Shocking truths of green energy

The shuttering of a wind-turbine-blade factory in Tillsonburg, with the loss of 340 jobs, is the latest proof Ontario’s green energy dream has become a grim energy nightmare.

When the provincial Liberals unveiled their alternative energy plan in 2009, they boasted it would do more than simply generate power.

It would fight climate change by reducing our dependency on carbon fuels.

And it would create a new industrial sector to replace what was being lost in the shrinking auto industry.

But the closure of the Siemens Canada plant, announced this week, exposes an arrogant, fumbling government that consistently overpromises and under-delivers on the energy file.

The factory opened just six years ago, one of four facilities set up to provide parts for wind and solar energy farms after the Liberals made a controversial, multibillion deal with Korean industrial giant Samsung.

Back then, the Liberals reckoned they could entice private businesses to invest in wind and solar projects by dangling a gigantic subsidy carrot before their eyes.

That strategy worked, but in ways the Liberals didn’t expect and almost certainly didn’t want.

Hungry for subsidies, investors and businesses rushed into the market.

To be sure, more solar- and wind-generated electricity came on line.

But it resulted in the generation of far more electricity than Ontario needs. Much of that surplus is sold to Americans at a cut-rate price.

In June, the Ontario Society of Professional Engineers said the province’s overproduction of energy from clean sources, including wind, cost $1 billion in 2016 alone.

Meanwhile — surprise, surprise — the lavish green energy subsidies helped drive up electricity rates by 71 per cent for Ontarians between 2008 and 2016. In the rest of Canada, rates rose by an average of 34 per cent.

Of course, to assuage consumers’ pain in the lead-up to next year’s provincial election, the Liberals are cutting electricity bills by 25 per cent.

But borrowing money to offer that relief now will cost Ontarians an additional $21 billion down the road.

The Liberals eventually woke up to the folly of their Green Energy Act.

They renegotiated the Samsung deal in 2013. Last year they began scaling back renewable energy projects in an effort to save the province and consumers billions.

No wonder. The market for wind and solar energy in Ontario is saturated.

Yet the prospects for exporting what’s made in Ontario to other parts of Canada or abroad are dismal.

Now, Siemens’ Tillsonburg plant is unviable. Now, the mayor of Windsor fears a factory that makes wind-turbine towers in his city may close, too.

In 25 years, these setbacks might be seen as a bump in the road on the necessary drive to an environmentally-sustainable economy.

Today, it looks more like a car crash in which Ontario Liberal naivety hit economic reality.

The Liberals still think they can command the marketplace to do their bidding.

The 340 workers in Tillsonburg who are now, or soon will be, unemployed know that’s as effective as ordering the sun to shine or the wind to blow.