Quebec will soon run out of electricity to meet all demand. What does businessman Claude Garcia propose to increase energy supply?
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“The first thing to do is set prices for residents and businesses according to the time of day. This is happening in Europe, for example, but not here yet. We’ve talked a lot about the example of the dishwasher, which can be programmed to start at night, or at a time of day when it uses less electricity. But even someone who owns a Tesla car, for example, can program it to charge at any time of the day. But for a Tesla owner in Quebec, there’s no point in doing that since we pay the same rate whether we charge at night or during the day. It’s not effective.
According to the entrepreneur, another way of increasing electricity supply would be to open up the electricity market to companies. “I would say to companies, ‘Do you want electricity? So do you agree with another company?’ So there would be production agreements between companies and private providers such as Boralex or Innergex. I would pay Boralex, and then Boralex would pay Hydro.” -Québec to distribute that electricity to the company. This would give us market prices and encourage the private electricity companies to produce more (to have more customers), which would increase the overall electricity supply in the province. In addition, Boralex would “already do so in France. It sells directly to companies. This is also done in Alberta and elsewhere in the world,” said the former head of insurer Standard Life.
“In other words, instead of telling Hydro-Quebec to buy renewable energy through a tender and then sell it on to companies, we would allow the companies to be self-sufficient.”
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