Premier Doug Ford loves to talk about saving Ontarian’s money. But the money the average Ontarian saves on things like licence plate stickers is chump change compared to the costs being piled onto our electricity system by the government’s high-cost choices.
Premier Ford’s enthusiastic support for high-risk, high-cost nuclear projects is a perfect example. The best-case scenario for Ontario Power Generation’s (OPG’s) proposed new Darlington reactors is power at twice the cost of building solar and wind with storage today. And that’s if everything goes well with a technology that only exists on paper and does not even have a working prototype. Of course, every new nuclear project in Ontario’s history has gone massively over budget.
To fill the gap while OPG pursues its expensive dream of nuclear expansion, Ontario will turn to polluting gas plants. New gas-fired peaker plants don’t just pollute our air and wreck our climate, they also come with eye-watering costs: at least four times the cost of paying customers to shift some of their electricity demand from peak to off-peak periods.
Meanwhile, we under-spend on efficiency measures that are simply the lowest cost way to keep our lights on while also reducing individual bills.
It all adds up to inevitable – and steep – cost increases for an inefficient, inflexible and outdated electricity system – costs that will be paid by all of us for decades to come and that will add to the already massive bill being shouldered by taxpayers for previous nuclear follies.
If Doug Ford is serious about making life affordable for the people of this province, he would order his new Energy Minister, Stephen Lecce, to triple Ontario’s solar and wind generation by 2035. Send your message to Minister Lecce here.
Choosing the lowest cost, most climate friendly energy options is just common sense after all.