Well, I have two pieces to answer that.
With respect to the link between the lower Churchill and the coastal communities of Labrador with respect to diesel, we've done extensive studies in terms of what it would cost to run transmission lines up the north and south coasts of Labrador. And we have compared that with what it costs to operate diesel generation. There's such a huge disparity in cost with respect to this that it's not something, essentially, that is feasible for us from a cost perspective. We can't defend that. That being said, it doesn't mean we're not looking at that kind of thing, not only for the remote communities in Labrador but also for the island portion of the province.
Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro has been successful recently in putting together a consortium of two universities, Memorial University and University of New Brunswick, with Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro in the lead, and we've brought in some private partners. We're doing a research and development project, a pilot project we started several years ago, in a remote community called Ramea. It was and still is being driven by diesel, similar to some of the communities on the coast of Labrador.
Several years ago we brought in wind and hired someone to come in and put up a pilot project to marry wind with diesel. Naturally, when the wind blows, you are providing cleaner power; and when the wind isn't blowing, diesel kicks in. We've perfected the technology to make that happen in a manner that gives the customer reasonable reliability.
In this most recent study, we've introduced a new piece, and that is hydrogen storage. This is a research project we're leading in which we've brought hydrogen into the mix. What we want to do now is that when the wind is blowing, even if we need diesel for voltage support, we want to take the excess power that's being generated by the wind, which we can't control, and store it in hydrogen. It's a five-year project, and we're hoping to commercialize that process. We're sinking a lot of time, effort, and money into it. Not only are we hoping it will benefit our own remote communities, from a greening perspective and potentially from a reliability perspective, but if we get this right, we think we may be able to patent something we can market to the rest of the world--in places such as Australia and Greenland and other areas where they have a situation similar to what we have.