About as you’d expect (via Tom Nelson)
(Wind Concerns Ontario) An “opinion†piece in the Toronto Star written by Kris Stevens of the Ontario Sustainable Energy Association (OSEA) and Gillian McEachern of Environmental Defence (ED) extolls the wonders of the captioned Act on its fourth birthday. They ramble on about what it has done for the economy, the jobs it has created and how it’s “non-existent health impacts†are simply “fearmongering†by anti-wind groups! They also claim a myriad of hurricanes, droughts and heat waves are caused by “climate change†despite the IPCC and other climate scientists reversal of that claim.
The article is wrong on all counts but, because both of these entities were involved in helping to write the Act they believe in it!
In the four years since the Act passed ratepayers have seen the cost of electricity climb well beyond inflation; off-peak time-of use rates are up 60%, mid-peak 37% and on-peak 34%. Those increases don’t yet include the cost of the gas plants (to back up intermittent wind and solar generation) or the $585 million cost of their moves to Lambton and Bath.
This shouldn’t mean that we do not look towards alternatives/renewables: it means we need to implement them in a responsible manner that doesn’t cause massive price increases. Those same increases in energy costs ripple across the entire economy, raising the prices of everything else.
60% of Canadas electricity comes from hydro. Canada hasn’t done massive investments in solar. You are blaming cost increase on a tiny part of Canada’s electric generation The cost has gone up because the cost of FOSSIL FUEL went up. Fuel accounts for the biggest increase in power generation