[jessriedel]

> This isn't a subsidy, it's hydro power; which is limited, but cheap to produce.

The government is buying electricity from the region next door to make up for shortfalls, so I am confident they could sell their cheap electricity the other direction as well when they have an excess. Not selling that electricity at market prices and instead selling it at below market rates to companies because you think they benefit your community is a subsidy.

Heck, even if you couldn't sell the electricity to neighboring regions, you should still sell it at market rates and then distribute the resulting money in a more targeted way.

> If the companies got a cash subsidy instead, they would probably pocket the cash without doing as much as they promised to do to get it.

You don't have to hand them cash for nothing. You could give it as payroll tax breaks or a million other methods that are a lot more targeted than per-KW-hr. It's lunacy to think that power usage is even roughly proportional to the number of people employed pre-bitcoin. Businesses very tremendously in their power-usage-to-employee ratio.