Meanwhile, in Australia

"Batteries counter the long-used arguments against renewables – that they are unpredictable and intermittent and therefore put extra burdens on a national grid which must have an expensive backup power source such as gas in place. Instead, batteries mean solar power can be stored and used when it is needed."

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2026/may/31/cheaper-energy-bills-battery-revolution-climate-crisis

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No real alternatives analysis. NB Power presented a false binary: gas plant or nothing. The letter calls out this framing directly and identifies utility-scale BESS, virtual power plants, and demand-side management as proven, deployable alternatives that deliver equivalent grid reliability without imposing a localized health burden on a rural community.

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Professional accountability. Engineers and environmental consultants are bound by codes of ethics requiring them to place the safety, health, and welfare of the public above all else. Presenting regulatory compliance as a guarantee of medical safety — while omitting startup emissions from scope entirely — is a direct breach of that ethical obligation.

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Real-world data contradicts the proponents' claims. Epidemiological studies of operational peaker plants document 11% higher asthma hospitalizations, 15% higher acute respiratory infections, and 17% higher COPD hospitalizations in surrounding communities. Stantec's theoretical modeling cannot override decades of lived public health data.

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Ignoring vulnerable populations. The health risk framework uses average physiological baselines and ignores children, the elderly, and those with asthma, COPD, and heart disease. Both Health Canada and the WHO are clear: there is no safe threshold for PM2.5 exposure.

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Private well contamination. The Tantramar region relies heavily on private well networks. No cumulative hydrogeological assessment has been done to evaluate impacts on local water tables. The proponent's plan to discharge heavy industrial wastewater into local drainage ditches represents an unassessed contamination threat to the aquifer.

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The startup loophole. The proponents tout their Selective Catalytic Reduction technology as scrubbing 90% of NOx — but SCR systems require turbine exhaust to reach 300–400°C before the catalyst activates. For the first 20–30 minutes of every single startup sequence, this plant will vent raw, unmitigated fossil fuel exhaust directly into Centre Village. The EIA doesn't address this at all.

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