Great Plains Energy Inc.'s shareholders overwhelmingly approved the company's purchase of Aquila Inc.
The tally, announced at a shareholders' meeting, showed 96 percent of the shares voted were in favor of the purchase. The approval came a day after Aquila shareholders also approved the deal. The sale still needs regulatory approval from Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, Nebraska, and Kansas. Iowa regulators approved the deal in August.
Michael Chesser, chief executive officer of Great Plains, reiterated after the vote was announced that the purchase will make Great Plains and its Kansas City Power & Light subsidiary a stronger regional utility with the addition of Aquila's 300,000 electric customers in Missouri.
"The Aquila deal was very attractive to us," he said.
Chesser said, if the remaining regulatory approvals go as hoped, the sale will close the end of February. Great Plains will keep Aquila's electric utilities in Missouri. Shortly before the deal is closed, Aquila's utilities in Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska, and Colorado will be sold to Black Hills Corp., a South Dakota company.
The short Great Plains' meeting included questions from its shareholders. The first was why Richard Green Jr., chief executive officer of Aquila, was being given $3.5 million in severance pay plus a $909,000 annual pension.
Chesser said he had answered similar questions at the company's annual meeting and didn't have anything to add. He has previously said the purchase price for Aquila was adjusted to account for such expenses. Great Plains offered $1.80 in cash and .0856 of a share in Great Plains for each of Aquila's shares.
Chesser said the Aquila purchase would not affect the Great Plains dividend. On other matters, he said Great Plains might someday be interested in investing in more nuclear power. He said the Wolf Creek nuclear plant, in which KCP&L is a partner, is one of its best assets.
"Wolf Creek was one of the best decisions this company ever made," he said. If Great Plains' purchase of Aquila is successful, it will acquire Aquila's South Harper plant in Cass County.
That plant is the focus of a legal dispute over whether it had the necessary zoning approvals to build it. Chesser said if the purchase of Aquila is successful, the company will visit with local government officials to determine if some agreement could be made about South Harper.
"No guarantees but we're going to give that a try," he said.
2022 U.S. Power Outage Statistics show lower SAIDI as fewer major events hit, with SAIFI trends, electric reliability, outage duration and frequency shaped by hurricanes, winter storms, vegetation, and utility practices across states.
Key Points
They report SAIDI and SAIFI for 2022, showing outage duration, frequency, and impacts of major weather events.
✅ Fewer major events lowered outage duration versus 2021.
✅ Hurricanes and winter storms drove long outages in several states.
In 2022, U.S. electricity consumers on average experienced about 5.5 hours of power disruptions, a decrease from nearly two hours compared to 2021. This information comes from the latest Annual Electric Power Industry Report. The reduction in yearly power interruptions primarily resulted from fewer significant events in 2022 compared to the previous year, and utility disaster planning continues to support grid resilience as severe weather persists.
Since 2013, excluding major events, the annual average duration of power interruptions has consistently hovered around two hours. Factors contributing to major power disruptions include weather-related incidents, vegetation interference near power lines, and specific utility practices, while pandemic-related grid operations influenced workforce planning more than outage frequency. To assess the reliability of U.S. electric utilities, two key indexes are utilized:
The System Average Interruption Duration Index (SAIDI) calculates the total length (in hours) an average customer endures non-brief power interruptions over a year.
The System Average Interruption Frequency Index (SAIFI) tracks the number of times interruptions occur.
The influence of major events on electrical reliability is gauged by comparing affected states' SAIDI and SAIFI values against the U.S. average, which was 5.6 hours of outages and 1.4 outages per customer in 2022. The year witnessed 18 weather-related disasters in the U.S., each resulting in over $1 billion in damages, and COVID-19 grid assessments indicated the electricity system was largely safe from pandemic impacts. Noteworthy major events include:
Hurricane Ian in September 2022, leaving over 2.6 million Floridian customers without electricity, with restoration in some areas taking weeks rather than days.
Hurricane Nicole in November 2022, causing over 300,000 Florida customers to lose power.
Winter Storm Elliott in December 2022, affecting over 1.5 million customers in multiple states including Texas where utilities struggled after Hurricane Harvey to restore service, and Florida, and bringing up to four feet of snow in parts of New York.
In 2022, states like Florida, West Virginia, Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire experienced the most prolonged power interruptions, with New Hampshire averaging 10.3 hours and Florida 19.1 hours, and FPL's Irma storm response illustrates how restoration can take days or weeks in severe cases. Conversely, the District of Columbia, Delaware, Rhode Island, Nebraska, and Iowa had the shortest total interruptions, with the District of Columbia averaging just 34 minutes and Iowa 85 minutes.
