Road transportation, mainly cars and trucks running on gasoline and diesel, is the single biggest source category of man-made carbon pollution in Ontario. In 2009, cars and trucks put more than 45 million metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) into our air. That was well more than double the output from the province’s electric power…
I have been part of a very interesting listserv discussion lately, on the value of reliable electricity. As I pointed out last article, in Ontario we have a topsy-turvy system for pricing electricity: we pay the least efficient and least-reliable generators the highest per-kWh price. The ones that have literally for decades provided affordable power…
Power prices in Ontario are on a steady upward climb, and if you think they’re bad now just wait. You’ll soon look back at February 2014 as the good old days. Ontario continues to add wind farms to the grid—the latest one began reporting to the system operator on January 30, bringing the total to…
Less than a week ago, the Ontario Municipal Employee Retirement System (OMERS), a pension plan, announced it will increase its share in Bruce Power. Bruce Power is a partnership that runs the Bruce nuclear plant, the biggest clean energy producer in the Western Hemisphere. OMERS’s representation in the partnership is by way of Borealis Infrastructure,…
My most recent posts on this blog have played on the theme of clean, cheap electricity as an environmental and societal benefit. Using the Electric Power Carbon-Price Matrix, I have compared electricity systems using the criteria of carbon emissions and price. I have proposed the C-P Matrix as the way for jurisdictions to plan electricity…
If you are a sentient and literate human being, there is no way you have been unaffected by the news about climate change. Some people might disbelieve the claim that there is a link between emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and climate change. But most believe it. They therefore agree that we should do everything…
Germany’s much-touted and -admired route to carbon dioxide (CO2) reductions has, predictably, proved to be an embarrassing and expensive failure. The bubble chart represents electricity data from 2010. As you can see, German electricity was, kilowatt-hour for kilowatt-hour, the second-dirtiest of the 10 jurisdictions shown on the chart. Only British electricity contained more carbon (two…
Reducing emissions of man-made carbon dioxide (CO2) is the Number One environmental priority facing the human race. Fitting this priority into the daily business of government has, in the sheer pressure of that business, taken some policymakers’ eyes off the ball. In those cases—and I will put Germany’s efforts to address CO2 emissions from electricity…
Why did NDP energy critic Peter Tabuns, in a very successful media blitz in which he attacked Ontario Liberal energy policies, not attack nuclear as the source of Ontario electricity price hikes? You would think that would be his number one gambit: it has been all along, including in a pre-election TVO Agenda debate with…
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