by Mark Winfield. Originally published on Policy Options
The Ford government is surprisingly unwilling to explore renewable energy projects despite the wide range of options available to it.
Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservatives went into the 2018 Ontario election campaign promising, among other things, to fix the province’s “hydro mess.”
In practice, fixing the hydro “mess” turned out to be a lot more complicated than it sounded. In the end, the first Ford government did little more than double down on its Liberal predecessor’s mistakes and then added a few of its own.
Those included the cancellation of the final portion of planned renewable energy projects at a cost of at least $231 million. Ford also terminated the province’s relatively successful strategy for energy efficiency and ended the last vestiges of any meaningful planning processes around the province’s electricity and energy futures.
The Liberals’ Fair Hydro Plan has effectively remained in place, and in some ways expanded, artificially lowering hydro rates at a cost of $7 billion per year.
The refurbishments of the Bruce and Darlington nuclear plants, which were never subject to any meaningful economic or environmental review, have continued. This means embedded higher costs for decades to come.
Part of the nuclear refurbishment plan is a ramp up of the province’s existing natural gas-fired electricity plants. These will compensate for lost output from out-of-service nuclear units and meet anticipated new demand. By 2040 that strategy could mean a more than 600 per cent increase in electricity related green house gas (GHG) emissions compared to the 2017 low.
The Ford government’s 2022 platform had little new to say about any of this. Now, the situation is about to get worse.
The province’s Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) is now proposing a request for proposals for 2500MW of new electricity supplies. The request is supposed to be technologically neutral. However, the requirements for new supply seem to strongly favour gas-fired generation (although some energy storage technologies like advanced batteries may be able to contribute). Environmental performance, be it in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, emissions of smog precursors, or any other parameter, is excluded. Demand-side options are also ignored in the short term.
The Ford government’s unwillingness to consider different approaches to meeting the province’s electricity needs is particularly surprising given the range of alternatives available to it. These would allow for a significant uptick in usage as a result of the electrification of transportation, space heating and industry without the need for new conventional generating assets.
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