Many plans, few details for Nunavik power projects

Wind farms with giant windmills, like this one in Copenhagen, may someday be familiar sights in Nunavik, as Hydro Quebec moves forward with its plan to set up a wind farm near Kangiqsualujjuaq. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

People in Nunavik will have to wait longer before they learn the details of the power-generation projects that Quebec wants to develop in the region under the newly-released Plan Nord.

But here’s what Quebec’s power corporation wants to see: 3,500 megawatts of new renewable power from the North in addition to the 24,000 megawatts already generated in the North through projects like the La Grande complex.

The new projects are to include a Hydro Quebec-operated wind-diesel power project in Kangiqsualujjuaq, slated to be installed between 2015 and 2017 — although it’s impossible to say exactly when that wind farm would be in operation or how much the project will cost, Hydro Quebec spokesman Guy Litalien told Nunatsiaq News.

The Quebec engineering firm RSW is currently looking at what type of technology will best suit the region, he said.

A Hydro Quebec presentation at last November’s Kativik Regional Government council meeting in Kuujjuaq revealed that there’s seven Nunavik communities with enough wind for a wind farm, although Kangiqsualujjuaq will get the test run.

A second wind farm will go to Akulivik, Hydro Quebec said.

The windmills rely on giant fan-like turbines to take energy from the wind, which is then converted into electricity.

The turbines usually have three-blades and are pointed into the wind by computer-controlled motors. The blades’ light grey colour blends in with the clouds. The windmills are large and tall: the blades’s length run from 20 to 40 metres (66 to 130 ft) or more, while the tubular steel towers can be from 60 to 90 metres (200 to 300 ft) tall.

Hydro Quebec would own Nunavik’s windmills, which would then convert wind to electricity for use in the communities.

Some say wind power is an efficient option to the costly — and polluting — imported diesel fuel that now lights and heats homes across Nunavik.

But windmills wouldn’t reduce the cost of electricity for the host communities or for Nunavik.

And in Arctic Sweden, the Saami call windmill farm developments a form of “green colonialism,” because they occupy indigenous lands to satisfy the southern hunger for electricity.

In Sweden, a plan calls for the construction of a $8.2 billion wind farm with 1,100 turbines, which will cut through Saami traditional reindeer herding lands.

In the most recent edition of the WWF’s Circle newsletter, Saami leader Lars-Anders Baer says “there is a green revolution growing and it smells of colonialism.”

But wind farms would offer a cleaner form of energy, Hydro Quebec maintains.

Quebec is also eyeing other alternative energy sources, such as underwater generator in Kuujjuaq’s Koksoak River for 2012.

“There aren’t other generators like this elsewhere in Quebec,” Litalien said. “It’s very new.”

This generator, which would draw energy from underwater currents, would have a capacity of 250 kilowatts.

“[The underwater generator] could be something interesting for Kuujjuaq,” said Kuujjuaq mayor Paul Parsons. “Anything’s that’s not going to change the water levels is welcome. But there are always environmental considerations.”

That project must undergo technical studies before it gets the go ahead. If the experiment is successful, officials say there is potential for several more underwater generator installations across the province’s North.

Northern rivers are also expected to play a large role in the Plan Nord, although Quebec isn’t ready to say yet where new hydroelectric projects will go.

Plan Nord has also raised fears that Hydro Quebec will revive its plans to dam the Great Whale River, a project that met with stiff opposition and was eventually put on ice in 1994.

Among the Cree leaders against the Great Whale hydroelectric project was the current Cree grand chief Matthew Coon Come, who spoke in favour of the Plan Nord at its May 9 launch.

“[The Great Whale project] was another time,” Coon Come told reporters. “It’s a different era. But I made sure there was no Great Whale project in the Plan Nord, as far as I know.”

Environmentalists and Inuit from Umiujaq also say that they’re against any plans to dam the Nastapoka River, which runs into the Hudson Bay north of Umiujaq.

A dam on the Nastapoka would be a threat to the tiny population of freshwater seals who live in the river’s watershed.

The Nastapoka’s headwaters are protected under the Tursujuq provincial park project’s borders.

But that’s not enough to protect the unique sub-species of seals, whose population is said to have dwindled to about 80.

The Nastapoka, whose development is mentioned in the 2002 Sanarrutik deal signed between Quebec and Nunavik, could produce up to 1,000 megawatts of power, enough to meet the daily needs of about 250,000 homes.

with files from Jane George