Liberals have bungled Ontario energy policy
Abillion dollars is the amount the Ontario Society of Professional Engineers says the Wynne government wasted last year dumping clean energy down the drain. OSPE past president Paul Acchione explained the culprit is “curtailment … an industry term that means the power was not needed in Ontario, and could not be exported, so it was dumped.”
“It’s when we tell our dams to let the water spill over top, our nuclear generators to release their steam, and our wind turbines not to turn, even when it’s windy,” Acchione said. “These numbers show that Ontario’s cleanest source of power is literally going down the drain because we’re producing too much … it’s an unnecessary waste of beautiful, clean energy, and it’s driving up the cost of electricity.”
This is distinct from the money Ontario loses when it sells electricity at a loss to Quebec and the U.S. because we have an energy surplus. “Taken together,” Acchione said, “total exports represent nearly enough electricity to power every home in Ontario for an entire year.”
The situation is so bad — according to a 2015 report by Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk Ontario pays twice the U.S. average for wind power and 3.5 times for solar power — that the basic investing theory of “buy low, sell high” has been turned on its head.
Here, our Liberal government buys high and sells low, which we pay for through our hydro bills. OSPE says the root problem is the politicization of energy policy.
“It is imperative that we de-politicize what should be technical judgments,” president Jonathan Hack said.
But even when the Liberal government gets good advice from its experts, it ignores it. Lysyk in 2015 reported Ontario paid $9.2 billion extra for 20-year contracts with wind- and solar-power developers because it sweetened the deals, despite the fact its own experts said its existing procurement program was doing the job.
Even worse, Ontario didn’t need wind and solar power to replace coal-fired electricity, which the Liberals actually did with nuclear power and natural gas.
The ultimate absurdity is that the Liberals continue to sign new wind and solar contracts, despite the province’s energy surplus, caused in part by the loss of manufacturing jobs due to skyrocketing electricity prices.
If you think the Liberals don’t know what they’re doing — other than kicking the crisis down the road by subsidizing electricity prices to the tune of $24 billion, which could eventually cost Ontarians up to $93 billion, according to Ontario Financial Accountability Officer Stephen LeClair — you’re right.