Canada Had Designs on Being a Hydro Superpower. Now Its Rivers and Lakes Are Drying Up.

It is hard to tell is that article is written to obscure or misrepresent facts accidentally or on purpose.

It says stuff like hydro “normally represents 60%” of the power generation without saying what it is now. It for sure doss not tell you if hydro generates more or less electricity now vs the past.

The closest we get to a fact that illustrates the narrative is that Quebec hydro exports are down 18% in 2023 from 2022. Again, it does not say how much was generated. Obviously there is still enough hydro power available as they are still exporting a lot of it. Does the drop have anything at all to do with caapacity?

It says that BC “imported” almost 20% of its power but does not tell us how much it exported. This tell us absolutely nothing. Why? Because of how BC uses power.

Unlike most other sources, hydro power is easily turned on or off whenever you want. You cannot control when the sun shines or wind blows. Turning coal or nuclear plants on or off is expensive.

Electricity is deregulated in the US which means that prices spike when demand is high ( daytime ) and drop when it is low ( night ). BC generates excess hydro power during the day and sells it to the US grid. At night, when prices drop, BC buys power back from the US grid ( or Alberta ) and lets the reservoirs fill back up. How much BC imports has more to do with market price than anything else.

Saying BC buys 20% of its electricity tells us nothing as a fact on its own.

The article shares important truths but does it in a biased and misleading way. I do not trust the narrative.

The most important truth is likely the mushrooming demand. The world ( not just Canada ) is requiring more and more electricity every year. It is quite likely that existing hydro power in Canada will have to be increasingly used to meet domestic demand and that new sources of electricity will need to be identified.

As a global phenomenon, we are creating much more “green” electricity than we expected to. However that has mostly gone to new demand and older power plants ( like coal ) have not always been decommissioned as planned. As a planet, we are using more fossil fuel than ever despite all the green progress made. That does not mean somehow that green power generation has not worked out or is somehow a failure. It at least we are not building coal plants to meet all the demand. I bet we are still building natural gas plants though. Still better, but still.

The “lakes drying up” story is also real and not just in Canada. I am not really debating that as a backdrop. However, in the absence of actual head to head facts showing otherwise, I call BS that hydro power plants in Canada have had to turn off or that production has materially dropped. Also, places like BC have certainly not been building coal plants and are not going to. If I did not know any better, that article would have left me with a profound misunderstanding of what is actually going on.