At first glance, the Samsung wind deal appears a viable and “green” way to replace Ontario’s coal-fired power plants. Wind is free, and comes with no pollution. Why would anyone object to that? They would object because wind actually comes with lots of pollution. Wind provides intermittent power; coal provides on-demand power. For wind […]

Al Gore has been on an oilsands kick lately, telling anyone who’ll listen that gasoline made from Alberta oilsands bitumen makes a Toyota Prius as emission-intensive as a Hummer. He may be right: oilsands operations pump over 50 million tons of CO2 into the air every year. Most of this CO2 comes from burning and reforming natural […]

Once in a blue moon, even I get my figures wrong. Last week I put up a poll which stated wind power developers in Ontario are paid 42 cents per kilowatt-hour. This was of course incorrect: the proposed standard offer feed-in tariff for wind generation in Ontario is 11 cents per kWh, not 42 cents. […]

If you promise something, you should deliver it. And sooner rather than later—especially if you engage in questionable PR tactics to win your case. I have argued in favour of governments financing both wind generation and nuclear generation (see article), but not because both are equally capable of providing zero-carbon electricity. They are plainly not […]

Another year, another disagreement on a pan-provincial approach to climate change. You can almost set your watch to what Ontario and Alberta will say at the annual premier-fest (a.k.a. Council of the Federation meeting). Ontario will talk about closing its coal-fired generating plants, Alberta about its opposition to any plan to put a price on […]

In their brilliant book Smart Choices, Hammond Keeney & Raiffa warn against falling into the “anchoring trap”—a psychological quirk which makes human decision-makers glom onto the first number they see and base subsequent decisions on that number. If the number is wrong, or out of context, those subsequent decisions could be disastrous. On Tuesday of […]

When unit 2 at the Bruce nuclear plant comes back online this fall after a 14-year layup, it will, every year, inject around 6.5 billion kilowatt-hours of cheap, carbon-free power into Ontario’s grid. How much carbon will it offset? Between 3.5 and 6.5 million tonnes. At the often-mentioned price of $15 per tonne of carbon, Bruce 2 would save […]

Last month the Canadian federal government announced it was going to privatize Atomic Energy Canada Limited (AECL). The medical isotope part of the business would be separated from power reactors. The feds hoped that this would thereby ease Ontario’s troubled mind as the province, in the middle of finalizing its choice of a vendor to […]

Professional climate policy wonks are watching the spectacle south of the Canada-U.S. border, where a House bill on climate change will receive its first major political test Friday. Political wrangling over what industries get covered (or hit, depending on your perspective), and how they are covered (or hit) has virtually ensured that the bill will […]

To read new posts, see the Canadian Energy Issues homepage
Nuclear and climate change stories have featured large in Canadian news reports over the past couple of days. You’d never know that the first is an integral part of addressing the second, since there wasn’t a single news story that linked the two issues. This […]