consultation structures and strategies. “In the EM1ASR, the emergence of radio shows and the internet have brought a completely new dimension in our capabilities to reach out to the Cree communities,” explains Ms. Poliquin. “We were more present very early in the project

– whether that’s through radio show call-ins, public sessions, official committees, or by placing Hydro-Québec representatives directly into the Cree communities at certain important gatherings to address their worries and concerns. It’s a new attitude, and one reflected in the company itself. Now, not only are we a team of 150 environmental advisors from a breadth of fields – biologists, anthropologists, sociologists, archeologists, geographers, and more – but we’re also 75 Community Relations Advisors, dedicated to improving our engagement across the province.”

For Hydro-Québec, the result of these efforts has been the establishment of a two-way channel of communication which gave way to a more robust sustainable approach. “With Eastmain 1A, it’s no longer about information dissemination,” says Ms. Poliquin. “Thanks to the structures we have in place, the Crees are now able to share their knowledge of traditional areas, and to participate in essential discussions. We saw this in our Lake Cisco study. The Cisco fish is an important food source for the community of Waskaganish, as well as a vital cultural touchstone, with the traditional technique of catching the fish by scooping having been passed down through generations. Through our workshops with the Crees, they shared knowledge on spawning sites, migration patterns, and general information on the species. This forged better study protocols and allowed to add value to findings. We saw the same partnership in our fieldwork, with Cree technicians operating boats, helping with the gear, and collecting and compiling data. By involving the Crees in the studies, it helps both parties to better-understand environmental and social objectives, and assists us when it comes to

communicating results at the community level. The examples were multiple in all studies, and the gains were enormous.”

Research is an important component of Hydro-Québec’s work. “We partner with universities on a range of environmental issues, from greenhouse gas emissions, to reservoirs, and mercury studies,” says Ms. Poliquin. “We’re always looking to enhance our contribution, and to that end, we often look to experiment new and upcoming technologies. We achieved this in Eastmain 1A, partnering with a university from Québec to conduct an environmental DNA study, and demonstrating the promise of a water sample as a means to assess biodiversity in water bodies. Similarly, our work with environmental consultants takes us right to the cutting edge, whether we’re exploring technologies for ice cover or for salt water intrusion. In doing so, we’re able to move research forward, but we’re also able to advance our own techniques, and to positively impact our environmental assessments.”

Providing access to this research is another key ambition for the company. “With our installations in very distant areas of Québec, we’re very conscious of the unique body of knowledge that we’re acquiring,” explains Ms. Poliquin. “We bring that knowledge to universities and similar organizations in the form of interviews, and through the publication of our results. We’re fortunate to have a massive document center, complete with tens of thousands of reports – on bird sightings, fish species, and much more, with data often drawn from areas where no other studies have been conducted before. We receive, and fulfil, requests for information throughout the year from universities, researchers, communities, and the public. In addition to scientific reports, we put effort into presenting results, publishing accessible summaries which wrap up long term studies. As well as publishing in French, which is the official language in Québec, we include summaries in English or translate key documents. We address lessons learned in our projects and studies. It’s a practice that makes science go further for all our partners and stakeholders, and for Hydro-Québec itself.”

Hydro-Québec is currently channeling this focus into the delivery of its Collective Energy Initiative. “We’ve invited all Quebeckers throughout the province to reflect together on three key areas related to Québec’s energy future,” explains Lynn St-Laurent, Senior Communications Advisor at Hydro-Québec. “That’s something we’ve not done for a very long time – to engage with individual stakeholders in-depth about our collective energy future, with a goal to build the foundation for collective action on how we move towards a lower carbon economy, and how we pay for it. Conversations throughout the initiative were organized by three main themes: the green economy, sustainable mobility, and responsible energy use, and we’re now in the second phase of analyzing the thousands of responses we received. Come October, we hope to have finalized that, with the expectation of rounding out the initiative with a select number of projects that we can carry through to implementation. Those might be catalysts – projects in which Hydro-Québec can play a leading role, but it isn’t yet core to our activities – or they might be amplifiers – tapping into

our core capabilities and expanding on our work to date. We’ll then be announcing which projects will be moving forward, before seeking to realize them sometime in 2022.”

The long-term vision at Hydro-Québec is to translate an already vast network of hydro power reservoirs into a ‘natural battery’, capable of serving the power needs of regions across Canada and the American northeast. “Our 28 reservoirs are, in essence, vast pools of stored energy in the form of water, with an approximate capacity of 180 terawatt hours,” explains Ms. St-Laurent. “It’s the magnitude of this storage capacity – large enough to power the six New England states for almost a year and a half – which underlines the vision of the natural battery. In past decades, we’ve seen renewable technologies added to the grid across northeastern US, in the form of wind and solar farms. The region plans to substantially increase their use of these variable sources of energy, which need non-intermittent energy sources to back them up. A lot of that back-up is currently being provided by thermal generation. We believe that in the future, our reservoirs can provide that back-up, in a new form: a clean, renewable source of always-on or complimentary source of energy.”

The potential for Hydro-Québec’s natural battery vision has been highlighted in recent research, most recently at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in February 2020. “MIT researchers examined how northeastern states might achieve deep decarbonization, and came to the conclusion that new transmission interconnections can facilitate that two-way trade,” explains Ms. St. Laurent. “Our reservoirs are flexible: they’re able to store energy for hours, days, months, or even on a seasonal basis, and return that energy back to market during periods of low renewable production and high demand. Likewise, if there’s low demand in our markets, and too much renewable energy online, we can import and absorb that into our system. It’s a means of efficient, affordable integration of higher levels of intermittent energy sources, a way of decarbonizing the grid in our neighboring markets without sacrificing reliability. If we achieve that, the reward is a reduction in total power system costs in the range of five to six percent, and a reduction in cost for end-users, which is always a priority.”

Bringing new transmission online is not necessarily easy, but Hydro-Québec is working hard to bring more projects online. “We’re currently working on two transmission projects: one through New England, called the New England Clean Energy Connect, and one to New York City, known as the Champlain Hudson Power Express (CHPE),” says Ms. St. Laurent. “As of this year, construction is already underway in New England, and the transmission line has obtained all major permits from its start in Québec, right through to the delivery point in Maine. Likewise, the CHPE is fully permitted, with a decision on the competitive solicitation process due before the end of the third quarter. If all that moves forward, we plan to have that transmission line commissioned in 2025. With improved grid integration, an additional line in New England, and an additional line into New York, then Hydro-Québec can fulfil its role as a natural battery for our US markets.” c Hydro-Québec has recently completed a vast review of scientific knowledge and environmental impact mitigation measures relating to Québec hydropower. In line with its principles regarding the sharing of scientific data and lessons learned, the company is happy to include this new publication here... issuu.com/hydroquebec/docs/wsp_generic_english_final_dec_2020_low-res