by Keith Stewart - May 12, 2011 at 10:11
The leader of Ontario’s Progressive Conservative party announced on Tuesday that, if elected, he would cancel the $7 billion wind and solar power deal with Samsung and kill the Green Energy Act.
For a Conservative in Ontario to want to run on their energy record seems like a desperate attempt to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory (confession: I co-authored a book on the topic), so I couldn’t resist tweeting a few questions at Mr. Hudak.
Such as:
How would you replace the power from the 2000 MW of wind power and 500 MW of solar power covered by the Samsung deal?
Are you proposing to cancel the coal phase-out, since the roughly 5.4 TWh of electricity that these projects would generate is the equivalent of 40 per cent of power we got from coal-fired generating stations in 2010? And if so, how will you explain to the parents of asthmatic children and/or parents concerned about what climate change means for their kids’ future that this is a good thing?
You have criticized the contracts being issued under the landmark Green Energy Act as too pricy, but do you recall that in the eight years that you sat around the provincial Cabinet table, your government managed to bring precisely 0 MW of new power on-line in Ontario?
And did you notice that when prices rose (which tends to happen when you build nothing new while having to close 8 nuclear reactors due to safety concerns, plus demand grows because you cancelled all of the conservation programs), your government’s response of freezing prices at an artificially low rate led to brown-outs. Businesses responded by buying diesel generators, and while that may be astrategy for keeping the lights on, I don't recall most people thinking it was a good strategy.
I forgot to ask him if he remembered that the bulk of the existing rise in electricity prices is not, in fact due to green energy but due to the backlog of maintenance and repair work not done when the Conservatives were in power. But that is another good question because Mr. Hudak's public statements seem to blame all of the price increases on projects not yet built.
No doubt he recognizes that all new power projects will be more expensive than the 40 year-old stations they are replacing, so fortunately I did remember to ask if he knew that according to theCalifornia Energy Commission (p. 20), power from new nuclear reactors (which Mr. Hudak has supported as an alternative to green energy) will be significantly more expensive than wind or solar. That's right: new nukes cost more than new wind or solar power.
I am still awaiting a reply to these questions.
Yet although Mr. Hudak is a prolific twitter-er, I recognize that responses to my questions may take a while, as he is likely still trying to recover from the drubbing administered not only by the Toronto Star (by columnist Reg Cohn and their editorial board), but from the even more aggressive assault by the (usually Conservative-friendly) Windsor Star, which was outraged that he would threaten all of the manufacturing jobs that have resulted from green energy investments.
So if Mr. Hudak wants to reconsider his plans, I would recommend our Green Energy 2.0 strategy as a low-cost, future-friendly alternative. Just drop me a line, and we’ll set up a meeting to go through the details -- in more than 140 characters.
Retrieved from http://www.greenpeace.org/canada/en/Blog/conservative-energy-plan-would-nuke-ontarios-/blog/34743
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