Coming in 2023: A Painful Return to Energy Supply Reality - "My 2021 year-end column entitled “Fossil Fuel Follies” focused on the bizarre impacts of the great march by “net-zero” green energy zealots to replace the approximately 84 percent of global energy supplied by crude oil, natural gas and coal with wind turbines and solar panels. Some were so ridiculous as to be humorous, but there’s nothing funny about the enormous damage inflicted by pursuit of this technically impossible goal that became evident in 2022. Exhibit #1 last year was Germany. That country’s ill-conceived policy of decommissioning its zero-emission nuclear plants – the last of which were to close in 2022 and 2023 – combined with its aversion to developing domestic natural gas resources (featuring a ban on hydraulic fracturing or “fracking”) and its failing attempt to power a modern industrial economy mainly with unreliable wind and solar power left Germany with no alternative but to import Russian natural gas... Years of net-zero-inspired policies discouraging capital investment in traditional energy sources had reduced crude oil supply replacement in Western countries, leaving markets dependent on the so-called OPEC plus coalition... The Ukraine crisis revealed just how narrow the global oil supply margin had become. Then came the shocking realization that most of that small margin was in Putin’s hands. Nearly all Western countries were already producing at full capacity. The main exception was Canada, a country with the world’s third-largest oil reserves and the resource potential to greatly increase production beyond its rate of approximately 4 million barrels per day. Urgent calls went out for help to loosen Putin’s grip on oil supply. But it was impossible for Canada to contribute because Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had presided over a seven-year anti-oil-industry pogrom, thwarting multiple export pipelines that could have helped supply countries now dependent on Putin’s blood oil. Trudeau’s shameful answer to those calls for help revealed our country to be an impotent imposter on the global stage... Trudeau’s answer was triply ludicrous. First, Germany (and other European countries) specifically needed additional fossil fuel supplies – not imaginary “renewable” energy. Second, they needed help right now, while Trudeau was musing about dreamed-of projects that might be built in 10 or 20 years. Lastly, even if Canada were to succeed beyond Trudeau’s wildest dreams in adding vast amounts of green power, this could never help Europe: electricity from wind turbines in Alberta or solar panels in B.C.’s sunny Okanagan simply can’t be sent across the Atlantic Ocean. In any event, even as the windmills of the former substitute drama teacher’s mind were spinning fantasies about hydrogen plants in Newfoundland, world oil prices soon skyrocketed to a staggering US$120 per barrel. Prices have since fallen, but they are still vulnerable to manipulation by OPEC+ (the cartel’s most recent production cut was announced in October) and the International Energy Agency projects world crude oil demand will increase by 1 million barrels per day annually... Twenty twenty-two will go down in history as the year when the net-zero fantasy hit hard and very costly reality. Among many examples: Germany has spent over 264 billion Euros – 7.4 percent of its GDP – just on subsidizing energy prices for hard-hit consumers and institutions. And Germany is hardly alone; as the accompanying chart shows, virtually every country in Europe has been doing the same on a somewhat less ruinous scale. How ironic that the net-zero fantasy has empowered a despicable despot named Vladimir Putin. But it has also fuelled the aggressions of another ruthless dictator. Chinese President Xi Jinping has been lauded by the net-zero ideologues for his promises to reduce emissions. In reality, he has authorized the building of over 200 carbon-spewing coal-fired power plants which supply cheap power to his factories. China is now responsible for 27 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions (compared to 11 percent for the U.S. and 6.4 percent for Europe) and continues to increase its use of fossil fuels without restraint. The accompanying chart illustrates the trend of electricity generation from coal in key countries including China. Xi’s promises, in other words, are pure propaganda crafted to give climate-obsessed Western elites the talking points they crave. Equally destructive, North American and European politicians worshipping at the net-zero altar have implemented policies mandating costly and unreliable wind and solar power generation, combined with escalating carbon taxes. This regrettable combination makes it impossible for many of the West’s factories to compete, leaving consumers no choice but to buy Chinese goods. China uses those enormous revenues to, among other things, produce weapons intended for global military dominance and to manufacture the very solar panels and wind turbines that Canada’s government insists we install. Who could ever have imagined that the legacy of the West’s net-zero policies would leave two dictators in control of global energy security and the supply of manufactured goods? As we look ahead, the West’s focus must be aimed at avoiding debilitating fossil fuel shortages. That doesn’t mean the net-zero crowd will toss in the towel. They will continue to advocate starving the energy-producing sector of the funds needed to replace, let alone grow oil and natural gas production. But when the cost of driving your car and heating your home starts taking an oversized portion of disposable income, and when oil-endowed despots continue their predatory behaviour, those net-zero voices should increasingly meet deaf ears. Canada simply must turn off the net-zero path or we will eventually experience a similar crisis as Europe – although ours will be entirely self-inflicted."
