Power Choices: Designing an electricity system for a rapidly changing world looks at how we could redesign our electricity system to lower its climate impact, reduce costs and create new economic opportunities.
In 2016-17, the Wynne government will be revising the province’s Long Term Energy Plan. The current plan essentially ends further development of renewable energy in 2021, while prioritizing the rebuilding of 10 aging nuclear reactors. It talks about the importance of conservation, but doesn’t put mechanisms in place to ensure we pay a competitive price for power savings. It suggests we talk to Quebec about increasing imports of its water power, but makes no commitment to actually putting the infrastructure in place to allow us to maximize the savings we could get by tapping into Quebec’s growing surplus of low-cost electricity.
We really can’t afford to continue with such an illogical approach – from either a financial or climate perspective. That’s why our report outlines a better recipe: Combine strong efficiency and conservation efforts with low cost water power from Quebec and made-in-Ontario green power to meet our electricity needs in a way that lowers costs and emissions.