In February, the United States did something it had not done in many years: The country sent more electricity to Canada than it received from its northern neighbor. Then in March, U.S. electricity exports to Canada rose even further, reaching their highest level since at least 2010.
The growing flow of energy northward is part of a worrying trend for North America: demand for energy is growing strongly everywhere, but the supply of energy (in Canada’s case, from giant hydroelectric dams) and The ability to get energy to where it is needed are increasingly under pressure.
Many energy experts say Canadian hydroelectric plants, which have had to reduce electricity production due to a recent drop in rain and snow, will eventually recover. But some industry executives worry that climate change, which has already been linked to explosive wildfires in Canada last year, could make it harder to predict when rain and snowfall will return to normal.
“We all have to be humble in the face of more extreme weather,” said Chris O’Riley, president and CEO of the British Columbia Hydroelectric and Power Authority, which operates hydroelectric dams in western Canada. “We manage the ups and downs of water year after year, and when we have the ups and downs like we are having, the lowest levels, it is common for us to import energy, and we hope to continue that this year.”
The United States and Canada have long depended on each other because energy use tends to peak north of the border during the winter, when Canadians use electric heaters, and American electricity use peaks in the summer. , during the air conditioning season.
Canada’s abundance of hydropower has been a cornerstone of trade, providing relatively low-cost renewable energy to California, Oregon, Washington state, New York state and New England.
But the energy supply and demand equation is changing. Electricity demand in many states has increased significantly in summer and winter. Some experts predict that winter electricity demand in the United States could eclipse summer demand by 2050.
At the same time, utilities are increasingly reliant on intermittent resources like solar and wind power. Large hydroelectric plants, once considered a stable source of electricity, have struggled with low reservoir levels in California, around the Hoover Dam and recently in Canada.
“We are facing real climate changes and we are finding out in real time how that will affect hydroelectric operations across virtually all of North America,” said Robert McCullough of McCullough Research, a company based in Portland, Oregon. who has been a consultant for Canadian utility corporate clients since the 1980s.
Additionally, electricity use is expected to increase as people and businesses turn to electric heat pumps, automobiles, and industrial equipment to replace devices that burn oil, natural gas, and coal. Demand is also growing due to data centers.
One solution is to build more power lines, something the Biden administration and some states are working on. But energy experts say the United States should also add more such connections to Canada. That would allow, for example, solar farms in California to supply Canada when its dams didn’t have enough water and Canadian utilities to send more power south when they had plenty.
“Most models suggest that a more interconnected grid is a better grid,” said Shelley Welton, a presidential distinguished professor at the University of Pennsylvania who helped write a recent report on electric grid reliability and governance. “I think there is power in being interconnected across North America. We need scenario planning. “We need long-term planning.”
Situated among the pine and spruce trees of northern Quebec, the Robert-Bourassa hydroelectric dam represents the promises and challenges inherent in harnessing renewable energy.
The plant’s operator, Hydro-Québec, a utility company owned by the Canadian province, built the power plant on a bank of the La Grande River as part of a network of stations that can produce more than twice as much electricity as the largest power plant in the United States. the Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia River in Washington State.
The La Grande complex has helped Hydro-Québec become a leading supplier to New York State and New England. But less snow than normal has forced Hydro-Québec and other Canadian companies to import more energy from the United States in recent months.
“It looks like conditions are abnormally dry,” said Gilbert Bennett, president of Water Power Canada, a non-profit organization that represents the hydropower industry. “The variations from year to year are increasing.”
Hydro-Québec executives say they expect the drought to end soon, citing similar stretches in 2004 and 2014. Models predict a 6 to 8 per cent increase in rainfall for eastern Canada over the next 25 years, the company said. company.
Serge Abergel, chief operating officer of Hydro-Québec Energy Services, said Canada’s increased reliance on the United States had been a temporary way for hydroelectric plants to save water. He added that as both countries modernize and expand their networks with more renewable and efficient resources, they will be able to complement each other.
“The transition is also creating opportunities,” Abergel said during a recent tour of the Robert-Bourassa Dam. “These resources are optimized.”
In general, the United States would prefer to import more energy from Canada because it is much cheaper. Hydro-Québec residential customers pay about $50 per 1,000 kilowatt-hours of power, Abergel said, compared to $236 in New York state and $276 on average in New England.
The company’s costs are low because its hydroelectric plants were built and paid off a long time ago. But bringing that affordable energy south is expensive: Canadian hydropower costs homeowners in Massachusetts twice as much as it does for Quebec residents, according to an analysis by McCullough Research.
Hydro-Québec has been building more power lines. It is involved in a project, the Champlain Hudson Power Express, which is expected to be completed in mid-2026. The approximately 339-mile-long, $6 billion transmission line will connect a substation in La Prairie, near Montreal , with a converter station in Astoria, Queens. The line will be able to supply enough power to power more than one million homes in New York City.
“If you want a quick transition, you need more transmission,” Abergel said. But “we’re not incentivizing anyone to find solutions,” she added. “We are doing things little by little.”
Abergel said Hydro-Québec would meet all of its obligations to New York and other states despite the dry conditions because it can preserve water by reducing the amount of electricity its hydropower produces and importing more power from the United States. This way, the company will still have enough water to export power when power demand is highest in New York and New England.
But some energy experts are not so optimistic. McCullough, the consultant, said he was concerned that global warming could overload reservoirs so much that it would no longer be feasible for Canadian utilities to keep enough water in reserve to survive a very long drought period.
“Every time we have one of these episodes,” McCullough said, “it’s a tense moment.”
The mutual dependence between U.S. and Canadian utilities is evident in Oregon. Portland General Electric, a utility that serves about two million residents in the state, tracks water flows and snowpack in British Columbia from an operations center near Portland.
When drought and wildfires threaten areas around the Columbia River, hydroelectric plants and transmission lines connecting Canada, Washington, Oregon and California become vulnerable.
“What we’re really concerned about right now is that snowpack is low in Canada,” said Darrington Outama, senior director of energy operations at Portland General Electric. “What we focus on as a region is how they do up there.”
In addition to importing electricity from British Columbia, PGE gets power from two small hydroelectric plants in the Bull Run Basin, east of Portland.
Oregon’s Bull Run Rainforest does not receive water from the Columbia River. But a serious wildfire like the one last summer could force officials to close those dams and stop drawing water from Bull Run. If that happened, Portland would have to rely on groundwater, which in turn could affect the Columbia River and the hydroelectric dams connected to it.
“We have to think about all the scenarios,” said Kristin Anderson, water resources program manager for the Portland Water Bureau, during a tour of Bull Run. “We have been seeing more rapid changes in weather timing. “We are planning throughout the season to be prepared for anything.”
Hydroelectric plants usually have the lowest priority in terms of water use. As a result, forest fires, low snow cover and drought can cause significant reductions in their production. If electricity demand is high at the same time, regional energy networks could collapse.
“There were these historical north-south energy patterns,” said British Columbia Hydro’s O’Riley. “All those patterns have changed. Power flows in all directions.”
In an unexpected twist, California, which suffered a severe drought in recent years, has recently been flooded. Blizzards, atmospheric rivers and other storms have covered the state’s mountains with snow and filled reservoirs, allowing its dams to produce plenty of electricity.
The state also recently installed many large batteries that allow utilities to use the abundant solar energy for hours after the sun has set.
California’s energy abundance should be a boon for British Columbia, Oregon and Washington state, but energy executives said there weren’t enough transmission lines to carry all that excess electricity north where it’s needed.