The cope is that they just need to have even more "renewables", of course. And when that doesn't happen it will be the fault of "greedy companies" since "everyone" "knows" that renewable energy is "cheap" and becoming "cheaper"
Dutch Close Europe’s Biggest Gas Field Despite Energy Crisis - Bloomberg - "Beneath the windmill-dotted marshlands of the Netherlands lies Europe’s largest natural gas reserve. The sprawling Groningen field has enough untapped capacity to replace, as soon as this winter, much of the fuel Germany once imported from Russia. Instead the field is in the process of shutting down, and the Netherlands is rebuffing calls to pump more, even as Europe braces for perhaps its toughest winter since World War II. The reason: Drilling has led to repeated earthquakes, and Dutch officials are loath to risk a backlash from residents by breaking promises... Dutch officials have said that if Germany needs more energy, a safer option would be to further prolong the life of its nuclear plants... Groningen recorded its first small tremors in 1986. Since then, there have been hundreds more. Although most are undetectable except by instruments, a magnitude 3.6 earthquake hit the province in 2012, resulting in thousands of property damage claims. Starting in 2014, the Dutch government has placed ever-stricter limits on production from the field, and the output dropped from 54 billion cubic meters in 2013 to an expected 4.5 billion cubic meters this year... Rather than boosting gas output, the Netherlands has instead removed limits on coal-fired power plants to help ensure energy security, joining other EU members in turning to the heavily polluting fuel"
Government to Restart Coal Plant After Power Company Tsars' Warning - "After a warning from the head of three power companies, France’s government has announced that it will restart a coal-fired plant this winter... The announcement that the Saint-Avold will be brought back online comes shortly after the heads of three major energy companies in France warned that the general public must “immediately” cut back on energy use to better enable officials to better handle energy insecurity... Environmentally obsessed Germany has also announced that it will be revving up its own coal-burning capabilities in order to better deal with the ongoing energy crisis, with the country’s economic and climate Tsar, Robert Habeck, saying that the measures are necessary to conserve much-needed gas... The official however has remained adamant that Germany’s nuclear power plants — the last three of which are due to be shut down by the end of the year — will not be used to buffer energy supply problems, despite calls from all sides for Germany to keep them online. So bad is the situation that even officials within the climate-crazy EU are now calling on Germany to keep using the plants. “There are still three nuclear power plants operating in Germany, this corresponds to 25% of their electricity consumption,” Internal Market tsar Thierry Breton is reported as saying. “Rather than deciding to cut them at the end of the year as provided for in the coalition agreements, we can perhaps say to ourselves that we will continue them for one or two years in order to solve this problem”"
Conservatives' Understanding Of Climate Science Is More In Line With Climate Scientists Than Liberals' - "conservatives - well, conservative for Oregon(2) - are more skeptical of climate change but when unpacked their views on the science are right in line with...climate scientists. This is counter-intuitive, right? Not really. The more you know, the more likely you are to see the bigger picture - and flaws.(3) The more you instead believe, the more likely you are to abdicate your thinking to experts. You will take scientists on faith like religious people do priests. One of the authors grew up in a culture that didn't believe in evolution or climate change, so they are sympathetic to the idea that there are often values issues involved... More liberals see climate science and climate change as, in the words of the authors, "certain and simple." It is not complex ("bro, do you even science?"), models of today will never need to be reconsidered in the future, and they trust climate scientists absolutely. This is a sharp turn from other areas, where liberals have beatified "lived experience" to such an extent that often no data matters and people can claim expertise despite having none. The authors then used multivariate regression to try and anticipate what factors 'predicted engagement preferences' - what might and might not work to get more people to accept science, instead of treating science as something culturally subjective. Farmers, for example, can be asked if they have seen consistent changes in weather patterns since they were kids. That is all anecdotal, of course, but the goal is not to get people to call anecdotes science(4), it is to get them to get out of the political bubble and to look at science through a different lens than they get from Fox News or CNN. So what won't work? If your goal is outreach rather than ridicule, assuming people are stupid is always a spectacular failure. Assuming they are just uninformed is also hit and miss. That is called deficit thinking and is the idea that you have a lack of knowledge and some of my data will fix it. Women laugh (or not) about experiencing this all of the time, in the guise of mansplaining. Standing outside a Whole Foods with a white paper on the safety of all American food won't do any good - they will know right away you are a scientist and think Monsanto bought you off.