Canadian hydropower destined to hit a roadblock in Maine

Serge Abergel inspected the spinning turbines at the heart of the world’s largest underground power plant. It is a massive facility that converts the water from the La Grande River, in Quebec, Canada into a current of renewable electricity strong enough to power a midsize city, hundreds of feet below a secluded forest near Hudson Bay.

Yet today, work on this $1 billion project is at a standstill.

  • Over the last few years, an odd combination of locals, conservationists, and Native Americans launched a raucous campaign against the project, funded by rival energy companies
  • Native American tribes in Maine and Canada joined the opposition, protesting the fact that corporations stood to profit billions of dollars without compensating the First Nations on whose ancestral lands the electrical energy is generated 
  • Concerns about whether or not the challenge would actually reduce greenhouse gas emissions persuaded leading environmental groups to oppose the challenge

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