On his first day, he got a $200 billion assignment
Mathieu Johnson got a tough assignment when he started a new job at Hydro Quebec six years ago: turn North America's hydro giant into a major wind power producer. Johnson, now senior vice president of partnerships and development, is leading a major wind expansion at the utility. Photo by François Robert-Durand / Canada's National Observer
By Darius Snieckus
Most first days in a new job might revolve around a tour of the office, meeting new colleagues and setting up email and Zoom accounts.
When Mathieu Johnson joined Hydro-Québec as vice president of strategy in 2020, it was rather more daunting: devise a $200 billion plan powered by 10 gigawatts (GW) of wind farms for a provincial utility that, as its name suggests, had until then focused almost exclusively on hydroelectric generation.
“That is what I faced, sitting down at my desk when I started,” recalled Johnson, now senior vice president of partnerships and development at North America’s largest clean energy operator.
The scale of the plan, known as Action 2035, was a big enough challenge, promising to generate enough electricity to supply 8-10 million homes in Quebec with new wind power while making a “cornerstone” of economic reconciliation with First Nations and Inuit. Time pressure added another dimension.
Hydro-Québec had long counted on vast reserves of clean electricity stored behind the dams of its 37 GW fleet of generating stations across the province. But falling reservoir levels and fast-rising power demand were combining to radically alter the utility’s long-term outlook.
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