Ontario casts green shadow on U.S.

Ontario’s lawmakers are battling to gain support for one of the most ambitious clean energy policies in North America.

Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty's government unveiled the Green Energy and Green Economy Act last week, calling for up to $5 billion in spending over several decades to encourage the growth of renewable energy and create 50,000 jobs in the next three years.

The policy would amend at least 15 existing statutes to create feed-in tariffs, encourage renewable, mandate energy-efficient appliances, and require green building in the public and private sectors.

It’s an ambitious plan for a province with the dirtiest coal-fired power plant in North America and just 10 wind turbines in 2003, said Ontario's Minister of Research and Innovation John Wilkinson. Ontario has already begun phasing out the 3,500 MW Nanticoke coal plant on Lake Eerie, eliminating a third of its generating power, with plans to reduce another third by 2011 and close the plant by 2014.

“Fifty percent of our pollution was impacting the United States,” Wilkinson told the Cleantech Group. “How can we say to our neighbor to close your dirty coal when we have the single largest emitter of greenhouse gases in North America?”

Ontario has 29.7 gigawatts of energy generating capacity and almost 20 GW of demand, according to the Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure. Ontario has over 8.6 GW of installed renewable energy generating capacity today, including 1 GW of new renewable energy added since October 2003 at a cost of $1.7 billion. An additional 2.2 GW of renewable power is under contract.

Ontario got about 23 percent of its energy from coal five years ago. Today, that number is 7 percent but is expected to be eliminated by 2014, Wilkinson said (see Ontario aims to kick out coal by 2014). The province has 569 wind turbines, with plans to reach 975 by the end of 2010 (see Acciona and Suncor Energy begin building Ontario wind project). The province is also investing heavily in hydroelectric, solar and biomass (see SkyPower and SunEdison land Ontario solar contract, Ontario backs Verdant Power tidal project and Ontario putting cash into cleantech).

Ontario wants its energy generation capacity from renewables to increase from 25 percent in 2008 to 50 percent, with the remaining 50 percent from nuclear. Natural gas would be used for peak capacity, Wilkinson said. The province expects to replace aging nuclear plants with new nuclear, despite concerns from some environmentalists about the disposal of nuclear waste (see Nuclear's biggest problem? Not enough scientists).

“We’re not going to expand or diminish our nuclear energy. We can’t do that and phase out coal at the same time,” Wilkinson said. “We’re replacing coal with renewables and efficiency.”

The proposal would establish a renewable energy feed-in tariff for decades for wind, solar, hydro biomass and biogas, mimicking FITs in Denmark, Germany and Spain (see German feed-in tariff reductions delayed till 2010 and Extra solar panels in Spain driving down prices). Additionally, owners of renewable energy systems would be given a guarantee they could connect projects to the grid. The proposal streamlines the permitting process for renewables projects so that owners don’t have to deal with different laws and time lines in different municipalities.

The proposal mandates that all appliances sold must be rated by Energy Star for energy and water efficiency. And all new public buildings would be required to be build to Silver standards under the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED, rating system, while private buildings would have to undergo assessments for energy efficiency before sale.

The policy seems to be a shoo-in—McGuinty’s Liberal Party of Canada controls 71 of the Legislative Assembly’s 107 seats—but it still must go through three readings, a committee meeting and a public hearing before it’s enacted.

“We want to pass this thing as quickly as possible,” Wilkinson said.

The policy faces some challenges. Among them, there's talk of growing opposition to wind farms across Ontario because of the offending size and noise of wind turbines in previously undeveloped areas or near homes. Transmission connections could be necessary over undeveloped land as energy is piped from rural damns and wind farms to urban areas.

Wilkinson said the plan wouldn’t be derailed by “NIMBYism”—the not-in-my-backyard reaction to renewable projects.

“If people have concerns about renewable energy because they’re unsure about the technology or don’t like it for health reasons, we will listen,” he said. “Otherwise, get out of the way.”

The government has said the plan would increase Ontario residents' electricity bills by 1 percent, but critics say the actual cost could be up to 30 percent added to power bills.

Other critics question the basis for the claim of the proposal creating 50,000 jobs in domestic manufacturing and assembly, building, servicing and installation, engineering and trucking, finance, electrician and inspection work, architecture, and computer software and hardware. Critics say the green proposal’s price tag is high, considering Ontario lost 71,000 jobs in January alone, many in the manufacturing sector.

A study by Ottawa-based management consulting firm Russell-Mitchell Group released in February said that a $1.2 billion investment is needed during the next three to five years to bring clean technologies from Ontario to a global market. Most of the 110 cleantech companies in Ontario are small, private companies with little to no revenue, and many have first-time executives.

Wilkinson has said he thinks the government's green proposal could kickstart the sector.

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