Hydro Not An Energy Silver Bullet

From the tremendous Green Miles: 
 Ann Berwick writes in Wednesday’s Boston Globe that Gov. Charlie Baker has, so far, overlooked a huge potential made-in-Massachusetts energy source: offshore wind. As Massachusetts has fallen behind Rhode Island, where construction is already underway on the Block Island wind farm, Baker has instead focused almost exclusively on fracked gas and hydro. Berwick isn’t opposed to hydro, but says that without offshore wind, Baker is negotiating from a position of weakness:
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No question, if we can get more Canadian hydropower, we should. But will we be able to get it, and get it when we need it most?

There’s still hope for Hydro-Quebec’s Northern Pass project, designed to bring Canadian hydropower through New Hampshire to Massachusetts, but it has been stymied for years. It’s possible that other proposed transmission lines will not encounter the same difficulties, but that remains to be seen. And if opposition forces transmission lines to be installed underground, rather than overhead, the costs of Canadian hydro will increase dramatically.

Windfarm in Southern Quebec

And will we be able to get the power when we need it most? Quebec has a winter-peaking electric system, and New England’s system is summer-peaking. However, New England’s electric system is under maximum stress in the winter, when it has to compete for natural gas with the region’s heating needs. The unanswered question is whether Quebec will in fact be able to supply New England with additional electricity on the coldest winter days, when both their system and ours experience peak demand.

Given these circumstances, it is puzzling that the governor is focused on Canadian hydropower to meet the state’s climate-related requirements, to the exclusion of offshore wind. [...]

Further, offshore wind is a local resource; Canadian hydropower isn’t. We currently ship overseas most of the billions of dollars we spend on energy. Granted, Canada is not Saudi Arabia, but why would we finance Canadian hydropower and transmission construction jobs in the northern New England states to the exclusion of local offshore wind? Meanwhile, building an offshore wind industry in Massachusetts would create jobs associated with both the construction of wind farms themselves and with the entire supply chain.

Pilgrim supplies over 80 percent of the state’s carbon-free energy. Even without its closing, the state was behind in meeting the climate requirements of the Global Warming Solutions Act. The fact is, we need both hydropower and offshore wind. We’d be far smarter to negotiate the price for Canadian hydropower with our own large domestic resource — offshore wind — in hand.

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The Baker administration makes it sound like solar and wind are the only power sources that fluctuate output. But look at this chart of US hydro output:

 Keep in mind this is smoothed across the entire United States, not just from one region as the Quebec hydro buy would be.

While Gov. Baker says he’s committed to supporting the Massachusetts clean energy industry, he’s, so far, failing to lead. The actual policies he’s introduced would subsidize out-of-state, polluting fracked gas and imported hydro power. Meanwhile, his proposal to lift the solar cap was weak if not outright insufficient and Baker has yet to introduce any plan to support Massachusetts offshore wind.

The truth is none of these energy sources can solve our energy problems on their own. We don’t need a silver bullet—we need silver buckshot, using an array of small solutions to meet our big problems.
Crossposted at Blue Mass Group