Recently, Premier Higgs said that citizens who are demanding more government action on climate change need a reality check about energy security.

Referencing the extreme cold on Feb. 4, Higgs painted wind energy as a weak link in our electricity system, and said it’s time to get all the facts on the table.

We’re glad the premier asked for facts, and we’re eager to help clarify them for him.

Fact No. 1: Wind energy is not the reason the power almost went off during February’s sub-zero snap—it was an overreliance on imports from Quebec and a serious lack of stored, in-province renewable energy.

Fact. No. 2: We lack robust storage, wind and solar in N.B. because we refuse to move on from burning fossil fuels as the foundation of our energy supply, despite renewables being the cheapest form of energy today.

Fact. No. 3: We’re burning too many fossil fuels and it’s disrupting our planet’s life support system and making life more expensive for us all, affecting everything from food to housing to energy prices. Acting on climate change—by building up renewables and storage, retrofitting homes for energy efficiency, and helping people pay for this transition—is how we keep the planet liveable and make life affordable for all.

Let’s unpack this.

The extreme cold and wind on Feb. 4 led to record-high demand for energy in the province. 

Premier Higgs noted that during this energy crunch, Point Lepreau, Belledune, and Coleson Cove generating stations were running, but the province’s wind turbines were not because the extreme winds were too strong—implying that wind turbines weakened New Brunswick’s energy security. 

The real vulnerability on Feb. 4 was the near total collapse of energy imports from Quebec. 

New Brunswick typically imports 817 MWh of power from Hydro-Quebec per hour, but when that utility shut off New Brunswick’s supply due to surging demand from Quebec customers, it left NB Power buying what it needed at very expensive wholesale market prices.

From the evening of Feb. 3 (when Quebec shut off supply to N.B.) to midnight on Feb. 5, NB Power imported 6,208 MWh from New England. These power purchases were on top of the millions we paid for imports earlier in the year due to 109 days of Point Lepreau outages.

Higgs is right that we need a reality check. But we believe he’s wrong about the remedy.

The path toward affordable and secure energy is deep investments to build more in-province (and better distributed) wind and solar paired with enough storage capacity for when we need it.

NB Power’s recent call for proposals to build 50 megawatts (MW) of storage was a step in the right direction, but it needs to scale up every year until we have enough to protect New Brunswickers from major storms. 

If we consider the energy imported from New England on Feb. 4 (6,208 MWh), it would cost roughly $3 billion in batteries today. 

That’s a deep investment, but studies from leading financial institutions such as Lazard show batteries get significantly cheaper each year, and the new federal budget earmarked $20 billion for wind, solar, and storage options, providing extra incentive for N.B. to invest in these technologies now to secure a sustainable energy future.

This approach ends our reliance on energy imports and protects our people, water and climate from more fossil fuels, including shale gas, and unreliable nuclear power. 

Because the true reality check issued last week was not from Premier Higgs, but from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in the form of its flagship assessment report confirming, unequivocally, that if we keep burning fossil fuels at the rate we are, we condemn the world to food, energy, land and water crises.

That’s an alarming prospect for New Brunswickers, who know how much climate change is already costing us: disrupting how we grow our food, damaging our homes, businesses, and roads, bringing new pests (think Lyme disease), forcing us inside (think punishing 30+ degree days and heatwaves) and destroying cherished spaces (think sand dunes swept away by Fiona, flooded camps along Grand Lake or the Kennebecasis River, or beloved trees uprooted by Arthur).

Climate solutions are how we make life affordable and energy secure.

It’s time leaders like Premier Higgs face this reality and get to work on a clean energy strategy that ensures New Brunswick has a reliable, sustainable and affordable electricity system with the right balance of in-province efficiency, wind, solar, hydro and storage, along with regional transmission interties like the Atlantic Loop.

This article originally appeared in the April 10 edition of the New Brunswick Telegraph-Journal.