(5) While some people are stupid and uninformed, and that will never change, there are what I call 'sincere skeptics' out there. Treating every question or concern as science denial is as ridiculous as liberal people who know vaccines work but who still wear masks because they don't want people to think they're Republicans. Yet corporate science communication often does just that sort of populist theater. They will dunk on anyone concerned about a vaccine when they literally demanded that government government create more regulations that slow down approval of every drug of the last 20 years because Big Pharma and corporate scientists could not be trusted to produce safe products. Journalists repeat every nonsensical 'endocrine disruptor' and 'miracle vegetable improves longevity' and 'bees are dying' claim in press releases from activists in their political tribe while hiding behind the rationale that 'it is news' or they are discussing the supposed controversy.(6) The conclusions the authors of the paper advocate - tailoring the approach to the demographic you are meeting - may also work for other areas of science denial, like energy or food. Texas embraced alternative energy and ended up with a whole lot of people without power. California routinely suffers brownouts because they regulate utilities heavily while denying power generation that works to exist within the state, like hydroelectric and nuclear and natural gas. Asking if poor people should have affordable, energy available energy the same way the rich do is smarter than calling them Luddites because they think natural gas and nuclear are as bad as coal and solar is ready to power everything now."
Texas’ Impending Reliability Issues With Wind Power - "Texas has the most wind capacity of any state, generating about 16% of its electricity from wind. In August, as temperatures rose above 100F and consumers increased their use of air conditioning, Texas’ grid operators struggled to meet the record demand for electricity. Many of the wind turbines could not operate because the wind was stagnant, a common occurrence on very hot days. As a result, energy costs skyrocketed. In Houston, wholesale power prices spiked 49,000% (to $9,000 per megawatt-hour). The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) warned that reserve margins were so low that it might have to institute rolling blackouts, or controlled interruptions of power service. The independent system operator called for the construction of more gas-fired generating plants. Facing a second consecutive year of strain on its grid, ERCOT mandated all available power plants to run flat-out, called on factories to cut power consumption, and imported electricity from Mexico. Power reserve margins were so thin that increments of just tens of megawatts were available to meet demand. The state called the first of its three levels of emergency and hit its market price cap of $9,000 per megawatt hour to avoid rolling brownouts, or partial, temporary reductions in system voltage or total system capacity. According to ERCOT, if one of the state’s large natural gas plants had gone offline when reserve margins were thin, rolling blackouts might have been unavoidable... The situation may get more dire as additional wind farms are built... the city of Georgetown, Texas obtained a $1 million grant from former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s nonprofit, Bloomberg Philanthropies, in which the city planned to obtain 100% of its electricity from wind and solar power. The grant’s only real requirement, however, was that the city serve as a public relations platform to convince Americans to abandon fossil fuels and switch to renewable energy. The town’s politicians promised that the renewable energy would be cheaper. But, as more wind and solar power displaced natural gas, electricity bills went up. The city’s municipal utility now has a $7 million shortfall that has to be made up by the city’s consumers through higher electricity bills. The embarrassed City Council changed course and voted 5-0 to kill the Bloomberg PR deal. It also raised property taxes. As part of the Bloomberg agreement, Georgetown planned to install solar panels on homes and obtain a battery storage farm to store electricity when wind and solar power were not available. For Georgetown to be 100% renewable using state-of-the-art batteries from Tesla’s Gigafactory, the city would need a $400 million battery farm weighing some 20,000 tons to avoid a blackout. And, after spending $15,600 for each household for such a battery farm, its backup power would be drained in 12 hours with a single windless night."
