New Brunswick and Maine aren’t just planning on selling electricity. That’s old. Rather, alongside the 1,200 to 1,500 megawatts of electricity would move a steady stream of renewable power, including wind, tidal and natural gas. Part of the plan calls for the construction of a natural-gas-fired co-generation plant to work in tandem with a New Brunswick liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant and which would supply energy during times when wind power wasn’t available. Fifteen-hundred megawatts sounds like a lot of energy, but ISO New England, the regional energy operator, has estimated the North-eastern region of the U.S. may require as much as 5,000 megawatts of electricity over the next decade.

The energy would originate from a variety of sources, many of them not yet built. Future wind power projects would supply some of the wattage, while further electricity would originate with the co-generation plant – a system that uses the same energy twice to generate heat and power (for example, by burning natural gas or coal, the plant can power a turbine but also heat the water to steam, using it to turn a turbine again to generate even more electricity). The electricity would flow over the transmission lines, while future stages would add pipelines to carry products such as natural gas.

One of the key pieces of the infrastructure would connect to the Irving-Repsol LNG terminal in Saint John (also known as Canaport), expected to begin operations in 2010. The Canaport LNG terminal – where liquid natural gas is converted back into a gaseous state after having been previously cooled and liquefied to shrink its volume to one-600th its size for transport in ships – would be the source of the natural gas to fire the co-generation plant.

Premier Graham told reporters that “through these challenging economic times, New Brunswick remains focused on a vision of economic self-sufficiency. The proposed energy corridor will help accelerate the development and deployment of clean, renewable and greenhouse-gas-free electricity resources in both New Brunswick and Maine, as well as provide leadership in helping address and support the overall North American security agenda.”

Irving Oil announced its intention to become the first private-sector partner. In an interview, Daniel Goodwin, a spokesman with Irving, echoed Graham and said the project is intended to deliver clean, secure and reliable energy. Both Graham and Baldacci stressed the need for the region to achieve “energy independence,” something sorely needed in an area battered with a severe downturn in the forestry pulp industry.

It all sounds fantastic, but will the corridor ever get built? That’s the problem. As wonderful as all these proposals are, that’s all they are at the moment – proposals. While no one is saying what the exact price tag of all this pie-inthe- sky is, energy analysts peg it in the billions. And while Graham and Baldacci talked a lot about securing energy independence and so on, the fact is they only committed to exploring the idea and its “great potential.” For its part, Irving Oil said it would start conducting commercial and technical feasibility studies on the first phase of development. Certainly, the announcement was one way for the province and state to test the waters for the project and maybe build a bit of excitement in slow economic times.

Goodwin conceded it’s not the best time to finance large-scale projects. “These are clearly challenging times and by no means has any decision been taken to proceed with this project. The availability of capital is obviously a real challenge we would have to work through,” he said.

John Kerry, director of the Maine state Office of Energy Independence and Security, said this summer the state will start to assess the framework for a public private partnership. Kerry said according to the state’s policies, any transmission line that crosses Maine should bring a tangible return to its citizens and rate-payers. That said, Kerry noted the state is eager to reduce its dependence on foreign petroleum products and other fossil fuels in favour of developing renewable resources such as wind and biomass materials. “Our hope is we will create a public policy that will encourage the transmission of affordable and clean power from our Canadian neighbour and develop a long-term sustainable relationship with our neighbours to the south, where there is a great demand for energy.”

When Google decided to expand into China, the government there told the Internet search engine company it would either have to self-manage the information people were able to access, or it would manage it for them. This prickly problem of open access and freedom to information was just one of the business cases a team of five students from Halifax’s Nova Scotia Community College (NSCC) Waterfront campus faced this past March as they competed head-to-head in international competition.

The NSCC team ultimately placed third against 18 other teams from15 countries in the international business case competition held in Doha, Qatar. What was really remarkable is that the school put together its team a mere two weeks before the contest.

“We had no preparation, almost nothing to speak of,” recalls team coach Malcolm Burtt, a faculty member of the NSCC’s School of Business. “Going into it, the odds were stacked way against us. We didn’t think we had a hope, but we were there to experience and give our students the opportunity to present on the global stage and to test our mettle as a college.”

NSCC’s third place finish under such tight timelines comes as no surprise. Atlantic Canada has a strong reputation for its feisty performances and winning ways in such competitions.International case competitions give students a chance to put into practice the business and marketing theories they’ve learned in the classroom. The competitions call for students to think on their feet and require them to solve complex organizational problems in a short time span.

Typical issues students might face are whether a company should go global, or how it should market a particular product. Generally, they are presented with a problem concerning a firm that needs strategic advice in a number of different areas. The cases themselves tend to be studies generated from such places as Harvard. However, some competitions do feature “live” case studies, complete with involvement from executives.

The longest-running international case competition in Canada is the John Molson MBA competition first held in 1982, at Montreal’s Concordia University. It is now known as the “oldest and largest case competition in the world,” annually attracting 36 teams from four continents. The “most winning team” in the history of the competition comes from Atlantic Canada.

Over a 28-year period, Memorial University in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador has won or placed in the top three in the competition 10 times. In 1991, they had the only all-female team to ever win the competition. Peggy Coady is the current team’s coach as well as a former winner in the competitions herself. The director of Graduate Programs (Business) at Memorial says every student who has ever participated in a case competition calls it the best part of his or her MBA.

“It’s because it’s real life. It’s think on your feet,” she says. “It’s applying what you learned in class. I think your whole life after, you realize what you can do in under three hours is pretty amazing.”

Competition is “intense,” according to Coady. A typical competition pits teams of four to five students from different universities against each other. They are given the case to analyze and often placed in a room with no Internet access, where they have two to five hours to read the case and prepare a presentation. Then they present to a panel of judges, often made up of company representatives and industry experts. The students are given 15 to 20 minutes to state their case and then undergo a rigorous question period.

Preparing for competition is equally demanding. Memorial, for example, is one of a number of universities which actually offers a course in case competition participation. When students start gearing up for competition, they will spend weekends simulating the event. They are often given 30-page case studies to read and three hours to analyze the case and come up with a 25-minute presentation.

Winning strategies include good time management skills, the ability to quickly synthesize and analyze information, and creativity. “These cases, there’s often a problem and you have to be able to come up with a creative solution,” Coady notes.

For their part, the judges score each team by its demonstrated understanding of the problem, the quality of its analysis and the options they present to the company. They also judge how those recommendations might be put into practice.