The following recommendations from the Ontario Clean Air Alliance to the Ontario government should be taken seriously and acted upon. As the recommendations are based on sound reasoning, the only reason not to follow through on them would be due to pressure from the nuclear lobby. A summary of the report is reprinted here:
"Ontario can obtain 100% of its grid-supplied electricity from renewable sources by 2027 if Energy and Infrastructure Minister George Smitherman adopts the recommendations in the Ontario Clean Air Alliance’s new report, Ontario’s Green Future.
The report’s three key recommendations are: build on success; take the lid off clean power; and make nuclear the last choice, not the first.
Build on success
Ontario’s Standard Offer Program for Renewable Power has been a huge success, attracting more projects in one year than the Ontario Power Authority had projected would be available in 10. It’s time to extend this simple and effective program, which pays a fixed price for each kilowatt-hour (kWh) of new supply, to energy efficiency and clean combined heat and power projects.
Take the lid off clean power
We also need to make the Standard Offer Program model more robust by removing arbitrary project size limits and raising the standard offer price to reflect the true comparative cost of obtaining power from new nuclear units and associated transmission systems.
Make nuclear the last choice, not the first
Nuclear power projects have a long history of massive cost overruns in Ontario. No other electricity generation projects, whether they be wind, water, solar or natural gas, are allowed to pass their capital cost overruns on to ratepayers and taxpayers. It is time to end this and other costly special deals for nuclear and to make nuclear projects compete fairly with other generation sources.
Ontario should pass a Nuclear Cost Responsibility Act that makes it illegal for nuclear capital cost overruns to be passed on to ratepayers or taxpayers. This will prevent any additions to the $18 billion “stranded” nuclear debt that is still being paid off by Ontario ratepayers."
The Ontario’s Green Future report can be downloaded from:
http://www.ontariosgreenfuture.ca/Ontarios_Green_Future.pdf
Comments
""Ontario can obtain 100% of
""Ontario can obtain 100% of its grid-supplied electricity from renewable sources"
The minute I see a statement like this I tend to dismiss the whole article as BS! Such statements are misleading and counter productive. I fully support the move towards more renewable energy but someone will have to explain how (given today’s technology) 100% renewable power can be achieved. The only currently available technology to provide 24hr 7 day a week reliable "renewable" power (in Ontario) is Hydro Electric, and development of enough capacity to pick up the load on a cold, dark, windless night would involve the harnessing of just about every river or stream of any size and extensive transmission lines from those locations where larger installations are possible. Given the ho-ha about the new line from the Bruce I can well imagine how well that would go over, as well as the "environmental" concerns over damming our rivers and stream. Even a small private hydroelectric installation is currently not allowed if damming a river is involved due to such concerns.
So will someone explain to this technically aware but environmentally friendly individual how we can provide 100% of our power from "renewable sources" given that we lack the technology to store large (or for that mater, small) amount of electricity efficiently.
I do note that areas near tidal basins do have the potential to do so by using tidal generating systems but transmission restraints limit the distance that such power can be useful.
"So will someone explain to
"So will someone explain to this technically aware but environmentally friendly individual how we can provide 100% of our power from "renewable sources" given that we lack the technology to store large (or for that mater, small) amount of electricity efficiently."
The Ontario’s Green Future report can be downloaded from:
http://www.ontariosgreenfuture.ca/Ontarios_Green_Future.pdf
Having now read this report,
Having now read this report, most of the contentious issues that I have arise out of the definition of GRID- SUPPLIED in the statement “Ontario can obtain 100% of its grid-supplied electricity from renewable sources by 2027”.
They base this upon the use of increased microgeneration in the form of Combined heat and power (CHP) GAS FIRED plants and by recycling wasted energy from industrial activities such as steel mills, chemical plants, refneries, carbon black production, gas compressor stations and steam pressure drop. An initiative I fully agree with, even if such supply cannot be called “renewable”.
However whilst these units would be local to their various loads, they would normally be grid tied, if for no other reason than to cover maintenance and other down time. In fact they make a point of saying “Many smaller generation sources located near centres of electricity demand are used instead of a handful of large power stations. The result is a system that wastes much less energy during generation, TRANSMISSION and use….”
So the question becomes are these grid tied, non renewable fueled, locally generated electricity supply to be considered “grid-supplied electricity from renewable sources” or not. Semantics perhaps but let us be accurate in our claims.
There are a number of very good proposals in this document, that seems to focus upon hydro costs as much as supply, as well as a few questionable statements, I will be developing a further commentary upon it for your consideration in the next few days and will post it as a new article.