By referring to the economic experience of those European countries that have vigorously promoted wind energy over the last two decades, this report demonstrates that the decisions of the Ontario government did not take into consideration the reality of introducing large scale industrial wind energy onto the grid. In fact, the government’s enthusiasm to embrace what it claimed to be cheap, “clean”, environmentally benign electricity at the same time as diminishing CO2 emissions appears to have ignored all the realistic information that was available, leaving an energy policy based on little more than a leap of faith. Wind energy is neither cheap nor environmentally benign, as this report will demonstrate.

Here is the PDF
What_Went_Wrong_with_OntarioEnergy_Policy2[1]

COMMENT – Written by Rick Conroy on Friday, April 16, 2010 – 1 Comment
The gambler
A better man might feel empathy for Dalton McGuinty. Gambling, I’m told, is an addiction. He may not be able to help himself. But here’s the thing—it’s Ontario’s energy future he is putting at risk and it is our money he is wagering. Dalton McGuinty never felt comfortable with the energy file. Not since he blurted out an ill-considered promise to close Ontario’s coal electricity plants, in an election debate in 2003, has he managed to grasp the complexity of the business of electricity or how tightly energy in general is tied to the economic prosperity and well-being of residents of this province.
Most folks leave things they don’t understand alone—they don’t try and turn the house upside down hoping it all comes out right. But that isn’t how McGuinty rolls—at least on this file.

Instead he is placing billions of your tax dollars and your children’s tax dollars on a bet that a mix of unproven wind, solar and other exotic means of electricity generation will one day put a meaningful dent into Ontario’s supply of energy. It is a high-stakes gamble—with about the same odds as winning the lottery.

Nevertheless, McGuinty last week announced his government was offering contracts for 184 renewable energy contracts. By some estimates this converts into an $8 billion investment. This is on top of billions more spent through at least four other outlandishly rich contracts designed to attract investors.

Whom has the province attracted? Well, they include such corporate luminaries as 2225054 Ontario Limited and 6718710 Canada Corporation. Others such as Zep Wind Farm LP signify that these outfits are organized as limited partnerships which means the investors who anted up the money to make the FIT application were able to write off at least part of their investment on their personal taxes. So as a taxpayer you are an enabler of this bit of speculation.

Most of these companies didn’t exist five years ago. Many likely formed just to apply for the FIT contracts. This is the cast of characters to whom McGuinty has decided to hitch Ontario’s energy future.

Like the husband and father who secretly gambles away his family’s savings, McGuinty must create a web of diversions and lies to cover his tracks.

Number one diversion: tell people wind and solar energy is better than coal-generated electricity.

The McGuinty government doesn’t issue a press release on the energy file in which it doesn’t attempt to turn the public’s dislike of coal into support for its misguided green energy schemes.

Energy Minister Brad Duguid last week: “The advantage is we’re not poisoning the lungs of our kids when we use green energy.”

Yes, by all means, we can all go along with not poisoning our children. But the question that needs to follow is: will wind and solar energy help us do that? Will McGuinty’s energy schemes reduce our dependence on coal-fired electricity? Mr. Duguid will dodge the question—but the answer is no.

Worse, he knows the answer is no. All one has to do is look to Europe, which has installed thousands of wind turbines and solar panels over the past two decades. Not one coalfired electricity generating plant has closed due to the introduction of these new generating sources. In fact, European nations are building 50 brand new coal-fired generating plants over the next decade. They are also scaling back wind energy development and the rich incentives required to erect it. Why does McGuinty expect a different outcome in Ontario?

Number one lie: XYZ wind farm will supply electricity for 5,000 homes. The truth is that all the wind turbines in all the world can’t run a toaster, let alone a home, on their own. It is a lie that is repeated in virtually every news story on wind or solar development. Intermittent energy sources like wind and solar must be paired with a fossil fuel generating plant to produce the steady and reliable stream of electricity your toaster needs to run properly.

The truth is wind energy, combined with a natural gasfired generation plant, might be able to supply electricity that you can use in your home—but you will never know how much was supplied by natural gas and how much came from wind. In most jurisdictions the gas plant runs full-time— burning fossil fuel—the unseen partner in the wind and solar fantasy.

