Conservationists question N.B. Power decision not to build $1B gas plant at industrial park
CBC
The rationale behind N.B. Power’s controversial decision to build a gas-fired power plant on a 550-acre woodlot is outlined in a recent report from the utility, but critics aren’t buying it.
In December 2024, N.B. Power told reporters the major new gas plant would likely be built in the Scoudouc Industrial Park, about 22 kilometres northeast of Moncton.
But according to the two-page report, the utility decided just two months later that it would instead go with property near Centre Village in rural Tantramar.
N.B. Power and ProEnergy, the U.S. company hired to build and operate the plant, are now building a 1.5-kilometre road to get to the chosen site.
But local conservation groups say a gas plant makes much more sense in an industrial park than in the middle of the Chignecto Isthmus.
“I think that we have to, as New Brunswickers, raise our standards a little bit about where we put these kinds of projects,” said Melanie Jellett, conservation manager with the New Brunswick chapter of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society.
“A project of this size should not be built in an ecologically sensitive area like this. It's much better in an area where there's already industrial development.”
The decision to build in Centre Village didn’t become public until N.B. Power formally announced its plans in July 2025, inspiring an outcry from local residents and conservation groups.
In its “location analysis” report, N.B. Power listed 10 sites that it considered, including Coleson Cove, Lepreau, Millbank, Belledune and Dalhousie. The utility quickly narrowed the field to five worthy of “detailed review.”
Eel River, Bayside, and Memramcook were ruled out because of “transmission constraints” and lack of “proximity to natural gas pipelines.”
That left Scoudouc and Centre Village offering “the greatest value and most suitable conditions."
Both properties are crossed by N.B. Power transmission lines and the Maritimes and Northeast natural gas pipeline.
Both could also “support the 500-megawatt capacity with minimal transmission investment,” and both are in the southeast, where they could address growing energy demand and “support eastward transfers (to Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island),” according to the N.B. Power report.
N.B. Power says it studied the "regulatory context” for both sites in the summer of 2024, something that would be a key factor in the utility’s decision to go with Centre Village.
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