QUEBEC HYDRO IN BATTLE AGAINST USA ENVIRONMENTALISTS

Stringing the land with ugly wires has always sparked pushback. This time the fight includes hefty corporate rivals that stand to lose a share of the market. And the stakes are rising as electricity emerges as the quickest way to strip carbon from the energy system in an effort to stem climate change.

The battle over a power line in Maine to carry 1.2 gigawatts of hydropower — enough to supply more than 1 million households — from dams in Quebec, features a television advertisement depicting felled pine trees in the wooded U.S. state paired with noir images of a corporate tower in modern Bilbao, near the Guggenheim art museum. A voiceover declares: “A good deal for Spain, and a bad deal for Maine.”

The Spanish utility company Iberdrola S.A.’s political action committee has spent almost US$15 million to promote its US$950 million New England Clean Energy Connect (NECEC) electric transmission project which would run for more than 230 kilometres. Yet last month opponents won a partial stay of construction in court and an activist group filed papers to hold a state referendum to revoke its permits.

An Iberdrola subsidiary in the U.S., called Avangrid Inc., launched the NECEC project in 2018 to carry 1.2 gigawatts of hydropower — enough to supply more than 1 million households — from dams in Quebec.