However the cost of building and operating additional natural- gas fired plants needed to back up wind is never calculated in the billions we are spending on green energy. It would be cynical to call natural gas green energy.

Many will suggest it is a worthwhile gamble—that doing something is better than doing nothing. But this is a trap. Doing the wrong thing is worse. Much worse. For we are robbing ourselves of the dollars that should be invested in real energy research and development—not frittered away by making the investors in 2225054 Ontario Limited wealthy.

Worse still, we are propelling massive hikes in energy costs. This will have direct impact on low- and middleincome Ontarians. It will be yet another blow to manufacturers and processors—another reason to move jobs out of the province to low-cost jurisdictions. Smelters, miners, pulp and paper mills and auto manufacturers are all large consumers of electricity. As their margins get squeezed they get closer to putting their raw materials on a ship and processing them elsewhere—taking these jobs with them.

In desperation McGuinty is doubling down and digging our hole deeper. So far this year the province has spent on average a little over 3 cents per kilowatt hour for electricity. Last week McGuinty offered to pay 2225054 Ontario and dozens of other such outfits 44.3 cents per kilowatt hour—14 times more than the going rate. Does this sound like a rational man? Perhaps it’s time we intervened.

rick@wellingtontimes.ca

TAKING A DEEP BREATH ON WIND POWER
Michael Trebilcock Chair in Law and EconomicsFaculty of Law, University of Toronto84 Queen’s Park Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5S 2C5Tel.: 416-978-5843Email: michael.trebilcock@utoronto.ca
The current Ontario government’s headlong rush into massive subsidization of various forms of renewable energy, including wind power and solar energy, is likely to reveal the law of unintended consequences from these precipitous policies unless we take a deep breath and calmly and rigorously re-evaluate these policies before committing billions more dollars from consumers and taxpayers to them.Such a re-evaluation would sharply focus on three key factors: a) the costs of renewable energy; b) its contributions to reducing CO2 (greenhouse gas) emissions; and c) its contributions to creating jobs in the province. Much of the current government’s renewable energy focus has been on the promotion of industrial wind turbine-generated electricity, and hence I focus on these three factors as they relate to industrial wind power.
Economic Effects
First, as to the cost of wind-generated electricity, the feed-in tariff for on-shore wind turbines in Ontario provided for under the Green Energy Act is 13.5 cents per kWh (and higher for smaller projects), which is more than twice prevailing rates for electricity on the spot market in Ontario (less than 6 cents per KWh). Solar power qualifies for an 80 cents per KWh feed-in tariff. These cost increases will be fed through to industrial, commercial, and residential consumers through various additional charges on their electricity bills. In addition, further expenditures are required in order to enhance and extend the transmission grid to accommodate these projects. A recent study by London Economics Consultancy, “Examining the Potential Costs of the Ontario Green Energy Act 2009 (April 30, 2009), estimates that the higher costs of green power will add hundreds of dollars to average electricity bills of households throughout Ontario. A recent article in the Globe and Mail, “The High Cost of Green Power,” January 8, 2010, quotes Adam White, President of the Association of Major Power Consumers of Ontario, as stating: “The situation is not sustainable because it will leave companies paying higher rates than competitors in other jurisdictions.” Toronto energy lawyer, Peter Murphy, is quoted as stating: “The government is sitting on a political time bomb.” Recent studies of wind power in Denmark,# Germany,# and the UK,# reach similar conclusion about the impacts of renewable energy on electricity costs in these three jurisdictions. The Ontario government’s estimate of an increase in electricity costs per year from its renewable policies of 1 percent a year seems to lack any justification or credibility.
Environmental Effects
The contributions of industrial wind power to reducing CO2 (greenhouse gas) emissions, which might be thought to justify the additional cost of renewable energy, are in fact at best marginal. Most wind turbines run at only about 25 percent of nameplate capacity, so that generating any substantial amount of electricity from wind power requires massive numbers of wind turbines. In addition, because of their intermittency and unpredictability (like solar power), they require the availability of back-up generation, especially for peak-load capacity, which has entailed in Denmark, Germany, the UK, and now Ontario the construction of additional fossil fuel plants (typically natural gas plants) to provide reliability. This dramatically reduces the net contributions of wind power to CO2 abatement, which come at an extremely high cost relative to other abatement strategies (such as real-time pricing of electricity).