The frequency of outages, unlike their duration, is more often linked to non-major events. Across the nation, Alaska recorded the highest number of power disruptions per customer (averaging 3.5), followed by several heavily forested states like Tennessee and Maine. Power outages due to falling tree branches are common, particularly during winter storms that burden tree limbs and power lines, as seen in a North Seattle outage affecting 13,000 customers. The District of Columbia stood out with the shortest and fewest outages per customer.
Canada Net-Zero Transition unites energy workers, R&D, and clean tech to decarbonize steel and cement with hydrogen, scale renewables, and build hybrid storage, delivering a just transition that strengthens communities and the economy.
Key Points
A national plan to reach net-zero by 2050 via renewables, hydrogen, decarbonization, and a just transition for workers.
✅ Hydrogen for steel and cement decarbonization
✅ Hybrid energy storage and clean tech R&D
✅ Just transition pathways for energy workers
Except for an isolated pocket of skeptics, there is now an almost universal acceptance that climate change is a global emergency that demands immediate and far-reaching action to defend our home and future generations. Yet in Canada we remain largely focused on how the crisis divides us rather than on the potential for it to unite us, despite nationwide progress in electricity decarbonization efforts.
It’s not a case of fossil-fuel industry workers versus the rest, or Alberta versus British Columbia where bridging the electricity gap could strengthen cooperation. We are all in this together. The challenge now is how to move forward in a way that leaves no one behind.
The fossil fuel industry has been — and continues to be — a key driver of Canada’s economy. Both of us had successful careers in the energy sector, but realized, along with an increasing number of energy workers, that the transition we need to cope with climate change could not be accomplished solely from within the industry.
Even as resource companies innovate to significantly reduce the carbon burden of each barrel, the total emission of greenhouse gases from all sources continues to rise. We must seize the opportunity to harness this innovative potential in alternative and complementary ways, mobilizing research and development, for example, to power carbon-intensive steelmaking and cement manufacture from hydrogen or to advance hybrid energy storage systems and decarbonizing Canada's electricity grid strategies — the potential for cross-over technology is immense.
The bottom line is inescapable: we must reach net-zero emissions by 2050 in order to prevent runaway global warming, which is why we launched Iron & Earth in 2016. Led by oilsands workers committed to increasingly incorporating renewable energy projects into our work scope, our non-partisan membership now includes a range of industrial trades and professions who share a vision for a sustainable energy future for Canada — one that would ensure the health and equity of workers, our families, communities, the economy, and the environment.
Except for an isolated pocket of skeptics, there is now an almost universal acceptance that climate change is a global emergency that demands immediate and far-reaching action, including cleaning up Canada's electricity to meet climate pledges, to defend our home and future generations. Yet in Canada we remain largely focused on how the crisis divides us rather than on the potential for it to unite us.
It’s not a case of fossil-fuel industry workers versus the rest, or Alberta versus British Columbia. We are all in this together. The challenge now is how to move forward in a way that leaves no one behind.
The fossil fuel industry has been — and continues to be — a key driver of Canada’s economy. Both of us had successful careers in the energy sector, but realized, along with an increasing number of energy workers, that the transition we need to cope with climate change could not be accomplished solely from within the industry.
Even as resource companies innovate to significantly reduce the carbon burden of each barrel, the total emission of greenhouse gases from all sources continues to rise, underscoring that Canada will need more electricity to hit net-zero, according to the IEA. We must seize the opportunity to harness this innovative potential in alternative and complementary ways, mobilizing research and development, for example, to power carbon-intensive steelmaking and cement manufacture from hydrogen or to advance hybrid energy storage systems — the potential for cross-over technology is immense.
The bottom line is inescapable: we must reach net-zero emissions by 2050 in order to prevent runaway global warming, which is why we launched Iron & Earth in 2016. Led by oilsands workers committed to increasingly incorporating renewable energy projects into our work scope, as calls for a fully renewable electricity grid by 2030 gain attention, our non-partisan membership now includes a range of industrial trades and professions who share a vision for a sustainable energy future for Canada — one that would ensure the health and equity of workers, our families, communities, the economy, and the environment.
Hinkley Point C dome lift marks a nuclear reactor milestone in Somerset, as EDF used Big Carl crane to place a 245-tonne steel roof, enabling 2027 startup amid costs, delays, and precision indoor welding.
