EverWind Fuels has unveiled details of its plans to build Canada’s biggest wind farm in eastern Nova Scotia, a two-gigawatt facility with 404 turbines covering more than 64,000 hectares of provincial Crown land in Guysborough County.

At one of a series of public information sessions held in the region in recent weeks, EverWind representatives told The Energy Mix they hope to submit the first phase of the project for provincial environmental assessment by the end of this year. They said the plan is to feed the electricity directly across the Strait of Canso to Point Tupper in Cape Breton, where the company plans to develop a green hydrogen and ammonia plant.

The Guysborough project is in addition to three other wind projects EverWind has planned in Nova Scotia. Those are slated for central Nova Scotia, and total more than 80 turbines that would produce 523 megawatts of electricity that EverWind plans to feed into the Nova Scotia Power grid. The company would then draw an equivalent amount to power its production of green hydrogen, and its conversion to green ammonia, primarily for export to Germany.

In August, 2022, EverWind signed memoranda of understanding with two German utilities, Uniper and E.ON, for the “offtake” of a million tonnes of ammonia a year from its proposed hydrogen and ammonia facility in Nova Scotia.

Two years later, EverWind still has no signed contract for that offtake, so it has no guaranteed market for any hydrogen or ammonia it may eventually produce.

EverWind vice president of power, Brendan Chard, said no construction has begun on the Point Tupper facilities and no final investment decision has been made.

“The project will only be built and constructed if we have secured offtake agreements that will allow us to secure the financing to construct the facility. So, the construction of the wind won’t commence until we have hit those other milestones,” Chard said.

Chard said he was unable to speak about financing arrangements for the project. In November. 2023, Export Development Canada confirmed it had provided EverWind $166 million in financing.

EverWind’s proposed Guysborough wind project, like the 100-turbine one proposed by Bear Head Energy next door in Pictou County, has raised local concerns about their environmental impacts on forests and wetlands, and loopholes and weaknesses in Nova Scotia’s environmental assessment process.

Marsha Plant, a co-founder of Protect Guysborough, which opposes EverWind’s wind project, said she’s concerned about green hydrogen-wind projects specifically, not wind energy in general.

“It needs to happen to help us get off coal, but these massive projects have nothing to do with that,” she told The Energy Mix, adding that electricity used to produce green hydrogen and then ammonia for export won’t help Nova Scotia end its use of coal, as it must do by 2030.

Plant is part of a province-wide coalition, Green Nova Scotia First, which opposes the green hydrogen-wind projects that do not help Nova Scotia clean its grid, which still produces more than half of its electricity from fossil fuels.

“Let’s be clear, Nova Scotia needs more renewable energy,” states the Green Nova Scotia First website. “But wind turbines for hydrogen/ammonia export are not the answer. Hydrogen and ammonia production requires vast resources including land, water, and energy, and will not help reduce Nova Scotia’s greenhouse gas emissions. We must Green Nova Scotia First!”

Paul Martin is a chemical engineer with a 30-year history of working with, making, and using hydrogen, and a member of the Hydrogen Science Coalition. The Mix asked him whether EverWind’s plans make environmental and economic sense, given the thousands of hydrogen production projects being proposed around the world.

“In a word, no,” Martin replied. “Many other locations (i.e. western Australia, north or west Africa, Chile, etc.) will be able to make ammonia far more cheaply, with a carbon intensity even lower than that achievable by these wind-only projects, because they have access to better quality wind plus solar resources. These will allow the same investment in hydrogen and ammonia production equipment to generate twice as much hydrogen and hence more ammonia on the same site, for the same investment of capital.”

But “a few dedicated wind energy projects would produce a lot of power to permit decarbonization of Nova Scotia’s grid, without the need for capital subsidy toward hydrogen production,” he added.