# In the case of base load electricity, most of this is provided in Ontario by carbon-clean hydro and nuclear power so that, to the extent that wind power is used to provide base load electricity, it simply displaces lower cost hydro and nuclear power with no effects on CO2 emissions (or results in exports of surplus power, often at give-away prices). In October 2007, the Ontario Power Authority (OPA) – the government’s own agency, tasked with planning Ontario’s power system and now entering into long-term contracts with renewable energy producers – published its Integrated Power System Plan, where it analyzed a “high wind power” scenario for the province, and concluded: “Since wind generation has an effective capacity of 20 percent compared to 73 percent for hydroelectric generation, additional generation capacity with better load-following characteristics would need to be installed. This needed capacity will likely have to be obtained by installing additional gas fired generation. Thus, in addition to incurring further capital costs for the gas generation installation, higher gas usage would be expected to make up for the reduced amount of renewable energy from wind compared to that from hydroelectric generation or this alternative. Therefore, this alternative would result in higher greenhouse gas emissions.” The OPA concluded: “Wind and solar power will never be more than a niche supplier of power in Ontario.”What did the OPA see as the better alternative? Renewable hydro power sites in northern Ontario (which it identified). The OPA stated: “The hydroelectric generation developments included in the plan are cost effective compared to developing additional wind generation; this comparison includes the cost of transmission reinforcements. In conclusion, development of major hydroelectric generation north of Sudbury, with major reinforcement of the transmission north of Sudbury, is the preferred alternative compared to developing additional renewable generation in southern Ontario and other parts of northern Ontario.” This begs the obvious question, what has changed in two years? Beyond these sites in northern Ontario, in the medium to longer term there is enough northern Canadian hydro power in Manitoba, Quebec and Labrador to satisfy Ontario’s needs for decades. If Boston and New England can depend on northern Canadian hydro power, why not Toronto? Moreover, prior demand projections for electricity need to be revised downwards to reflect not only the current economic recession (demand was down more than 6% in 2009 over 2008), but the long-term contraction in a number of Ontario’s electricity-intensive heavy manufacturing industries, such as steel and automobile manufacturing.
Employment Effects
The potential contributions of renewable energy to the creation of jobs in the province require a heavy dose of skepticism. While the government has claimed that it plans to create 50,000 new green jobs in the province over the coming years, the additional burdens on industrial, commercial, and household consumers from higher electricity costs associated with renewable energy will kill existing jobs. Recent studies in Denmark and Germany find that very few net new jobs have been created as a result of renewable energy policies, and in the case of Denmark, have cost between US $90,000 to US $140,000 per job per year in public subsidies, and in the case of Germany, up to US $240,000 per job per year. According to a column by Randall Denley in the Ottawa Citizen of January 24, 2010, the new manufacturing jobs entailed in the massive Samsung renewable project recently announced by the Ontario government will cost $300,000 each in public subsidies.In an SNL Financial news wire report of October 23, 2009, the Ontario Minister of Natural Resources was reported as stating that the agency had temporarily stopped accepting applications for proposed wind energy projects because it had already received 500 such applications and needed to make sure that it had appropriate processes in place before taking any more. Obviously, the massive public subsidies being offered by the Ontario government to the renewable energy sector, especially industrial wind turbines, have provoked a massive corporate feeding frenzy, but corporate enthusiasm for subsidized wind power should not be confused with the longer-term public interest. On all three of the critical factors reviewed above, wind power attracts a failing grade. Beyond these three factors, localized impacts on flora and fauna and on the character of some of Ontario’s most beautiful rural communities, potentially adverse health effects on local residents from persistent exposure to low intensity turbine noise, potentially adverse impacts on local property values, and an environmental review process which the Ontario Environmental Commissioner describes as “broken,”# render renewable energy policy, at least as currently conceived by the Ontario government, one of the least compelling public policy options in the challenging economic environment in which the province finds itself now and for the foreseeable future. Picking technological winners in fields such as this, and then picking winners within classes of technology (such as Samsung) are fraught with the risk of costly errors. A far better policy orientation would be first to price all sources of electricity so as to reflect environmental costs and let consumers respond accordingly, and then to subsidize breakthrough R and D in all sectors that are significant sources of carbon emissions. As Dr. Jan Carr, former CEO of the OPA from 2005 to 2008, puts it in a recent article:#The recent rush to “green” Ontario’s electricity system has produced a largely ad hoc approach to the selection and investment in power generation technologies that will unnecessarily increase the cost of electricity with far-reaching economic and social effects… Pricing carbon would have the advantage of continuing a century of economically rational development of the electricity system as an essential underpinning of modern society. To do other than proceed on an economic basis is to risk massive economic distortions… The alternative process of picking winners and losers in renewable energy technologies, based on perceptions and public opinion polls, puts us all at considerable risk.” Before mortgaging its long-term future by awarding hundreds more 20-year fixed-price contracts to wind developers, the province of Ontario urgently needs an independent, objective, expert investigation (perhaps by the Auditor-General) of the prospective economic, environmental, and employment effects of wind power and other renewable energy policies in the province and alternatives thereto.

