Wind energy at the risk of transition? The resistible success of the wind power compromise in Québec

Quebec is a good illustration of the challenges posed by the “energy transition” to contemporary societies. For if the energy transition is about to become a consensual leitmotiv, it could be quite modest. As a laboratory for the current energy transition, wind energy embodies its contradictions: even though the transition is at the heart of Quebec’s most recent energy policy, wind energy is experiencing a sudden stop. To understand this at least apparent contradiction, it is necessary to explore the political dimensions of the energy transition: influenced by the historical trajectory of the Canadian political economy, the public policy instruments structuring the Québec wind farm initially favoured a “hard path” deployment before experiencing remarkable territorial shifts. From this perspective, Quebec’s wind energy program is a political, technological and territorial compromise that, initially not very original, was able to renew itself in contact with the territories to open up to new challenges, actors and territories… before experiencing a strange victory when, in 2016, the government’s global energy policy ignored wind energy production.