I'm happy to talk about that.
The opportunity with offshore wind on a national scale probably mirrors the opportunities we've seen with onshore wind already in Nova Scotia. That means a couple of things. It means a shift to a greater domestic supply of energy, from an energy security lens. It means a shift to a lot more activity in the construction sector locally. That would apply even more so at a greater scale for offshore wind. It means there's a significant decarbonization opportunity that comes with wind. All of those are key elements of that shift in the portfolio.
When we think about offshore wind and the potential opportunity there, it really is important to talk about it on a national scale. Nova Scotia, from an electricity perspective, is a small market, and even the Maritimes is a small market. Our peak demand in Nova Scotia is about two and a half gigawatts. For the Maritimes, it's about six and a half gigawatts, and for Quebec, it's about 45 gigawatts. You can see from that sense of scale the difference.
As we understand it today, the smallest commercially viable size for an offshore wind project is about one gigawatt, or more than Nova Scotia could absorb on its own. The opportunity for economic impacts by moving to a domestic, secure supply of energy is in construction jobs, not just for the wind facility itself, but for the ports that are used to supply the infrastructure there and for the transmission infrastructure that would connect offshore supply to other jurisdictions, whether that's through New Brunswick, through Quebec, perhaps as far as Ontario or through other jurisdictions.
Then there are the ongoing operations and maintenance activities. All of those come without a fuel cost that's tied to global markets. They also come without the greenhouse gas emissions that sometimes come from other emitting sources of energy.
Those would be some of the advantages that we would see to that source of supply.