Unifor, in a release carried by CNW on Nov. 2, 2026, said an April decision by New Brunswick's Energy and Utilities Board, allowing NB Power to sell surplus power outside the province at market prices, cut the lower-cost interruptible supply available to large industrial employers and pushed its price up. The union is asking for the change to be suspended pending review by the board.
For a large plant, electricity is not a utility bill in the household sense. It is a direct input cost that sits inside every unit produced, and interruptible supply has traditionally been part of how heavy users plan production around power they can afford to have curtailed. Shrink that supply and raise its price, and the cost lands on the production schedule itself.
Power pricing is not a utility story for a plant. It is a margin story.
That makes industrial electricity pricing an operational intelligence input, not just an energy file. Plants need their power use tied to output, shift by shift, so a pricing change can be translated into which lines, hours and products absorb it. That visibility is the starting point of the operational intelligence work KSPACE TECHNOLOGIES does with manufacturers.
With a review now being sought, New Brunswick employers face two scenarios at once: plan under the current ruling, and be ready if the board suspends or revises it.
If you run a large New Brunswick operation, model both outcomes now, and get your energy use per unit of output measured before the review lands. Decisions made on a plant-wide average will be wrong in both scenarios.