The Ford government has been warned and is very concerned about the future supply of electricity. Why is no party in Ontario leading the charge on conservation?
Hydro electricity is a very complicated issue, one must have knowledge of generation, transmission and distribution. Clearly the Ford government does not have this knowledge. If we are really and truly going to save our planet, we must get on a conservation pathway as soon as possible.
Conservation is the cheapest, fastest and cleanest way to solve our electricity and climate change problems. Conservation measures can be immediately implemented and are one-tenth the cost of building new power plants.
Why isn’t the Ford government legislating conservation measures? Legislating real conservation measures would greatly anger the for-profit companies that support Ford. Real conservation measures reduce demand, lower electricity prices, hurt profits and the electricity market.
Pushing for more nuclear power to deal with a possible shortage of supply is just going to cost everyone a fortune. Nuclear energy is again being sold as clean and the answer to fighting climate change. Nothing could be further from the truth. Mining and production of nuclear fuel is a very dirty business. History shows that nuclear plants are very costly to build, very costly to maintain and very costly to decommission. The one thing, promoters of nuclear power never mention is that the nuclear waste must be safely stored for 250,000 years, a very costly fact. The other fact they never mention is that much of the electricity produced by nuclear plants is lost through heat and line loss. Who will pay for the cost of a possible nuclear accident?
The Harris government turned every hydro utility in the province from a non-profit commission into a for-profit corporation and introduced an Enron designed electricity market. This sent our rates through the roof. It’s even more apparent with every passing year that this decision was an epic mistake. Electricity is very much like water, a necessity of life and should never have been turned into a for-profit commodity.
The Harris government spent more than $1 billion to set up the Enron designed market and spent more than $1.5 billion on the price cap to keep this failed experiment going. Ford has also been clinging to this failure. Last February, the Financial Accountability Office showed Ford had been spending $6.9 billion a year on rate subsidies and plans to spend another $118 billion in rate subsidies in the future. Why not spend the $6.9 billion a year on conservation measures and green power, solar and wind farms, that would eliminate the need for polluting gas generators?
The Green Energy Act was a complete failure because it was nothing more than a license for private green energy companies to print money. Ford repeatedly says he is, “open for business.” He should look to the forward-looking Conservative government of James P. Whitney who brought in public power at-cost that made Ontario the place to do business.
Ford should form the Ontario Green Public Power Authority OGPPA with a mandate of conservation and green power at-cost. That with the bonus of local employment would make it very easy for the public to buy in and participate.
We imported our electricity problems from California in the form of deregulation and the ENRON electricity market. Maybe we should import some of their solutions. Institute the 20/20 plan. Cut your demand by 20 per cent, we will cut your hydro bill by another 20 per cent (40 per cent savings). Give out fluorescent light bulbs and real rebates on energy efficient refrigerators. These are just a few of the measures that are available.
It is long past time that the electricity market be scrapped and get on the pathway of conservation and green power. The lives of our children and descendants depend on it.
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