From 2019. They were having problems even before 2021 due to unreliable "renewable" energy
A Green Energy Texas Whitewash - WSJ - "The report focuses on the failures at natural gas plants, which experienced mechanical problems and fuel shortages as temperatures plunged and equipment froze. Texas’s grid regulators compounded these problems by mistakenly shutting off power to gas processors and plants. According to the report, gas plants accounted for 55% of the power-plant capacity that failed during the freeze compared to 22% for wind, 18% for coal and 1% for solar. But actual power generation in Texas increased 400% for gas and 25% for coal in the week before the power outage. Solar and wind power fell 80% and 55%, respectively. The solar industry hilariously tooted that solar “performed as expected during the February 2021 Texas blackout” and is a “predictable, reliable and affordable clean energy source.” Solar performed the worst of any source and produced less than 1% of state power during the freeze. But hey, regulators expect solar to be predictably unreliable. FERC recommends weatherizing power plants, but the costs will be hard to absorb for fossil-fuel generators that run at very low levels except when they’re needed to back up green energy. Here is the fundamental problem: Hefty subsidies allow renewable producers to pay to offload their power in competitive wholesale markets and still make a profit. This erodes the economics of baseload power generators and makes the grid less reliable. All of this is worth keeping in mind as Democrats pour more subsidies into green energy and attempt to regulate fossil fuels to death... President Biden should be begging U.S. gas companies to expand production to make sure Americans don’t lose power and heat this winter. But he won’t lest he upset the climate lobby, and if there are shortages or price spikes, Mr. Biden will blame fossil fuels."
We’ve allowed narcissistic eco martyrs to booby-trap our energy markets - "Markets expected to absorb the Ukrainian war without much trouble, but, like Vladimir Putin, they hadn’t banked on sanctions. The correction is proving painful. Amid it all, there is one signal coming through loud and clear: the rocketing price of oil... The good news is that, in the absence of another shock, like an Israel-Iran war (God forbid), markets are capable of solving the problem. The bad news is that we seem to have forgotten how to let markets solve problems. Let’s start with the US. America’s mighty shale oil and gas producers have already proved that they can turn global markets upside down. Back in 2013, oil prices were around the same level they are today ($120 per barrel) and the received wisdom was that they could only go higher. According to the experts, $200 a barrel was a realistic prospect. Instead, a year later, the price had halved. What happened in the meantime was that the shale industry innovated. As prices fell, the US’s patchwork of new oil producers didn’t shut down, as many had expected. They worked out how to produce more cheaply. What followed was a dramatic price war waged by Saudi Arabia, as it increased production in an attempt to wipe out its upstart rivals. It was a contest that Riyadh lost... Of course, there’s another piece to this puzzle, which bypasses the problem of import constraints: the UK’s own gas reserves. North Sea production is already on the rise, and could potentially increase further. And then there’s our own shale gas. Britain’s shale reserves haven’t been explored as extensively as America’s, so there’s still a lot of uncertainty over how much we can get out of the ground, but even a fraction of what’s there could potentially put a sizeable dent in European gas demand. According to Cuadrilla, the company trying to pull it off, the first gas could be flowing to British consumers within a year of getting equipment back on site. But as Cuadrilla’s trials demonstrate, there is a problem with this