Think-tank ranks Ontario No. 3 in Canada on reduction of greenhouse gas emissions
More expensive hydro a price that had to be paid, Wynne tells legislature
Ontario’s renovation of its electricity system puts us near the head of Canada’s provinces in dealing with climate change, a new report from the green-minded Pembina Institute says.
It’s a little lifeline — a life-string, a strand of life-thread — for a government that’s getting blasted day in and day out for the increase in electricity prices it’s presided over in the past decade.
Ontarians are furious over the price of power, Progressive Conservative Leader Patrick Brown put to Premier Kathleen Wynne in the legislature on Thursday. Why do you suppose that is?
“Maybe it’s because, according to the auditor general, between 2006 and 2014, the people of Ontario have been overcharged $37 billion for electricity and global adjustment fees,” he said. “Maybe it’s because this government has overpaid $9.2 billion for renewable contracts, while the Liberal party took $1.3 million in donations from 30 companies. There are a lot of reasons why the people of Ontario would be angry, but I want to ask the premier, why do you think the people of Ontario are so angry at your energy policy?”
We did things we had to do, Wynne responded.
“We now have an electricity grid that is 90-per-cent renewable,” she said. “The shutting down of the coal-fired plants in this province and the investment in a renewable industry was the single largest initiative in terms of reduction of greenhouse-gas emissions in North America. We’re proud of that. We’ve done away with smog days and reduced that pollution.”
The Pembina report backs her up.
Of course, most of Ontario’s power comes from nuclear reactors, which is not what most people think of when we hear about renewable energy. There’s a large but finite supply of uranium to run them and they produce poisonous nuclear waste that we still just submerge in pools near the reactors for years and then tuck into warehouses because we don’t know what else to do with it yet. But nuclear power doesn’t burn fossil fuels and throw exhaust up into the atmosphere, so if that’s what you mean by “renewable,” nuclear reactors count.
This has made a difference. According to the Pembina Institute report, which relies on publicly available data, Ontario is now third-best among the provinces in greenhouse-gas emissions per person, at about 12.4 tonnes a year. Hydro-powered Quebec is the best, at 10.1 tonnes, and wee Prince Edward Island is just ahead of Ontario at 12.3 tonnes.
Most of the provinces have numbers in the high teens, and then there’s a giant gap before Alberta and Saskatchewan stagger in at 66 and 67 tonnes per person.
When it comes to how much economic bang we get for our emissions, Ontario is second, again just behind Quebec. Here, the gaps separating the provinces are bigger, with the bestperforming provinces, like ours, getting twice as much economic production out of their emissions as those in the middle, and four times as much as those at the back (Alberta and Saskatchewan again).
Coal and natural gas are big players in both Alberta’s and Saskatchewan’s power systems. Yes, most of those provinces’ emissions come from their oil and gas production. But more than 80 per cent of Alberta’s electricity comes from burning stuff. Almost as much of Saskatchewan’s does.
Both Alberta and Saskatchewan have active plans to move to renewable energy. Alberta’s planning to phase out coal entirely. Ontario’s already done it. Sloppily, haphazardly, expensively. But Ontario’s done it.
Nice as the Pembina Institute report is to Ontario, it urges more.
Freight transportation accounts for 10 per cent of Ontario’s greenhouse-gas emissions, the report says. The province has promised fuel standards for trucks that do much of the moving of stuff around the province, but the expectation is that trucks on Highway 401 will stay the dominant means of hauling freight here indefinitely.
“Given that emissions from freight are significant, and the challenge this presents to Ontario’s overall climate ambitions, the province should release a stand-alone goods movement strategy to map out a climatefriendly future for the sector,” the Pembina report says.
The provincial Transport Ministry got as far as a consultation paper on such a strategy in 2012. It appears to have gone splat, possibly because it landed a few seconds before Dalton McGuinty announced he’d be quitting. Some elements of one are in Ontario’s climate-change plan, including promoting shortline railways to connect hubs like ports and major rail yards with individual warehouses and factories. But a major move away from trucking would mean a big investment and probably increased prices for manufacturers and the goods they produce to help pay for it.
This might sound familiar — it’s an echo of the renovation the government’s carried out to the electricity system. Big changes to a basic system with a ton of money at stake. It’ll be a brave government that decides to take on another such challenge.