Retired consultant Martin Bush

A retired international consultant on environmental management, who recently moved to Moncton from Montreal, is questioning the New Brunswick Energy & Utilities Board’s  approval of the 500 MW gas/diesel plant near Centre Village as a prudent investment.

“How can it be a prudent investment if you’ve got an alternative, which is proven technology that is much less expensive,” Martin Bush said during an interview last month with Warktimes.

“I knew instantly when I moved here and somebody told me about the gas plant in Tantramar, that if NB Power went with renewables and batteries, that system would be much cheaper,” he adds.

In a 12-page paper he completed in September, Bush calculates that the cost of wind farm technology paired with battery energy storage systems would cost about $370 million less over 25 years than NB Power’s proposed RIGS plant.

“The RIGS gas/diesel facility proposed by NB Power is NOT a prudent investment,” he writes. “It is expensive, socially unacceptable, economically wasteful, and environmentally harmful.”

Bush says he is working on a second edition of his book, first published in 2019

Bush, who has written two books on climate change and is a member of various environmental groups, including Seniors for Climate Action Now, points to figures in the New Brunswick Auditor General’s report showing that the gas/diesel plant would cost more than $3 billion over 25 years while the costs of battery systems combined with wind farms would be substantially less with no emissions of greenhouse gases and no harmful air pollution generated by the burning of fossil fuels.

“Neither the battery system nor the wind farm requires frequent provisions of diesel fuel by heavy trucks along local roads in poor condition,” he writes.

“The environmental impacts of providing a RIGS gas/diesel facility with a regular supply of diesel fuel should not be underestimated.”

He writes that  battery energy storage systems and wind farms can be placed anywhere on the grid in locations where there would be minimal environmental and ecological effects.

“There is absolutely no reason why either the battery system or the wind farm should be located in Tantramar,” he writes. “The wind farm and the battery system do not need to be in the same location.”

In a later e-mail to Warktimes, Bush responded to NB Power’s argument that battery energy storage systems could not provide enough sustained power during a prolonged, three-day period of frigid weather similar to the cold snap in early February 2023.

Re the 3-day cold snap, the issue here is that NB Power continues to treat the battery system like it generates electricity.  It doesn’t. It’s a battery: it only stores electricity. Which is why batteries have to be coupled to a solar park or a wind farm or another source of electricity so they can be regularly charged. And utility batteries are ALWAYS integrated into the power distribution network—so they can be charged from any source on the grid that is operational including solar parks and wind farms , which are the cheapest sources of power.

Only in the improbable case of a frigid cold snap coincident with zero wind would a wind farm and battery system be inadequate. Not impossible but very low probability and routinely forecast days in advance.

But again, these systems are part of a province-wide network of generating assets that NB Power manages in their role as electrical system operator. And when an asset goes offline (like the Lepreau nuclear station), NB Power automatically brings in other sources of power.

Bush writes that his calculations also include the costs of maintaining and replacing batteries over 25 years.

“The fact that they’re locking in a polluting technology in the local environment for a couple of decades to come is an outrageous proposition by NB Power,” he says.

To read Martin Bush’s paper, click here.