vision: Western governments have spent the last decade building up a forest of environmental regulation and restrictions designed to make it impossible. In the US, a series of drilling moratoria, regulatory restrictions and investor anxiety over climate change and government policy have made oil companies reluctant to turn on their drills in response to demand. In the UK, the combined forces of Nimby objectors, radical green protesters and do-good Davos men like Mark Carney have built a series of financial and political booby-traps around our last-resort, strategic resources. With impeccable timing, Extinction Rebellion has popped up again (how we missed them) to announce a new series of protests at oil refineries. We are hobbled by good intentions – and the narcissistic martyrs who parade under their banner. These green legions argue that we ought to focus all of our effort on building more renewables and improving energy efficiency. Yes, fine, let’s do both – and add a fleet of new nuclear plants into the bargain. But these measures aren’t enough alone. They say they want us to turn down the heating and drive at 55 miles per hour. And this, ladies and gentlemen, is meant to be the West’s response to Russian cluster bombs and economic ruin: voluntary self-impoverishment. It won’t wash, and the Government needs to understand that now. It is simply unacceptable, with Europe facing a war on its borders, a refugee crisis and the prospect of energy rationing or even blackouts, for our bureaucrats to tut their tongues and tap their clipboards and say: ooh, it’s shale gas you want? That’ll be 10 years, minister. The Conservatives used to understand that getting things done was the essence of competent government. But after over a decade in power spent failing to avert this catastrophe, it seems all they know how to do is pander. The absurdity is that if only they could at least remember how to get the government out of the way, markets would fix the energy problem for us."
Fracking could have saved us from this energy crisis - "there has been a moratorium on fracking in England since November 2019 because of worries about earth tremors. Concerns intensified after a tremor in Lancashire measured 2.9 on the Richter scale. This ‘quake’, as the Guardian hyperbolically referred to it, could be felt in neighbouring towns. What terrible catastrophe resulted? One resident of nearby Lytham St Annes, quoted by the Guardian, said there was a ‘very loud rumbling’, the ‘whole house shook’ and a ‘picture fell off a shelf’. It was ‘quite scary’, apparently. In the history of seismic events, this registered low on the Does Anybody Really Care scale. As Cuadrilla, the company which ran the fracking site, pointed out, the rumble caused only a third of the ground motion that is allowed by law for construction projects. A report commissioned by the government, published in December 2020, suggested that a tremor of similar magnitude to that in Lancashire ‘may cause sparse cases of low superficial damage’. In other words, a potentially important industry – one that might have even saved us from the current gas crisis – has been banned for relatively trivial reasons. To get things into perspective, one study found that 25 per cent of the earthquakes in the UK during the 1980s and 1990s were caused by mining. Yet the risk of tremors was never a serious consideration in determining whether mining should be allowed – and these quakes certainly didn’t inspire the kind of panic-mongering that fracking has. Let’s be honest. The eco-protesters who have made fracking difficult in the UK are not really concerned about such minor subterranean movements. What they really want to do is to stop companies from extracting and burning fossil fuels. They will exploit any issue to scare people into rejecting gas production. And the UK government, obsessed with cutting greenhouse-gas emissions and fearful of localised protests, has bowed down to them."
