Tantramar MLA Megan Mitton
Tantramar Green MLA Megan Mitton says there’s one word that keeps coming up when she talks to people about NB Power’s plan for a 500 MW gas/diesel power plant on the Chignecto Isthmus.
“That word is stupid,” she told about 50 people at a public information session Sunday in the Mount Allison University Chapel.
“This is so stupid. It doesn’t make any logical sense,” she said, pointing to what she called NB Power’s “history of stupid mistakes” including its $13 million investment in a Florida-based company that claimed it could convert seawater into industrial-scale hydrogen power.
Mitton also referred to the $30 million that both Liberal and Conservative provincial governments paid to companies trying to produce small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) in New Brunswick.
(In October, the current energy minister said the province was abandoning plans for locally produced reactors and was considering investing in ones made in Ontario instead.)
“We were never going to build the first SMRs in the world and it’s the most costly power we could produce,” Mitton said.
“And now we’ve got gas plants,” she added, “and I say gas plants because there are actually multiple gas plants being proposed in New Brunswick right now.”
She explained that the proposed data centre near Lorneville would use gas-fired turbines to generate 190 MW of power while also buying an additional 190 MW from the NB Power grid.
Mitton said it’s hard not to believe that the Lorneville and Centre Village projects are connected.
Trump connection
She also criticized NB Power and the Holt government for doing business with Trump-supporting U.S. firms at a time when the American president is threatening to make Canada the 51st state.
Doug Kimmelman. Photo: Facebook
Mitton mentioned Doug Kimmelman, who has donated hundreds of thousands to Trump and other Republican candidates’ election campaigns. In 2024, his firm ECP (Energy Capital Partners) acquired PROENERGY, the company that won the bid to build and operate the gas/diesel plant in Tantramar.
She was also referring to comments VoltaGrid CEO Nathan Ough made to the Wall Street Journal praising the U.S. president’s enthusiasm for fossil fuel drilling, his support for data centres and his high tariffs to encourage more companies to move to the U.S.
Ough’s VoltaGrid is one of the companies proposing to build the data centre near Lorneville.
“I don’t know why we want to empower Trump and his donors, but that’s NB Power’s plan and the government’s plan because they’re not stepping in,” Mitton said.
She mentioned that the U.S. defence department, now called the department of war, has invested $20 million in the Sisson mine north of Fredericton because tungsten is useful in producing armour-piercing artillery shells.
If the Sisson mine goes ahead, NB Power will build a new 138 kilovolt transmission line to supply up to 50 MW of electricity to the site.
Energy alternatives
Mitton argued NB Power should be investing in newer, cheaper technologies similar, for example, to the large energy storage batteries in Maine or small ones in homes, such as those in Vermont.
She said NB Power and the government should also be reducing electricity demand through energy retrofits and installing heat pumps.
“The current program for putting in heat pumps, just for the homes that are eligible for the low-income threshold, they wouldn’t be done until sometime in the 2050s, so we’re not moving fast enough. It’s like we’re not even trying,” she said.
Inspirational story
Mt. A. environmental science student Delphine Reid
“I’m from Philadelphia, but please don’t hold that against me,” said environmental science student Delphine Reid as audience members laughed.
“I would like to talk about the Oakwell campaign,” she added.
Reid went on to say that during her high school years in Philadelphia, she worked with many others to prevent local school districts from destroying a wild space.
“Oakwell is a 13.4-acre piece of land and is full of old growth trees and beautiful wildlife,” she said, adding that the school districts wanted to mow the trees down and turn Oakwell into a football field.
“So a group of local activists, much like all of the wonderful people here, held panels in protest to try and stop this. And in the end, we were able to save this beautiful land,” she said.
“I wanted to tell you this story because it is incredibly inspirational and it proves that change can happen,” Reid added.
She went on to say that the gas plant must be stopped too.
“This project is being rushed through with minimal community consultation,” she said, adding that members of the community who would have to live with this every day are being ignored.
“This decision reveals whose interests are being prioritized and it is definitely not ours.
“This affects all of us, not just environmentalists, but anyone who cares about economic fairness and having a say in the community’s future.
“We deserve to be consulted about decisions that will define our lives. We deserve to have our community prioritized and we deserve a safe future,” Reid concluded to a sustained round of applause.
