How many years will the power stay on? The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind

Almost a year after Manitoba voters selected Wab Kinew to lead the province, his NDP government has unveiled a plan it hopes will keep our lights on at night and our homes warm in the winter for years to come.

In effect, this plan asks Manitoba Hydro to pull off something of a magic trick: find a way to pay for billions of dollars worth of construction, ideally without hitting ratepayers in the pocket or adding to the Crown corporation's $25-billion debt.

On Friday, Kinew's NDP government unveiled a 5,205-word "affordable energy plan" that replaces a 1,676-word "energy roadmap" prepared by Heather Stefanson's Progressive Conservative government 14 months before.

The Stefanson roadmap, issued in August 2023, warned Manitoba needs to ramp up its electrical generating capacity from its existing 6,100 megawatts to 10,000 to 16,000 megawatts in roughly 20 years.

That would constitute remarkable growth, considering it took Manitoba Hydro more than a century to get to 6,100 megawatts, cobbling together the maximum generating capacity of 15 hydro-electric stations, two wind farms and the province's sole remaining natural gas-fired power plant in Brandon.

But the document was short on specifics. It was less of a map and more of a scrawl on a pirate's handkerchief, indicating the location of buried treasure, somewhere.

The roadmap stated wind farms built with private partners would allow Manitoba to generate more megawatts. It failed to state what it would cost to build those windmills and when they would be built. It also made only one vague reference to modernizing Manitoba Hydro's existing infrastructure.

Also left unsaid: It will cost billions of dollars to increase generating capacity and billions more to replace Manitoba Hydro's aging transmission and distribution system. 

The Kinew plan, unveiled on Friday, is also light on specifics. It makes no mention of a new target for generating capacity overall.

The plan states new wind farms, built with Indigenous partners instead of private ones, will generate 600 megawatts but does not include timelines for construction or cost projections.

The Kinew roadmap also places a greater emphasis on the need to replace Manitoba Hydro infrastructure but makes no effort to come up with a cost.

NDP Finance Minister Adrien Sala, the minister responsible for Manitoba Hydro, nonetheless portrayed the energy plan as an achievement.

"We recognize the importance of moving forward in generating new energy to meet our energy needs in the province. That's exactly what this plan delivers on. It ensures that we have the energy we need for years to come," Sala said on Friday.

Critics called that conclusion wishful thinking. University of Ottawa public affairs professor Nicholas Rivers described the Kinew government's energy plan as a promise to create a clean-energy strategy some time in the future.

'It's not at all clear what that strategy might entail," said Rivers, whose research focuses on economic evaluations of environmental policies. "Until we see the actual strategy and policies in place to support the strategy, there's just not much concrete here."

While Manitoba won't run out of electricity this winter, there is urgency when it comes to creating specific plans to build new transmission lines, replacing aging converter stations and building new wind farms.

In 2022, Hydro told the Public Utilities Board its generating stations, transmission towers and distribution lines are degrading to the point where their declining condition poses a threat to Manitoba's power supply.

In 2023, Hydro warned Manitoba Finance it no longer has the generating capacity to service all the new large-scale industrial customers that want to plug into the utility's power grid.

Early this year, Hydro's now-former CEO warned a capacity crunch is coming for all Hydro users as soon as 2029. 

Heading off these problems while demand for electricity is skyrocketing is not simple. It takes years to design, commission and build large infrastructure projects, including transmission lines.

This sort of work doesn't come cheap. Hydro Quebec plans to spend an eye-popping $185-billion to build at least one more hydroelectric dam, hook up its power grid to new wind and solar farms and build 5,000 kilometres of new transmission lines.

The Kinew government, however, continues to stress affordability over other aspects of its nascent energy policy. The premier wants to keep Hydro rates from rising and has also indicated he wants to keep Hydro costs in check.

"One of the things that we're thinking about as a new government is ensuring that we're creating more electricity that's available for the needs of our province in the most cost-effective way," Kinew said in an interview in December.

While Kinew was talking about wind farms, there may be a cheaper short-term option: building more natural gas-fired plants to bolster generating capacity until enough wind farms come online and per-capita energy consumption drops to the point where there is no longer pressure to generate more electricity.

This is politically unpalatable for Kinew, who effectively promised to shutter the Brandon gas-fired plant by 2035. Nonetheless, his energy plan leaves the door open for more burning of fossil fuels.

It is now up to Manitoba Hydro to make sense out of the new energy policy. What that means won't be clear for months.

"Manitoba Hydro is continually balancing the need to maintain and rehabilitate our existing infrastructure with the need to expand our system to meet the growing needs of our customers. This includes new generating capacity, as well as transmission and distribution infrastructure," Hydro spokesperson Peter Chura said Monday in a statement. 

"If rate increases are necessary to support those priorities, that information would be part of a general rate application to the Public Utilities Board."

In other words, you can't build and maintain Hydro capacity without money from somewhere. Deciding sooner rather than later may determine whether our lights really do stay on at night and our homes remain warm five or 10 years down the road.