The UK is squandering its gas reserves - "The focus of Britain’s energy crisis has begun to shift. At a time when we are already struggling with enormous increases in the price of electricity and gas, The Times reports that the UK government has drawn up some worst-case scenarios projecting what would happen if Putin totally cut Europe off from Russian gas. The ‘reasonable worst-case scenario’ suggests that six million British homes might have to face electricity rationing, mostly at periods of peak usage during mornings and evenings this winter... Even now policymakers are too complacent and wedded to green fantasies. The Climate Change Committee forecasts declining demand for gas, but this is predicated on the mass adoption of heat pumps in place of gas boilers as part of the Net Zero agenda. That’s not going to happen. We’ll continue to need much more gas than the government imagines. We need to push back against the green zealots and defend gas as an essential part of the UK’s electricity and heat mix. It is complete hubris to say that Britain must set an example to the world and stop drilling for gas. Amid talk of power cuts and heating shortages, the public will not stand for this virtue-signalling any longer."
Risk of blackouts, higher bills if Ontario sets 2030 target to phase out natural gas, report says - The Globe and Mail - "IESO forecasts indicate the gas fleet will need to ramp up this decade to offset the retirement of the Pickering Nuclear Generating Station (currently scheduled for 2024-25) and ongoing refurbishments of reactors at the Bruce and Darlington nuclear stations, which are expected to continue into the 2030s. Until recently, natural gas was regarded as the fuel of choice for new power generation. It’s the cleanest-burning fossil fuel. Its other advantages include relatively short construction times for new plants and lower capital costs. And gas-fired plants have generally attracted less public opposition than new dams and nuclear plants. This led to a rapid buildout across North America, sometimes referred to as the “dash to gas.”... Other observers expect that demand for natural gas will actually increase, as electrification of things like buildings and vehicles causes electricity demand to skyrocket"
EDITORIAL: Natural gas phase out spells energy disaster | Toronto Sun - "eliminating natural gas from the electricity sector by 2030 — as 31 Ontario municipalities are calling for — would, in the words of the province’s Independent Electricity System Operator, “lead to blackouts and … increase residential electricity bills by 60%.”"
GOLDSTEIN: Wynne's epiphany on costs of green energy comes too late | Toronto Sun - "Former Ontario Liberal premier Kathleen Wynne has belatedly acknowledged one of her biggest mistakes was her failure to listen to warnings about how her government’s green energy policies would increase the cost of electricity... it might serve as a warning to Canadians elsewhere about what happens to taxpayers and hydro consumers when their governments at both the provincial and federal levels pursue green energy policies without understanding the costs. What happens is that everyone suffers... "I remember sitting beside Gerry Phillips (Dalton McGuinty’s minister of energy at the time) in many meetings and he would say ‘We’re piling up a lot of debt here. Electricity prices are going to have to go up. How are we going to pay for this?’ I heard it. But as a member of caucus and cabinet, I don’t think I took it seriously enough. “Then when I was premier, obviously the fact I made the decision to sell off part of Hydro One fed into that — the conflation of those issues. It was absolutely a huge factor in my downfall.” In Ontario under McGuinty and Wynne, their now-scrapped Green Energy Act contributed to a doubling of electricity prices in a decade, cost hundreds of thousands of jobs in the manufacturing sector and increased energy poverty. That occurs when families have to struggle financially just to heat, light and power their homes, weighing those costs against other necessities such as rent and food. According to two Ontario auditors general reports, the Liberal government, ignoring the advice of its own experts, overpaid $9.2 billion for green energy — buying it at two times the U.S. average price for wind power and 3.5 times for solar power. Because the 20-year contracts it signed with green energy developers required that these expensive and intermittent forms of energy had to be purchased first by the system operator, before all other forms of energy, the electricity grid became less efficient. Then the Liberals played election politics with taxpayers’ money, cancelling two politically unpopular natural gas power plants needed to back up wind energy. That resulted in a billion-dollar scandal and the jailing of a senior Liberal political aide to McGuinty for destroying government documents. The one thing the Liberals did right — eliminating the use of coal to produce 25% of Ontario’s electricity — was accomplished using nuclear power, which doesn’t emit greenhouse gases, and natural gas, which burns at half the carbon intensity of coal. Wind and solar power weren’t needed to do the job. They were a hugely expensive boondoggle and paying for them will haunt Ontario taxpayers and hydro consumers for decades to come."
