John Spears of the Toronto Star published an interesting piece the other day about the performance of Ontario Power Generation’s Pickering nuclear plant. Its headline reads “Pickering nuclear units among the most expensive, least reliable in the world,” but readers should keep a couple of facts in mind. First, as Scott Luft points out, price...
Ontario
Seniors and poor people on fixed incomes to pay mining company power rates in northern Ontario: how the Green Act shakes down in the real world
Cliffs Natural Resources Inc. wants to dig chromite, an ingredient in stainless steel, out of northern Ontario. The company wants to make money doing so, otherwise why would it be in business. To run its proposed operation in Ontario, Cliffs needs electricity. To make a profit, the company needs electricity that is cheap and...
Ontario about to add huge zero-carbon capacity to the grid: clean, cheap, reliable electricity
The biggest clean-energy news in nearly seven years broke late yesterday, when Bruce Power announced it is making steam again at Unit 2. The heat to make Unit 2′s steam comes from a 750-megawatt CANDU reactor. This machine “burns” tiny amounts of natural uranium fuel, and is one of the most efficient ways on...
Electricity and productivity: a basic truth that is being ignored
“The relationship between electricity and productivity is so important that it should be considered in developing federal… energy and economic policies.” Those words are from 1986, in a book called Electricity in economic growth: a report published by the National Academies Press. In the context of that quote, here is a question. Would you...
Earth Day 2012: time for greens to walk the walk when it comes to clean energy
Clean energy is energy that comes with no air emissions, and that comes with low or no lifecycle environmental impacts. By that measure, what’s clean? This: That public service announcement is from Energy Northwest, a public power utility in Washington state. I was in Gatineau Park last Sunday. The day started sunny but by...
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