Newcomer of the Year: Sophie Brochu signed Hydro-Québec’s biggest export deal ever

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Not long after taking over the provincial utility in 2020, Brochu signed its largest-ever export deal, which will keep the lights on in New York City for the next two decades. And that’s not Brochu’s only power move

In many ways, Quebec has a head start in the coming energy transition. More than 90% of its electricity mix comes from hydroelectric dams and from the partly owned Churchill Falls project in Labrador. With an installed generation capacity of 37,231 megawatts from 61 hydroelectric stations and 24 thermal generating stations, its grid stretches over 261,578 kilometres. Brochu delivered record earnings of $3.

Brochu is an energy economist by training. Before joining Hydro-Québec, she ran Montreal-based natural-gas distributor Énergir. Friends and associates describe her as a dynamic leader with a seemingly bottomless well of emotional intelligence, a measured thinker with a long-term view who can rally people behind her.

Perhaps the biggest catalyst was when the state closed the Indian Point nuclear plant, says Dan Zarrilli, chief climate adviser to former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio. That instantly took the city grid from roughly two-thirds fossil fuel–based to about 90%, which sharpened the focus on alternatives. CHPE and Canadian hydropower are a “big part of digging ourselves out of that hole,” Zarilli says.

In New York, meanwhile, Blackstone and Hydro-Québec are committing $117 million to improve the environmental health of Lake Champlain and the Hudson and Harlem Rivers, including restoring oyster reefs around New York. They’ll spend another $40 million to retrain workers and $9 million on community initiatives. They’ve also done less formal outreach, such as inviting Queensbridge-area kids to Quebec to see its installations there.

Brochu has some well-formulated thoughts on these questions—and they break with orthodoxy in Quebec, which is best described as: “Need power? Just build more dams.” Born into a family of entrepreneurs from the Beauce region, Brochu is the kind of person who will ask 10 questions about how you’re doing before volunteering anything about herself. She’s a team-builder who prefers comfy sweaters to formalwear, and has a penchant for analogies related to growing vegetables, one of her passions. Talk to her staff and you get the sense they feel she’s a once-in-a-generation leader.

New projects could also get messy. The Innu of Labrador are suing the utility for $4 billion in damages from when their traditional territories were flooded to build reservoirs decades ago. “Hydro-Québec refuses to acknowledge the power they have comes from destroying our land,” say Etienne Rich, Grand Chief of the Innu Nation. “This is not ethical.”

 

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Now we need her there even more. We can still hope she will make sure to inform the public to her best capabilities of any misuse of our resources from that specific government in power energy EnergyTransition energie polcan qcpoli greenenergie

Now we need her there even more. We can still hope she will make sure to inform the public to her best capabilities of any misuse of our resources from that specific government in power

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