Key Points
A 245-tonne dome lifted onto Hinkley Point C's first reactor, finishing the roof and enabling fit-out for a 2027 startup.
✅ 245-tonne steel dome lifted by Big Carl onto 44m-high reactor
✅ Indoor welding avoided weather defects seen at Flamanville
✅ Cost now £33bn; first power targeted by end of 2027
Engineers have lifted a steel roof onto a building which will house the first of two nuclear reactors at Hinkley Point in Somerset.
Hundreds of people helped with the delicate operation to get the 245-tonne steel dome into position.
It means the first reactor can be installed next year, ready to be switched on in June 2027.
Engineers at EDF said the "challenging job" was completed in just over an hour.
They first broke the ground on the new nuclear station in March 2017. Now, some 10,000 people work on what is Europe's largest building site.
They have faced delays from Covid restrictions and other recent setbacks, and the budget has doubled to £33bn, so getting the roof on the first of the two reactor buildings is a big deal.
EDF's nuclear island director Simon Parsons said it was a "fantastic night".
"Lifting the dome into place is a celebration of all the work done by a fantastic team. The smiles on people's faces this morning were something else.
"Now we can get on with the fitting of equipment, pipes and cables, including the first reactor which is on site and ready to be installed next year."
Nuclear minister Andrew Bowie hailed the "major milestone" in the building project, citing its role in the UK's green industrial revolution ambitions.
He said: "This is a key part of the UK Government's plans to revitalise nuclear."
But many still question whether Hinkley Point C will be worth all the money, especially after Hitachi's project freeze in Britain, with Roy Pumfrey of the Stop Hinkley campaign describing the project as "shockingly bad value".
Why lift the roof on?
The steel dome is bigger than the one on St Paul's Cathedral in London.
To lift it onto the 44-metre-high reactor building, they needed the world's largest land-based crane, dubbed Big Carl by engineers.
So why not just build the roof on top of the building?
The answer lies in a remote corner of Normandy in France, near a village called Flamanville.
EDF has been building a nuclear reactor there since 2007, ten years before they started in west Somerset.
The project is now a decade behind schedule and has still not been approved by French regulators.
Why? Because of cracks found in the precision welding on the roof of the reactor building.
Engineers have decided welding outside, exposed to wind and rain, compromised the high standards needed for a nuclear reactor.
So in Somerset they built a temporary workshop, which looks like a fair sized building itself. All the welding has been done inside, and then the completed roof was lifted into place.
Is it on time or on budget?
No, neither. When Hinkley C was first approved a decade ago, EDF said it would cost £14bn.
Four years later, in 2017, they finally started construction. By now the cost had risen to £19.5bn, and EDF said the plant would be finished by the end of 2025.
Today, the cost has risen to £33bn, and it is now hoped Hinkley C will produce electricity by the end of 2027.
"Nobody believes it will be done by 2027," said campaigner Roy Pumfrey.
"The costs keep rising, and the price of Hinkley's electricity will only get dearer," they added.
On the other hand, the increase in costs is not a problem for British energy bill payers, or the UK government.
EDF agreed to pay the full cost of construction, including any increases.
When I met Grant Shapps, then the UK Energy Secretary, at the site in April, he shrugged off the cost increases.
He said: "I think we should all be rather pleased it is not the British tax payer - it is France and EDF who are paying."
In return, the UK government agreed a set rate for Hinkley's power, called the Strike Price, back in 2013. The idea was this would guarantee the income from Hinkley Point for 35 years, allowing investors to get their money back.
Will it be worth the money?
Back in 2013, the Strike Price was set at £92.50 for each megawatt hour of power. At the time, the wholesale price of electricity was around £50/MWh, so Hinkley C looked expensive.
But since then, global shocks like the war in Ukraine have increased the cost of power substantially, and advocates argue next-gen nuclear could deliver smaller, cheaper, safer designs.
Michigan EV time-of-use charging helps DTE Energy and Consumers Energy manage off-peak demand, expand smart charger rebates, and build DC fast charging infrastructure, lowering grid costs, emissions, and peak load impacts across Michigan's distribution networks.
Key Points
Michigan utility programs using time-based EV rates to shift charging off-peak and ease grid load via charger rebates.
✅ Off-peak rates cut peak load and distribution transformer stress.
✅ Rebates support home smart chargers and DC fast charging sites.
✅ DTE Energy and Consumers Energy invest to expand EV infrastructure.
