On October 21, 2016, Premier Wynne announced that Ontario and Quebec have
finalized an agreement for trading electricity, energy capacity and
energy storage. This agreement follows the Memorandum of Understanding that the provinces
had signed in 2014 to exchange electricity capacity and reduce
Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions.
Under the new agreement, Ontario has agreed to purchase two
terawatt hours of electricity from Quebec each year from 2017 to
2023. According to the Globe and Mail, this amounts to
about 1.4 per cent of the province's total demand, or enough
electricity to power a city of 240,000 people (the example given is
Kitchener).
The hydroelectric power to be purchased from Quebec will
displace or replace electricity that would have been produced in
Ontario by natural gas-fired generation facilities. According to
Premier Wynne's announcement, this will reduce GHG emissions
for Ontarians by approximately 1 million tonnes per year and it
will save Ontario