Some liberal claimed that it was conservative propaganda that the policy had made energy prices skyrocket. Apparently the former Liberal Premier and Auditor General were both taken in by "conservative propaganda". Amazing.
Liberals ignored green energy advice that could’ve saved Ontarians billions, lead engineer says - "Ontario Liberals passed the Green Energy Act, an ambitious plan to rid the province of coal-fired electricity and make Ontario a powerhouse in renewable energy manufacturing. But the lead engineer responsible for designing and implementing a key component of the plan – the FIT and Micro-FIT programs that saw billions of dollars in green-energy contracts awarded to solar and wind companies – tells Global News in an exclusive interview the Liberal government ignored expert advice that, if followed, could have saved Ontario electricity customers billions of dollars in unnecessary spending. He also says the government never provided details of public promises about how much the plan would cost Ontarians – even though he asked the ministry responsible to provide this information two months before the Green Energy Act was passed. Despite these concerns, the government pushed ahead with its green energy “agenda,” against the better wisdom of its own policy advisers and to the detriment of Ontario electricity customers... the OPA wanted renewable energy in the province to grow at a snail’s pace, the government – pushed by industry groups and individual investors – instead chose to implement a policy that saw the floodgates opened wide. (Global News has obtained notes from stakeholder meetings where industry groups/individuals were pressing the government to increase prices)."
Hard lessons from Ontario's green shift - "“Green energy policy in Ontario has been a disaster for manufacturing, specifically small to mid-sized manufacturing. People left, people went bankrupt, [and] people moved growth. People just decided that they were done and closed up. The loss of jobs was staggering,” says Bamford, who founded the Coalition of Concerned Manufacturers and Businesses of Canada... What happened in Ontario “is Canada’s worst example of the unintended consequences that result from a strong political commitment to variable renewable energy when its system-wide impact is examined,” wrote authors Pierre Desrochers and Andrew Reed... University of Guelph environmental economist Ross McKitrick shares her concern. “The idea that the recovery from a recession is an ideal time to make a transition to green energy is really contradicted by the history of renewables and green energy, which is that they are very expensive, they’re technically unreliable, they drive up electricity prices, and they dampen growth and investment,” he says. “When you’re trying to recover from a recession and you’ve got 15 per cent unemployment, that’s the worst imaginable time to opt for power systems that you know are going to be more expensive and wasteful.” A 2017 report by McKitrick and Elmira Aliakbari found that Ontario’s manufacturing industry lost 75,000 jobs between 2008 and 2015 as a result of the province’s high electricity prices"
Too bad credulous people will just blame "greedy companies" instead of stupid green policies
Why does Ontario’s electricity cost so much? A reality check - The Globe and Mail - "Electricity prices in Ontario have soared in the past decade. Since 2006, the top rate for power has risen four times as fast as inflation... Ontario's electricity prices are far higher than those in the rest of the country. Quebec, for example, enjoys rates less than half of those in Ontario. The international picture is more complicated. Ontario rates are generally significantly lower than those across the border in New York and about half what Germans, Danes or Italians pay... Today's high prices are largely the result of provincial policy decisions made during the 2000s. When the Ontario Liberal Party came to power in 2003, the province's electricity grid was aging and creaky, and Ontario had to import power to meet its needs. The province was also haunted by the memory of Ontario Hydro's disastrously overbudget nuclear construction projects in the 1980s and 90s. What's more, the Liberals had been elected in part on a promise to close down the province's coal-fired power plants. So the government went on a building spree, upgrading aging infrastructure and commissioning new natural gas, wind and solar plants to replace the coal plants. But, wary of the previous cost overruns at Ontario Hydro, the government decided to outsource the work of building and running the new power plants to the private sector. The private sector would be responsible for cost overruns and other construction problems in exchange for 20-year contracts from the province. The contracts essentially guaranteed that the companies would receive a certain amount of revenue – no matter how much electricity their plants produced (though they would be paid more if the