The two largest utilities in the state of Michigan, DTE Energy and Consumers Energy, are looking at time-of-use charging rates in two proposed electric vehicle (EV) charging programs, aligned with broader EV charging infrastructure trends among utilities, worth a combined $20.5 million of investments.
DTE Energy last month proposed a $13 million electric vehicle (EV) charging program, which would include transformer upgrades/additions, service drops, labor and contractor costs, materials, hardware and new meters to provide time-of-use charging rates amid evolving charging control dynamics in the market. The Charging Forward program aims to address customer education and outreach, residential smart charger support and charging infrastructure enablement, DTE told regulators in its 1,100-page filing. The utility requested that rebates provided through the program be deferred as a regulatory asset.
Consumers Energy in 2017 withdrew a proposal to install 800 electric vehicle charging ports in its Michigan service territory after questions were raised over how to pay for the $15 million plan. According to Energy News Network, the utility has filed a modified proposal building on the former plan and conversations over the last year that calls for approximately half of the original investment.
Utilities across the country are viewing new demand from EVs as a potential boon to their systems, a shift accelerated by the Model 3's impact on utility planning, potentially allowing greater utilization and lower costs. But that will require the vehicles to be plugged in when other demand is low, to avoid the need for extensive upgrades and more expensive power purchases. Michigan utilities' proposal focuses on off-peak EV charging, as well as on developing new EV infrastructure.
While adoption has remained relatively low nationally, last year the Edison Electric Institute and the Institute for Electric Innovation forecast 7 million EVs on United States' roads by the end of 2025. But unless those EVs can be coordinated, state power grids could face increased stress, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory has said distribution transformers may need to be replaced more frequently and peak load could push system limits — even with just one or two EVs on a neighborhood circuit.
In its application, DTE told regulators that electrification of transportation offers a range of benefits including "reduced operating costs for EV drivers and affordability benefits for utility customers."
"Most EV charging takes place overnight at home, effectively utilizing distribution and generation capacity in the system during a low load period," the utility said. "Therefore, increased EV adoption puts downward pressure on rates by spreading fixed costs over a greater volume of electric sales."
DTE added that other benefits include reduced carbon emissions, improved air quality, increased expenditures in local economies and reduced dependency on foreign oil for the public at large.
A previous proposal from Consumers Energy included 60 fast charging DC stations along major highways in the Lower Peninsula and 750 240-volt AC stations in metropolitan areas. Consumers' new plan will offer rebates for charger installation, as U.S. charging networks jostle for position amid federal electrification efforts, including residential and DC fast-charging stations.
ITER Nuclear Fusion advances tokamak magnetic confinement, heating deuterium-tritium plasma with superconducting magnets, targeting net energy gain, tritium breeding, and steam-turbine power, while complementing laser inertial confinement milestones for grid-scale electricity and 2025 startup goals.
Key Points
ITER Nuclear Fusion is a tokamak project confining D-T plasma with magnets to achieve net energy gain and clean power.
✅ Tokamak magnetic confinement with high-temp superconducting coils
✅ Deuterium-tritium fuel cycle with on-site tritium breeding
✅ Targets net energy gain and grid-scale, low-carbon electricity
It sounds like the stuff of dreams: a virtually limitless source of energy that doesn’t produce greenhouse gases or radioactive waste. That’s the promise of nuclear fusion, often described as the holy grail of clean energy by proponents, which for decades has been nothing more than a fantasy due to insurmountable technical challenges. But things are heating up in what has turned into a race to create what amounts to an artificial sun here on Earth, one that can provide power for our kettles, cars and light bulbs.
Today’s nuclear power plants create electricity through nuclear fission, in which atoms are split, with next-gen nuclear power exploring smaller, cheaper, safer designs that remain distinct from fusion. Nuclear fusion however, involves combining atomic nuclei to release energy. It’s the same reaction that’s taking place at the Sun’s core. But overcoming the natural repulsion between atomic nuclei and maintaining the right conditions for fusion to occur isn’t straightforward. And doing so in a way that produces more energy than the reaction consumes has been beyond the grasp of the finest minds in physics for decades.
But perhaps not for much longer. Some major technical challenges have been overcome in the past few years and governments around the world have been pouring money into fusion power research as part of a broader green industrial revolution under way in several regions. There are also over 20 private ventures in the UK, US, Europe, China and Australia vying to be the first to make fusion energy production a reality.
“People are saying, ‘If it really is the ultimate solution, let’s find out whether it works or not,’” says Dr Tim Luce, head of science and operation at the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), being built in southeast France. ITER is the biggest throw of the fusion dice yet.
