That's the thing about SK... we do actually have a pretty significant hydro investment. Problem is that the untapped hydro resources are quite remote. We can't really extract a whole lot more energy out of the South Saskatchewan River without causing upstream and downstream problems.

My own research and modelling basically showed... if we're going to remain energy independent (i.e. the ability for SaskPower to power the entire province without net imports), including riding out the worst scenario (cold, dark, and calm in the winter) for a week while moving towards minimum carbon, it's going to pretty much need to be a strong mix of nuclear, solar, wind, and natural gas peakers. We keep the existing hydro capacity because it's great, but there isn't much more to be had.

Where it gets really gnarly is looking at also eliminating SaskEnergy and transitioning residential and commercial heating and cooling to electric (e.g. heat pumps) is going to require at least 3x the nuclear buildout that we've got planned PLUS significant energy retrofits to every house. Trying to move to electric-only HVAC without energy retrotifts adds like another 33% nuclear capacity requirements (+ additional solar and wind of course) and it starts to get financially infeasible.