A nuclear foundation for Ontario’s low-carbon future
The refrain is heard in Canada and in many parts of the world: Climate change is a worsening crisis, and we must take action to “decarbonize” our societies – to reduce the carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions we send into our atmosphere through electricity production, transportation and industrial processes.
International agreements and the energy and environmental plans of specific governments contain targets and potential pathways to build workable, low-carbon economies. Practically speaking, the experts say, the solutions must include a reasonable mix of clean-energy sources. These include renewables, such as wind and solar, nuclear power, hydro power, and carbon capture and other techniques that can lessen emissions from use of fossil fuels.
The nuclear industry is urging stakeholders to support policies that will ensure nuclear technology’s long-term position in the diversified energy mix.
“Canadian policy-makers and their international counterparts face severe environmental and energy policy challenges,” says the Canadian Nuclear Association in its Vision 2050 document. “Humanity will need the full toolkit of low-emitting energy sources and technology options.”
Nuclear power supplies a significant part of Ontario’s energy, generating around 60 per cent of the province’s electricity. In terms of all of Canada, nuclear energy has 16 per cent of the share.
Nuclear energy generates virtually no carbon emissions during its operations. The conversation about non-emitting sources also includes renewables, such as wind and solar. On some parameters, however, nuclear offers features that renewables cannot.
“Solar and wind are more costly energy sources because of their intermittency,” says Marc Brouillette, principal consultant with Strategic Policy Economics, and an Ontario-based expert on energy and environmental issues. “Solar power, for most of Canada, doesn’t provide what we need for the winter months, and that’s a problem because of the need to convert to electrical home heating to seriously tackle emissions.”
Wind power is also intermittent, he says. “There is a significant storage issue associated with the extensive, surplus wind energy that is produced when it is not needed. How do you capture and save that energy for a week or two until it is needed? To do so is very expensive.”
Nuclear plants operate 24/7, producing reliable energy that Ontario consumers need. “Nuclear energy produces electricity that for decades, will be half the cost of any reliable emission-free solution built around non-hydro renewables, for either baseload or daytime demand,” adds Brouillette.
“I think we are getting close to a tipping point among people who believe that we should support wind and solar and not nuclear power,” says Steve Aplin of emissionTrak, a data strategy consultancy.
Aplin points to data coming out of Germany, which has invested heavily in wind and solar energy.
“The idea that we can decarbonize relying only on wind and solar is being proven wrong every day by Germany. Because they are phasing out nuclear power and can’t get reliable, baseload power from renewables, they’ve had to increase generation from fossil fuels. Hence, their emissions are going up,” he says.
The Ontario government is supporting the continued importance of nuclear generation, including through investments to extend the life of Ontario Power Generation’s Darlington Nuclear Generation Station and the Bruce Power Nuclear Generating Station, into the middle of this century.
Several experts who closely study environmental and energy planning in Ontario raise questions about the government’s ability to reach its long-term climate change goals given its current energy investment plans.
The Environmental Commissioner of Ontario is among those who have criticized the province’s planning. Dianne Saxe calls the latest version of the Ontario Long-Term Energy Plan, released in November, “a disappointment,” stating that it “fails to address the most pressing energy question of our time: how will we transform our energy systems (electricity, natural gas, gasoline, diesel, propane and oil) to meet our ambitious future climate targets?”
Bryne Purchase is a former deputy minister of energy in Ontario, and currently an adjunct professor at Queen’s University in Kingston and Senior Fellow with the Queen’s Institute for Energy and Environmental Policy.
In his view as well, Ontario’s current policies are not adequate to achieve the GHG targets it has set. This government is not alone in terms of this problem, he says.
“Certainly in the western world, governments are going to have to consider building a lot of new power-generating capacity that produces low or no carbon if they are serious about meeting the international emission-reduction targets in the Paris Accord. And there are legitimate reasons to look at nuclear versus the alternative – some form of the combination of wind, solar, hydro and storage,” Purchase says.
To meet its low-carbon targets, he adds, Ontario would need to dramatically scale up “electrification” – using electricity to power transportation and heating, instead of the carbon-emitting fuels of gasoline and natural gas.
“Ontario claims it made its 2015 carbon-reduction targets because the government shut down coal plants. But the truth is, that was only possible because of increased nuclear output, plus a dramatic drop in the demand for electricity related to de-industrialization.
“We won’t achieve the next legislated target in 2020 and we definitely won’t make the 2030 target based on the current amounts of planned electricity generation, especially if people start adopting electric vehicles in a larger proportion than we anticipate.”
Aplin and Brouillette express similar concerns.
“Ontario’s carbon emissions are going to go up unless we change the policy we have now,” says Aplin. He points out that Ontario Power Generation’s Pickering nuclear facility will likely cease operations in 2024.
“In six years, 3,000 megawatts of baseload nuclear will come out of the system, and based on current planning, it will be replaced with natural gas. If that happens, we will immediately see a large increase of around 10 million tonnes per year in CO₂, just from electric power generation, as well as $2 billion per year in additional generation costs.”
“To reach carbon-reduction goals, we will need two to three times the electricity we have today by 2050, and if we don’t start building generating capacity now, we’re never going to meet that need,” says Brouillette.
Considering further nuclear investments is a realistic option, he says.
“Nuclear has two key things going for it in Ontario. One is that it’s low-cost electricity, and secondly, there would be opportunities to build a stronger export business through sales of low-cost electricity and nuclear components.”
Ontario made their 2015 carbonreduction targets because they shut down coal plants. But the truth is, nuclear was the reason they achieved it.” Bryne Purchase, Senior Fellow at Queen’s Institute for Energy and Environmental Policy and former Deputy Minister of Energy in Ontario