When you think nothing could get worse for Ontario consumers of electricity, the news that we are literally paying to get rid of our excessive electricity keeps coming up because “renewable energy” cannot be shut down according to the Green Energy Act where renewable’s take priority over any other type of electrical generation.
Headlines from the U.S. states that Obama’s Green dreams are costing taxpayers 2.6 billion $$$ in bankruptcies of renewable devlopers but Ontario alone can probably not only match that figure and could surpass it in the next year to come.
We’ve already got a good start for beating the whole U.S.A. for being the biggest LOSER in Green Energy with the 1.3 billion $$$ gas plant move not to mention the billions of extra charges to Hydro customers for McGuinty’s “green dreams”.
So when you hear McGuinty saying he wants Ontario to be the North American LEADER in renewable energy, he wasn’t kidding. It’s just that being the leader of the “LOSERS” wasn’t at the end of his sentence!
No wonder he’s hiding from questions inside Queen’s Park. What’s he going to say when questioned about “Project Vapour”?……………..“oh yeah, I just had a massive meal of beans and it backfired!”
Scott Stinson: McGuinty Liberals’ dream of renewable energy has not come to pass
Scott Stinson
Sunday, Nov. 4, 2012
Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty speaks to the media after making an announcement to resign from the leadership of the Ontario provincial Liberal party in October. Adding renewable-energy capacity has proven difficult. Mark Blinch / ReutersThe absolute best face that the Ontario Liberals can put on the decisions to cancel gas-fired power plants in Oakville and Mississauga, at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars to taxpayers, is that the government was “responding to local concerns.”
That is indeed one way to put it. One man’s “crass political opportunism” can be someone else’s “listening to residents.”
The irony, though, is that the gas-plant affair takes place against the backdrop of an energy-planning strategy, and the Liberals’ signature Green Energy Act, which was specifically designed to override local concerns about generation facilities. It also put far too much reliance on the feasibility of renewable energy projects, completely disregarded the impact on consumers, and imagined a world in which coal-fired plants, long a staple of Ontario’s energy system, could be replaced by sunshine and the breeze.
That scenario has simply not come to pass. And while outrage over the Green Energy Act has long been felt in rural Ontario, where local concerns over new projects have been largely ignored, the greater Toronto gas-plant cancellations have produced a political fallout felt right in the Liberal heartland. It is Dalton McGuinty’s green energy chickens coming home to roost.
The grand idea of the Green Energy Act was that it would allow the province to transition from the pollution of coal-burning plants by adding exponential amounts of wind and solar energy while at the same time encouraging conservation through a host of initiatives.
But adding renewable-energy capacity has proven difficult. Projects still have to be connected to the grid, which is a particular concern when the proposal is for a facility in a remote location, and the approval process has been slow.
Of greater concern is the problem of when the wind blows and the sun shines. On Oct. 28, for example, one of the windiest days of the year, Ontario’s wind energy farms were humming along in the early evening and producing more than 1,450 megawatts — about 85% of wind capacity. This is highly unusual; in the high-demand summer months, wind routinely produces at less than 10% of capacity. But here was a rare day when the wind facilities were doing what they were intended to do — and the province was dumping the electricity on the market at a tiny fraction of what it was paying for it. In fact, at various points of the day, according to data published by Ontario’s Independent Electricity System Operator, the province was exporting to neighbouring jurisdictions almost the exact same amount it was generating from wind farms. At 3 p.m., it was generating 1,432 megawatts of wind — at the mandated rate of ¢13.5 per kw/h — and exporting 1,507 MW at less than ¢3 per kw/h. At 4 p.m., it was producing 1,450 MW from wind and exporting 1,425 MW, at the same 80% discount. You get the idea: Renewables producing excess energy at the time it is least needed.
Unfortunately for the Liberals, the converse is also often true, underscoring why wind and solar are not good replacements for coal. Those plants can be fired up and turned off as needed; renewables can’t. This is why Ontario determined several years ago that natural-gas-fired plants were needed in southern Ontario — like coal plants, they have the flexibility to meet demand as needed.
When the residents of Oakville and Mississauga raised a fuss, the Liberals were in a position to back off
The Big Green Lie 