Its $22bn (£15.9bn) build cost is being met by the governments of two-thirds of the world’s population, including the EU, the US, China and Russia, at a time when Europe is losing nuclear power and needs energy, and when it’s fired up in 2025 it’ll be the world’s largest fusion reactor. If it works, ITER will transform fusion power from being the stuff of dreams into a viable energy source.
Constructing a nuclear fusion reactor ITER will be a tokamak reactor – thought to be the best hope for fusion power. Inside a tokamak, a gas, often a hydrogen isotope called deuterium, is subjected to intense heat and pressure, forcing electrons out of the atoms. This creates a plasma – a superheated, ionised gas – that has to be contained by intense magnetic fields.
The containment is vital, as no material on Earth could withstand the intense heat (100,000,000°C and above) that the plasma has to reach so that fusion can begin. It’s close to 10 times the heat at the Sun’s core, and temperatures like that are needed in a tokamak because the gravitational pressure within the Sun can’t be recreated.
When atomic nuclei do start to fuse, vast amounts of energy are released. While the experimental reactors currently in operation release that energy as heat, in a fusion reactor power plant, the heat would be used to produce steam that would drive turbines to generate electricity, even as some envision nuclear beyond electricity for industrial heat and fuels.
Tokamaks aren’t the only fusion reactors being tried. Another type of reactor uses lasers to heat and compress a hydrogen fuel to initiate fusion. In August 2021, one such device at the National Ignition Facility, at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, generated 1.35 megajoules of energy. This record-breaking figure brings fusion power a step closer to net energy gain, but most hopes are still pinned on tokamak reactors rather than lasers.
In June 2021, China’s Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) reactor maintained a plasma for 101 seconds at 120,000,000°C. Before that, the record was 20 seconds. Ultimately, a fusion reactor would need to sustain the plasma indefinitely – or at least for eight-hour ‘pulses’ during periods of peak electricity demand.
A real game-changer for tokamaks has been the magnets used to produce the magnetic field. “We know how to make magnets that generate a very high magnetic field from copper or other kinds of metal, but you would pay a fortune for the electricity. It wouldn’t be a net energy gain from the plant,” says Luce.
One route for nuclear fusion is to use atoms of deuterium and tritium, both isotopes of hydrogen. They fuse under incredible heat and pressure, and the resulting products release energy as heat
The solution is to use high-temperature, superconducting magnets made from superconducting wire, or ‘tape’, that has no electrical resistance. These magnets can create intense magnetic fields and don’t lose energy as heat.
“High temperature superconductivity has been known about for 35 years. But the manufacturing capability to make tape in the lengths that would be required to make a reasonable fusion coil has just recently been developed,” says Luce. One of ITER’s magnets, the central solenoid, will produce a field of 13 tesla – 280,000 times Earth’s magnetic field.
The inner walls of ITER’s vacuum vessel, where the fusion will occur, will be lined with beryllium, a metal that won’t contaminate the plasma much if they touch. At the bottom is the divertor that will keep the temperature inside the reactor under control.
“The heat load on the divertor can be as large as in a rocket nozzle,” says Luce. “Rocket nozzles work because you can get into orbit within minutes and in space it’s really cold.” In a fusion reactor, a divertor would need to withstand this heat indefinitely and at ITER they’ll be testing one made out of tungsten.
Meanwhile, in the US, the National Spherical Torus Experiment – Upgrade (NSTX-U) fusion reactor will be fired up in the autumn of 2022, while efforts in advanced fission such as a mini-reactor design are also progressing. One of its priorities will be to see whether lining the reactor with lithium helps to keep the plasma stable.
Choosing a fuel Instead of just using deuterium as the fusion fuel, ITER will use deuterium mixed with tritium, another hydrogen isotope. The deuterium-tritium blend offers the best chance of getting significantly more power out than is put in. Proponents of fusion power say one reason the technology is safe is that the fuel needs to be constantly fed into the reactor to keep fusion happening, making a runaway reaction impossible.
Deuterium can be extracted from seawater, so there’s a virtually limitless supply of it. But only 20kg of tritium are thought to exist worldwide, so fusion power plants will have to produce it (ITER will develop technology to ‘breed’ tritium). While some radioactive waste will be produced in a fusion plant, it’ll have a lifetime of around 100 years, rather than the thousands of years from fission.
