Thus the term "Brown Hydro". A vestige of British heritage, Canada owns most of the rural land in the country, the government leases specific rights to various entities. I inherited some maps from the Old Brown company files dated in the 1920s showing the hydroelectic potential of Canada, It is huge. The problem is most of the potential is surrounded by boreal forests that have thin soils and not much economic value except for mineral extraction. It is also settled by various Indigenous peoples that were there long before the British (very similar parallels to the US) and treated as chattel. Up until the last of couple of decades the official government policy and tradition was to treat them as an inferior lower class. When Hydro Quebec built the first river system, they abused the local tribes and members big time evicting them and flooding out their communities. The tribes were dependent on native fish and seasonal salmon runs, these runs on the river system are effectively extinct. The other issue is that this is hydro electric system dependent on vast watershed of dammed lakes (roughly equivalent to the headwater of the upper lake being the Hudson River and the final dam being in Eastport Maine. These dams are run to keep the hydros running rather than naturally and the result is degraded water quality and wildlife impacts along with high methane emissions from vegetation killed by widely varying levels. Maine has a few of these degraded lakes like Aziscohos and Flagstaff lakes which show similar but lesser damages despite being run within some limits. The average boater is just not trained to see the damage, but its there.
Due to this history, many New England states long ago decided not to support HQs hydro and declared it "brown hydro" and treated it no better than fossil. HQ is owned by the Quebec government but is independent and has the reputation of being a kingmaker in the province, if someone gets on the wrong side of HQ, they probably have won their last election. They bought loyalty from the voters in the province as they kept the power cheap. HQ wants to build, build build, to grow but the voters have told them that if it raises their power costs, they will not support it, thus the move into the US markets. By marketing relabeled green power to the US at a hefty profit, that eventually means HQ gets to go back into building. Subsequent dam negotiations with the tribes have been somewhat more fair, but its done on the basis of the project will happen, it is just what do the tribes want to give up rather than fighting it, that usually means use of native labor during construction and hiring select natives to go to school to leatn how to run the plants greased with various financial incentives. Note CMP in Maine did similar tactics as the original HQ dams when the Long Falls Dam on the Dead River was built, the state approved the work and CMP flooded out two towns) using eminent domain as a "club" to negotiate (The Quabbin reservoir in Mass did the same).
Of late, a lot of the power is wheeled in from Newfoundland and Labrador from projects like Churchill Falls
Churchill Falls Generating Station - Wikipedia.
Note the issues with the local tribes. The agreement will be up soon and that is putting HQ in bind as described in the article I posted.
It very much NIMBY on country level. Long ago there was the Dickey Lincoln Project proposed for the St John RIver in Maine (the last real free flowing river in Maine) it was puny compared to HQ but it was the teething ground for many an environmentalist and ultimately was opposed by many in state and killed
Dickey-Lincoln School Lakes Project | Maine Government Documents | The University of Maine Far easier to let someone else trash their country. I expect to many folks,they do not even know where the Saint John river is in Maine or that it flows north. Its next door watershed neighbor, the Allagash gets the press despite it requiring dams to keep the water flowing season long.
