{"id":784364,"date":"2026-07-06T18:13:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-06T18:13:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/784364\/"},"modified":"2026-07-06T18:13:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-06T18:13:09","slug":"quebecs-era-of-endless-cheap-electricity-is-coming-to-an-end","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/784364\/","title":{"rendered":"Quebec\u2019s era of endless, cheap electricity is coming to an end"},"content":{"rendered":"

MONTREAL \u2014 Hydro-Qu\u00e9bec faces an existential crisis. Its electricity surplus is expected to come<\/a> to an end next year, even as it devotes more power to decarbonizing its operations. Dwindling water levels threaten existing hydroelectric power generation, while regulatory and environmental hurdles are hampering future projects. Quebecers, North America\u2019s energy drunkards, are about to get a lesson in sobriety.<\/p>\n

Currently, a kilowatt hour of Hydro-Quebec\u2019s bounty costs the average consumer seven cents, pretty much whenever they choose to consume it. These low prices, enshrined in government legislation more than 25 years ago, are now nearly three times less than Ontario\u2019s on-peak rate and roughly 20 per cent of what Californians pay on average. Quebecers are among the most voracious electricity consumers on earth as a result, according to a 2025 Ouranos report<\/a>. This is in part because of an outsized predilection for things like swimming pools, detached homes and energy-hemorrhaging baseboard heaters.<\/p>\n

Until now, the government and Hydro-Qu\u00e9bec have tried to fix this problem with a flurry of carrots, like subsidizing<\/a> smart thermostats and politely reminding<\/a> people to run their dishwashers at night. Now comes the stick, in the form of PGIRE or \u201cPlan de gestion int\u00e9gr\u00e9e des ressources \u00e9nerg\u00e9tiques,\u201d the wordy title for the governmental plan to cut consumption.<\/p>\n

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\u201cQuebec is destined to change,\u201d proclaimed a government-made video introducing PGIRE. While it seems like a bit of feel-good agitpop\u2014all solar panels, heat pumps and sun-soaked horizons\u2014it notably emphasizes the collective need for energy sobriety and flexibility, two things Quebecers have rarely if ever practiced.<\/p>\n

PGIRE\u2019s rollout coincided with Hydro-Qu\u00e9bec\u2019s introduction of a third tier of rates for those electrical gourmands who consume more than 35,000 kilowatt hours a year, which is more than double the electricity of what your average Norwegian household consumes. If there was any doubt as to whom it was targeting, Hydro-Qu\u00e9bec explicitly called out<\/a> the 200,000 or so homes that often have spas, heated garages, heated pools and what it terms \u201cvery large living areas.\u201d<\/p>\n

Slackening Quebec\u2019s addiction to cheap power has huge, if hidden, rewards. A saved kilowatt-hour of energy \u201ccosts\u201d about three cents, or about three times less than the cost of building new energy-producing infrastructure, according to a recent report<\/a> from HEC Montr\u00e9al\u2019s Conseil qu\u00e9b\u00e9cois des entreprises en efficacit\u00e9 \u00e9nerg\u00e9tique.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s similar math for home retrofitting and other energy efficiency programs, which the report notes are far less expensive than building new dams to service existing inefficiencies. In hiking rates, PGIRE aims to rebalance Quebec\u2019s long-skewed laws of electrical supply and demand.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cElectricity consumers will have to pay more per kilowatt-hour consumed. However, the bills of those who make efforts regarding energy efficiency and conservation could still decrease, because consumption volumes may drop more than prices rise,\u201d Pierre-Olivier Pineau, HEC Montr\u00e9al\u2019s chair in energy sector management, told me.<\/p>\n

That said, the process will be politically fraught. A couple of years ago, I sat<\/a> in the back of a minivan with Pierre Fitzgibbon, then Quebec\u2019s innovation minister, as he lamented the political difficulty of hiking hydro rates in the province. Fitzgibbon tabled<\/a> a bill allowing for peak pricing, which eventually became law after he left government. Yet no politician has dared implement the otherwise-commonplace idea of charging more during peak usage hours.<\/p>\n

It is perhaps why PGIRE is less a revolution than a series of baby steps. For now, the electrical rate increases are marginal, and only target a relative handful of households\u2014a canny strategy, said energy consultant Benoit Marcoux, in that the only people who will complain are those with the means to own a big home and a winter spa.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Governments, too, play a role in the folly, in that it is far more politically sexy to announce big, river-bending hydroelectric projects than a window retrofit program. As well, Quebecers won\u2019t likely ever pay the true value of the electricity produced in the province, if only because there is too much cheap precedent to overcome. <\/p>\n

Nonetheless, the plan creates a threshold\u2014and something of a precedent. Hydro-Qu\u00e9bec spokesperson Audrey St-Pierre demurred when I asked if it planned further rate hikes, but it remains that such increases could be expanded to include more of Quebec\u2019s hoi polloi. The utility has already hiked<\/a> rates for AI data centres, confident the market will bear the price of a necessity. For the sake of sobriety, may it do the same for its citizens.<\/p>\n

Martin Patriquin is The Logic\u2019s Quebec correspondent. He joined in 2019 after 10 years as Quebec bureau chief for Maclean\u2019s. A National Magazine Award and SABEW winner, he has written for The New York Times, The Guardian, The Walrus, Vice, BuzzFeed and The Globe and Mail, among others. He is also a panellist on CBC\u2019s \u201cPower & Politics.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MONTREAL \u2014 Hydro-Qu\u00e9bec faces an existential crisis. Its electricity surplus is expected to come to an end next…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":784365,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[49,48,1673,4717,295,101002,906,70883,66],"class_list":["post-784364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-commentary","tag-energy","tag-environment","tag-hydro-quebec","tag-quebec","tag-quebec-ink","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/784364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=784364"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/784364\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/784365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=784364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=784364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=784364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}