Nova Scotia Power customers should pay for biomass plant if necessary: premier

HALIFAX – Premier Darrell Dexter says Nova Scotia Power customers should pay the costs of operating a biomass plant for the next two years if a deal to sell a shuttered Cape Breton paper mill goes through.

But Dexter says any concerns that running the mill, which closed last September, won’t offset the cost of running the biomass facility are false.

Dexter says the economic ramifications of the mill not reopening would exceed what Nova Scotia Power customers would pay to operate the $208-million biomass plant.

His comments come a day after a lawyer raised the possibility of power customers facing the costs of running the biomass plant at a Nova Scotia Utility and Review Board hearing.

The hearing into a proposed discount electricity rate for the mill concluded Wednesday, and the prospective buyer of the mill is urging the regulator to make a decision before the end of August.

Pacific West Commercial has said that without a decision in its favour and approval from the Canada Revenue Agency, the deal to buy the mill could collapse.