Corporate Knights magazine ranked Manitoba Hydro’s Keeyask Generating Station and Bipole III projects among the 10 biggest infrastructure projects in Canada that will help lower the country’s greenhouse gas emissions.
Keeyask, which is scheduled to be completed by 2020, will be Manitoba’s fourth-largest hydroelectric generating station with a capacity of 695 megawatts producing an estimated 4,400 gigawatt-hours of electricity per year. The reservoir will cover an estimated 93 square kilometers – the equivalent of 30 of New York’s Central Parks. However, an environmental review said it would take 100 years for Keeyask to emit the amount of greenhouse gases that a natural gas-fired electricity generating plant produces in 177 days.
Also included in the Corporate Knights list is Manitoba Hydro’s Bipole III transmission line, which will cost $4.6 billion to construct. A 500-kilovolt line linking Manitoba Hydro’s northern power-generating complex on the Lower Nelson River with the conversion and electricity delivery system in the province’s south, Bipole III is intended to reduce vulnerability to extreme weather by providing a second transmission pathway to the existing Interlake HVDC corridor that currently delivers about three-quarters of northern-generated power to southern Manitoba.
The relative greenness of climate-friendliness of any given infrastructure project depends upon how you define it and where it is. Nuclear power plants reduce carbon dioxide emissions but generate other problems such as toxic waste. Large-scale hydroelectric developments have negative environmental consequences as a result of flooding, though those in temperate regions are considered more climate-friendly than those in the tropics, which result in more decomposition of organic matter that results in higher methane emissions. Power lines that delivery electricity with less wastage are only considered climate-friendly if they are delivering power generated by renewable resources, such as hydroelectric dams. Corporate Knights says big hydroelectric generating projects can play a large role in the fight against climate change provided they are properly planned and designed to have minimal impact on biodiversity.
Other projects on the magazines to 10 climate-friendly infrastructure projects list include B.C. Hydro’s Site C hydroelectric project, Nalcor Energy’s Muskrat Falls hydroelectric project, Hydro-Québec’s Romaine River hydroelectric complex, the Eglinton Crosstown light rapid transit line in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton area, the Scarborough and Spadina subway extensions in Toronto, the Confederation light rapid transit line in Ottawa and the Lower Mattagami hydroelectric complex in Ontario.
Founded in 2002, Corporate Knights magazine is distributed quarterly in the Globe & Mail and Washington Post. It was involved in the creation of the Council for Clean Capitalism in 2012 and says it is the first print business magazine and research firm in the world to be a Certified B Corp. B Corps must meet social and environmental performance, accountability and transparency to be certified and Corporate Knights says its website is powered only by renewable electricity produced in Canada.
