N.B. premier looks for alternative sites for Tantramar gas plant

Premier Susan Holt says she’d still like to find a different site for a controversial natural gas power plant now planned for a rural area in Tantramar.

Holt told CBC News in a year-end interview on Dec. 16 that she’d like the plant to be built somewhere where it’s acceptable to the local community.

“We've been having the conversation about alternate locations because it's clear that there is a lot of resistance to this location from this community, and I can understand why,” Holt said.

She said she’d received a Facebook message the day before suggesting that a site “20 kilometres down the road … would be a better spot” for the plant that would would provide N.B. Power with 400 megawatts of power.

“We need to do it somewhere where it is going to be accepted by the community, and right now that's not the case in Centre Village,” the premier said, referring to a rural area in the municipality of Tantramar.

Holt also did not provide a clear answer when she was asked if she had confidence in N.B. Power’s leadership, its management and its site selection process.

“I think that N.B. Power has done a lot of work on this,” she said.

The utility chose the Tantramar site because it is close to both existing transmission lines and the Maritimes and Northeast natural gas pipeline, from which it will draw gas to power its turbines.

But it’s the government’s role, and the Energy and Utilities Board’s, “to question and test and make sure … that nothing was missed.”

N.B. Power is facing a tight timeline for the project.

The EUB will hold hearings on it in February, and the utility has said that the U.S. company that would build the plant, Missouri-based ProEnergy, needs a clear decision by April or else it may have to walk away from the project.

Looming over that is another deadline: a forecast by N.B. Power that it may not have enough electricity generation to meet demand by 2028.

Holt’s energy minister, René Legacy, said in December that he worried about shortfalls during peak demand as early as this winter.

The North American Electric Reliability Corporation said in a winter forecast report released last fall that the Maritime region of Canada does not have enough “reserve margin” of electricity generation to guarantee power during peak demand.

The chance that all power plants will be working perfectly during peak demand periods “is zero,” said John Moura, the agency’s director of reliability assessment and system analysis.

“Something will always break. There will always be some generation that's out of service.”

He said the agency has calculated that utilities in the Maritimes should have a collective reserve margin — or cushion — of 20 per cent more generation capacity in case of such failures when demand peaks in winter.

They only have 17 per cent this winter, the agency calculates.

Holt said this urgency has put the province “between a rock and a hard place” with the gas plant, which is intended to generate backup power for new wind and solar generation that N.B. Power wants to add to its system.

But local opposition also needs to be heard and respected, she said — even if it’s not a veto over the decision.

“We have to make sure we're working with a proponent that is going to do everything they need to do to make this a safe project, a responsible project, and not disturb the people around it in ways that aren't appropriate,” she said.

Holt appeared to be resigned to the Tantramar site when she spoke to reporters Dec. 12.

“This is not an ideal site, but it doesn’t appear that there is an ideal site,” she said then. “As we’ve been turning over stones and spaces, I haven’t found the next better option yet.”

The premier’s commitment to listening to New Brunswickers has been a hallmark of her time in office, but it has tripped up the government in some cases.

She and Housing Minister David Hickey were accused of not listening to residents of the Forest Hill area of Fredericton after the province decided to put a transitional housing project there before holding a community meeting.

More than a year into her mandate, Holt said, she has “a better sense” of whether five, 50, 500 or 5,000 emails represent a large part of public opinion.

“There are lots of different points of view” on government decisions, “so I listen to everyone. I listen to the people who are against something, to the people who are for something.

“That's the real challenge … of this job, is the compromise that you have to make between the speed at which you need to get something done, the ultimate objectives that you want to achieve, how many people are impacted and whether it's going to serve a lot of people and harm a few people or whether it's going to harm a lot of people.”

A major decision facing Holt early in 2026 is what to do with N.B. Power.

A report by a review panel looking at the future of the utility is due by March 31.

The premier said in the year-end interview that she’d be “moving pretty quickly” on the recommendations, “deciding which ones to act on and which ones perhaps not to act on.”

Holt also said she may not shuffle her cabinet in 2026, the traditional mid-mandate point when premiers move ministers around.

“The peanut gallery has all sorts of perspectives on when the right time for a government to execute a cabinet shuffle is,” she said.

“But I have an incredible team of ministers, 18 of them, who are doing a great job, working really hard, have gotten deep into their files and serving the people they're responsible for. …

“But who knows what will happen in somebody's life or the province in the next year? It's always an option, but not one that I have a fixed date or plan for right now.”