As Nova Scotia and New Brunswick walk away from the Atlantic Loop project, increased transmission capacity between the two provinces is being explored.
Nova Scotia announced Wednesday that the Loop, or a series of transmission lines that would allow more hydro-generated power from Quebec to flow into the region, is not part of its plan to meet the coal power moratorium in 2030.
New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs also said the project doesn’t make sense for the region right now, but wants to see federal help to upgrade transmission capacity between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.
“The Atlantic Loop, as proposed by the federal government, is not in the best interest of Atlantic Canadians at this time,” Higgs said in a statement on Thursday. “It’s important to enhance the interconnection between Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, including a connection to Point Lepreau. Federal funding support will be required for the enhanced transmission interconnection between Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, but also in clean energy projects such as SMRs (small modular reactors), wind and the conversion of coal burning facilities.
“At this point there has been no funding commitment from the federal government.”
An upgraded tie between the two provinces would involve two projects. One would be an upgrade of the existing connection between Salisbury, N.B., and Onslow, N.S., that would improve the reliability of both systems.
But in order to increase the amount of electricity that can move between the two provinces, further upgrades would have to be done. As NB Power’s head of business development Brad Coady recently told a legislative committee, that would require further upgrades.
“That would allow them to have a more reliable connection but not a single extra megawatt could flow through the connection unless we built from Salisbury all the way back to Point Lepreau and that’s what the team is currently studying,” he said.
David Miller, the director of clean energy for the Nova Scotia Department of Energy and Renewables, told reporters on Wednesday that that connection would also allow Nova Scotia access to more power from Quebec as well as the New England energy market.
“That could provide Nova Scotia with access to more New Brunswick energy and capacity as well as those same products from New England and Quebec,” he said.
“Those could both be completed by 2029 and at a substantially lower capital cost than the Atlantic Loop.”
The price of the two projects is estimated to be about $2 billion. That’s just shy of the initial estimate of the Atlantic Loop, which was about $2.5 billion. As the estimated price has grown to anywhere between $7.5 and $9 billion, the outlook on the project has greatly cooled.
Earlier this year NB Power’s latest integrated resource plan said the Loop would greatly impact rates, costing the utility about $240 to $310 million more a year than other options to green the grid. Coady also told the legislature’s public accounts committee last month that the province likely wouldn’t derive much benefit from the project until the 2040s or even 2050s.
The proposal to focus on interconnections within the region rather than the Loop, along with the ask for help in paying for it, has not been formally presented to the federal government, but Nova Scotia Energy Minister Tory Rushton says delegations from both provinces will be meeting with federal Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson soon.