Powerfully promising: Harnessing the Churchill River’s hydroelectric potential needed to develop the mining sector – by Gary Kean (Salt Wire/The Telegram – January 13, 2025)

https://www.saltwire.com/

Access to not only more, but clean, power in Labrador essential to luring investment, says mining industry

In the early 2000s, the idea of building an aluminum smelter in Labrador was shelved, and Yvonne Jones often wondered what else could have been if the region’s resources had been tapped into at the time. With Newfoundland and Labrador now planning to develop more hydroelectric power on the mighty Churchill River, the Liberal MP for Labrador hopes the next industrial vision to come along can be realized.

The smelter project would have been a joint venture between aluminum titan Alcoa and the provincial government, but the province walked away from the deal after a feasibility study was done. The company wanted the government to foot too much of the energy costs associated with the development.

The enterprise would have required developing the Lower Churchill Hydro Project as a power supply for the processing facility and the province felt there was a better way to do that. Alcoa moved on to build an aluminum smelter in Iceland, opening it in 2008. It also built a 690-megawatt hydroelectricity generating station – the largest power plant in Iceland, which also features the largest dam of its type in Europe – around 75 kilometres to the west to run the plant.

For the rest of this article: https://www.saltwire.com/newfoundland-labrador/powerfully-promising-harnessing-the-churchill-rivers-hydroelectric-potential-needed-to-develop-the-mining-sector