province used their electricity). The first major wave of private power plants was fuelled with natural gas. Later plants were tied to the Green Energy Act, which provided lucrative terms for wind and solar plants in a bid to build a renewable-power industry in the province. One of the most famous deals was a sole-source contract with a Samsung-led consortium, which included locating factories building green-energy equipment in the province. The cost of all this is passed on to ratepayers in the form of higher electricity bills. Auditor-General Bonnie Lysyk estimates that the "global adjustment charge" – the government's term for the costs in the system above the market rate for electricity – accounts for some 70 per cent of the average electricity bill. Ultimately, the province built more plants than it actually needed. In 2014, according to the Auditor-General, Ontario had the capacity to produce 30,203 megawatts of power – but only needed 15,959 on an average day. (Even on the busiest day of the year, the province only required 22,774 megawatts.)... So the province has a massive surplus of generating capacity, but because much of it is tied up in private, 20-year contracts, Ontarians have to pay for all that electricity – whether they need it or not. In some cases, the province also made the situation worse with political meddling. Ahead of the 2011 election, for instance, then-premier Dalton McGuinty cancelled two unpopular natural-gas plants in Liberal-held ridings in Toronto suburbs and gave the companies new contracts to build plants in other locations – farther from the areas that would need the electricity. As a result, ratepayers ended up on the hook for another $1.1-billion."
The more green energy is used, the more expensive energy prices are
Ontario's Green Energy Act a Bad Bargain for Ontarians - "the GEA has had disastrous impacts on Ontario’s energy rates and is going to seriously threaten economic competitiveness for the manufacturing and mining sectors. What little environmental benefit it is expected to generate could have been had at a fraction of the cost. Further, unless the province changes course, the GEA will saddle Ontarians with needlessly high energy costs for decades to come... What benefits will Ontario get for enduring high energy prices and reduced economic competitiveness? Precious little. Ontario’s air pollution levels were already well-controlled without the GEA, with concentrations of most primary air pollutants already at levels below government health standards and continuing to decline. In fact, with the perversity that seemingly can only come from heavy-handed and ill-considered government action, the GEA poses a risk of increasing air pollution levels. Wind power requires natural gas as a backup. If the province continues adding wind and gas power at a time when there is a surplus of generating capacity it may render one of Ontario’s baseload nuclear plants superfluous. Taking a nuclear plant offline and replacing it with gas would lead to higher overall emissions. Ontario’s pursuit of wind-power was particularly ill-considered because provincial demand tends to be out of phase with our wind patterns. In Ontario, 80% of wind-power generation occurs when demand is so low that the entire output is surplus and must be dumped on the export market at a substantial loss. The province’s Auditor General estimates that Ontario has already lost close to $2 billion on surplus wind exports: figures from the electricity grid operator also show the ongoing losses are $200 million annually. The wind grid is also inherently inefficient due to the fluctuating nature of the power source. The report calculates that due to seasonal variability, seven megawatts of wind energy are needed to provide a year-round replacement for one megawatt of conventional power. What’s particularly distressing is that all of this pain could have easily been avoided. A 2005 report commissioned by the government showed that if the province simply continued with ongoing retrofit projects of its existing energy-generation fleet, all of the claimed benefits of the GEA could have been secured at one-tenth the cost. Sadly, that report was kept confidential and subsequently ignored. But what about all the green jobs that the Ontario government promised? The government originally promised the GEA would create 50,000 jobs. Alas, those benefits also proved illusory: the government now admits the 50,000 jobs claim was not based on any formal analysis; that most of these green jobs would be temporary, and the estimate didn’t account for the jobs that would be killed by escalating electricity costs under the GEA. Of course, the provincial government can try to ease the burden on industry through energy subsidy programs but this will only transfer the costs onto Ontario taxpayers who will have insult added to injury: higher energy costs at home and the obligation to offset the pain of high energy rates for favoured industry groups."
