The federal government is continuing to show interest in Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston’s ambitious offshore wind energy plan, but Ottawa will not declare it a project of national interest until partners from the private sector sign on.

Federal Energy and Natural Resources Minister Tim Hodgson said the Major Projects Office needs to see that industry is ready.

“And that’s when their decision would be to move it from a strategy to an individual project,” Hodgson said Thursday.

Hodgson was taking media questions at an announcement about a loan from the Canada Infrastructure Bank for an onshore wind project in Nova Scotia. 

Houston wants to see a massive buildout of offshore wind projects in the coming years and a transmission line to enable export. He’s dubbed the project Wind West and his government has estimated it would cost $40 billion for 60-gigawatts of turbines and $20 billion for transmission cables.

The premier has said he wants Ottawa to provide tax credits, low-interest financing and direct investment.

Prime Minister Mark Carney indicated last fall that Wind West could make his major projects list, but said it needed more work before it would be approved.

Ottawa’s position on backing Wind West underscores a sequencing dilemma for Houston’s project, with different potential partners all waiting for each other to commit. 

The Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Energy Regulator started a process last year to pre-qualify potential developers and is expected to open a call for bids this year. They won’t say how many, if any, companies have pre-qualified.

French firm Q Energy has acknowledged that it applied and company officials visited the province last month to talk about their aspirations to build in Nova Scotia waters. But CEO Junu Lee said he would want to see transmission infrastructure in the works before making major investments in a wind farm.

Also marked at Thursday’s event was a contribution from Hodgson’s department to a feasibility study for Wind West. Natural Resources Canada is giving nearly $5 million to Net Zero Atlantic to conduct the work. The province is also putting in money and in-kind contributions valued at $700,000.

Houston said getting funding for the study marks “a really big moment.”

“The main constraint on [Wind West] is not the wind, the wind is there and it blows a lot. The constraint would be where is the power going to go and how are we going to move it, so that’s what this is about today,” he said.

Earlier this week, Houston tabled a bill in the legislature that lays the groundwork for how the province would make revenue from offshore wind projects.

The bill proposes a four per cent royalty on gross revenue, but only after a decade of operation. For the first ten years operators would pay a smaller fee based on their turbines’ capacity. Houston said he did not want to scare developers away with high fees.

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