The following resolution has been passed unanimously by the Board of Directors of the North Channel Preservation Society.
“Resolved the North Channel Preservation Society support Manitoulin Coalition for Safe Energy Alternatives in endeavoring to ensure alternative energy solutions within the North Channel of Lake Huron including Manitoulin Island meet all reasonable and safe health, cultural, aesthetic and practical financial standards. Specifically, NCPS currently opposes the development of the McLean’s Mountain and Green Bush Wind farm by Northland Power Inc.”

Please remember that the deadline for submission of concerns over the McLeans Mtn Wind Project by Northland Power Inc. is March 18! It is particularly important that all landowners who have been proceeding with new building permits for housing capable of overnight accommodation notify Northland before the deadline so that the towers are setback from these structures. Other concerns include lack of notification (if you are a landowner and have not received notice), health concerns from excess noise and shadow flicker, property devaluation, inadequate consultation with First Nation people, harmful effects to birds and animals, risk of ground water contamination or redirecting because drilling and blasting in unstable shale and limestone rock, negative aesthetic effects, negative effects on local tourism based economy, concerns re disruption of recreational hunting lands, using up the remaining space on the grid so local green energy projects will be deferred, electrical pollution and degradation, etc.
Comments are to be submitted to the following address:
Mcleans Mountain Windfarm Project
Box 73,
Little Current
Ont
P0P 1K0
or rickmartin@northlandpower.ca

Town of Northeastern Manitoulin and the Islands
PUBLIC NOTICE
The Public are advised there will be a Special Council meeting on Wednesday, March 3, 2010 at 7:00 p.m. in the NEMI Recreation Centre Main Hall. The items on the agenda will be
1) Municipal Consultation with Northland Power Inc.
2) Road Use Agreement with Northland Power Inc.
It is very important that all residents with concerns about this project come to this meeting. All local landowners will be interested in the municipal plans to give Northland power the use of all the unopened road allowances in the greenbush area. Come and see for yourself what the council is doing to protect the interests of local residents from the effects of this industrial development. Feel free to bring in any written questions for council and for Northland Power. We are not alone in calling for further studies! There are now 50 other municipalities in Ontario calling for a moratorium until further studies have been done. Why does our council refuse to listen?

Public comment on this project must be sent to Northland Power by March18, 2010
Mcleans Mountain Windfarm Project
Box 73,Little Current Ont
P0P 1K0
or rickmartin@northlandpower.ca.
We would suggest a copy be kept to send to the MOE when this project is posted on the EBR environmental registry for comment.
MCSEA

News Release from The Society for Wind Vigilance Jan 10, 2010