At the time of writing in September, researchers at the Joint European Torus (JET) fusion reactor in Oxfordshire were due to start their deuterium-tritium fusion reactions. “JET will help ITER prepare a choice of machine parameters to optimise the fusion power,” says Dr Joelle Mailloux, one of the scientific programme leaders at JET. These parameters will include finding the best combination of deuterium and tritium, and establishing how the current is increased in the magnets before fusion starts.
The groundwork laid down at JET should accelerate ITER’s efforts to accomplish net energy gain. ITER will produce ‘first plasma’ in December 2025 and be cranked up to full power over the following decade. Its plasma temperature will reach 150,000,000°C and its target is to produce 500 megawatts of fusion power for every 50 megawatts of input heating power.
“If ITER is successful, it’ll eliminate most, if not all, doubts about the science and liberate money for technology development,” says Luce. That technology development will be demonstration fusion power plants that actually produce electricity, where advanced reactors can build on decades of expertise. “ITER is opening the door and saying, yeah, this works – the science is there.”
Manitoba-Minnesota Transmission Project faces NEB certificate review, with public hearings, Indigenous consultation, and cross-border approval weighing permit vs certificate timelines, potential land expropriation, and Hydro's 2020 in-service date for the 308-MW intertie.
Key Points
A cross-border hydro line linking Manitoba and Minnesota, now under NEB review through a permit or certificate process.
✅ NEB recommends certificate with public hearings and cabinet approval
✅ Stakeholders cite land, health, and economic impacts along route
A recommendation from the National Energy Board could push back the construction start date of a $453-million hydroelectric transmission line from Manitoba to Minnesota.
In a letter to federal Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr, the regulatory agency recommends using a "certificate" approval process, which could take more time than the simpler "permit" process Manitoba Hydro favours.
The certificate process involves public hearings, reflecting First Nations intervention seen in other power-line debates, to weigh the merits of the project, which would then go to the federal cabinet for approval.
The NEB says this process would allow for more procedural flexibility and "address Aboriginal concerns that may arise in the circumstances of this process."
The Manitoba-Minnesota Transmission Project would provide the final link in a chain that brings hydroelectricity from generating stations in northern Manitoba, through the Bipole III transmission line and, like the New England Clean Power Link project, across the U.S. border as part of a 308-megawatt deal with the Green Bay-based Wisconsin Public Service.
When Hydro filed its application in December 2016, it had expected to have approval by the end of August 2017 and to begin construction on the line in mid-December, in order to have the line in operation by May or June 2020.
Groups representing stakeholders along the proposed route of the transmission line had mixed reactions to the energy board's recommendation.
A lawyer representing a coalition of more than 120 landowners in the Rural Municipality of Taché and around La Broquerie, Man., welcomed the opportunity to have a more "fulsome" discussion about the project.
"I think it's a positive step. As people become more familiar with the project, the deficiencies with it become more obvious," said Kevin Toyne, who represents the Southeast Stakeholders Coalition.
Toyne said some coalition members are worried that Hydro will forcibly expropriate land in order to build the line, while others are worried about potential economic and health impacts of having the line so close to their homes. They have proposed moving the line farther east.
When the Clean Environment Commission — an arm's-length provincial government agency — held public hearings on the proposed route earlier this year, the coalition brought their concerns forward, echoing Site C opposition voiced by northerners, but Toyne says both the commission and Hydro ignored them.
Hydro still aiming for 2020 in-service date
The Manitoba Métis Federation also participated in those public hearings. MMF president David Chartrand worries about the impact a possible delay, as seen with the Site C work halt tied to treaty rights, could have on revenue from sales of hydroelectric power to the U.S.
"I know that a lot of money, billions have been invested on this line. And if the connection line is not done, then of course this will be sitting here, not gaining any revenue, which will affect every Métis in this province, given our Hydro bill's going to go up," Chartrand said.The NEB letter to Minister Carr requests that he "determine this matter in an expedited manner."
Manitoba Hydro spokesperson Bruce Owen said in an email that the Crown corporation will participate in whatever process, permit or certificate, the NEB takes.
"Manitoba Hydro does not have any information at this point in time that would change the estimated in-service date (May-June 2020) for the Manitoba-Minnesota Transmission Project," he said.
The federal government "is currently reviewing the NEB's recommendation to designate the project as subject to a certificate, which would result in public hearings," said Alexandre Deslongchamps, a spokesperson for Carr.
"Under the National Energy Board Act, an international power line requires either the approval by the NEB through a permit or approval by the Government of Canada by a certificate. Both must be issued by the NEB," he wrote in an email to CBC News.
By law, the certificate process is not to take longer than 15 months.
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