It is only a matter of time before the reality of Smitherman’s and McGuinty’s green legerdemain becomes fully evident. While wholesale electricity costs have been going down, Ontario consumers’ electricity bills have been going up.
A strategy to subsidize the province’s nascent green energy industry is starting to sting businesses and many households that find themselves paying the biggest markups on electricity pricing in the country.
Even as electricity demand — and market prices — dropped last year with the global economic downturn, electricity bills have risen steadily on the back of generous contracts signed by the province’s power planning agency. Now, the government of Premier Dalton McGuinty is preparing for a looming political backlash.
[…]
The government is sitting on a “political time bomb,” said Toronto energy lawyer Peter Murphy. “While renewable energy is a great thing for the environment, it’s also expensive.”
[…]
Ontario does not have the highest electricity costs on the continent, but it stands out for the gap between the market price of power and the price charged to consumers. Toronto ranked in the middle of the pack among North American cities, according to a study of consumer prices done by Hydro-Québec last April. But industry observers say prices will increase substantially in Ontario over the next two years as the cost of higher priced renewable energy flows through to consumers.
Green Grift 
January 9, 2010 at 10:36 am
It’s not like the government wasn’t warned. They chose ideology over science and engineering, objectors be damned. Now we will have to deal with the consequences. This is what comes from spending too much time reading Thomas Friedman and not enough time with a text on thermodynamics.
January 9, 2010 at 11:58 am
It is clear that the McGuinty government has been captured by extreme environmentalists with a take no prisoners approach to their pet issues like climate change. That’s what you get from listening to Gerald Butts.
As the article indicates, it is now up to Gerry Phillips to clean up Smitherman’s mess. (God forbid he becomes Toronto Mayor.) However, I don’t think he will be able to stop this insanity.
I sure hope Hudak and Yakabuski find an angle to communicate what is happening here before the next election. Otherwise, Ontario is destined to become an eco-backwater without any industry, with the citizens reduced to heating their homes with firewood and books because that is all they can afford.
January 9, 2010 at 7:01 pm
Greengrift, the truth always comes out. Look at what is happening at Richard North’s Eu Referendum website and his investigation of the financing behind Dr. Pachauri of the IPCC. This is by no means over and there is no way they are going to put this genie back in the bottle.
January 9, 2010 at 8:56 pm
Some interesting stuff at the site.
This is the first I’ve heard of Patchygate. Although the level of corruption is astounding, it is not surprising. It’s been a con all along.
January 9, 2010 at 8:13 pm
If there is anyone out there that can give any background on Butts it would be held confidential and used for nothing but good!
e mail anything to enviro2001@nexicom.net
Thanks…….this bad egg needs to be “cracked”
Quixote
January 9, 2010 at 9:59 pm
All I know about him is what I’ve googled. Tom Adams made a comment here some time ago noting he was once McGuinty’s Principal Secretary before becoming president and CEO of WWF Canada. There has long been a rather symbiotic relationship between WWF and the Liberal Party.
Butts obviously seems to have some influence. I noticed the other day that Coca Cola has partnered with WWF Canada, and is making donations to it on behalf of its customers.
One way to get at him is through his sponsors. I for one, will no longer be buying Coca Cola products, including their soft drinks, Minute Maid or any other of their products
January 9, 2010 at 8:20 pm
We think a lot of it is linked to the failure of the auto industry and McGuinty doesn’t want to face the electorate next time out without an alternative source of jobs and if it’s “green” too, he thinks he wins!!!
He has stated he wants Ontario to be the “beach-head” of turbine manufacture for North America.
Wrong! The Chinese and the Americans are way ahead. That said, they are retooling a plant in southern Ontario for turbine manufacture.
At the end of the day, this is short-term thinking no matter how you play it. It’s not about leadership and sustainable quality of life, it’s about getting elected again.
January 9, 2010 at 10:15 pm
McGuinty clearly realizes he has to be seen to be doing something, but I suspect he is going to retire rather than lose the next election. These elusive green jobs will never materialize in the numbers he needs to turn things around.
As it stands, the GEA is a disaster. There is no surer way to waste taxpayer money than by following a me-too industrial policy. If every country subsidizes the manufacture of wind turbines, no one will make money. The only winners are the jurisdictions that bow out of the competition. Ontario has no comparative advantage in making wind turbines. McGuinty has to go.
January 10, 2010 at 8:50 am
One of the saddest things in the debate of so called “green” energy is the fact that nowhere can one find how things such as Industrial wind, can lower harmful emissions, reduce the mining and burning of coal, lower or stabilize electricity rates, wean us from foreign oil, nor provide a timely and reliable product needed in a modern society. For these reasons, we should not be misguided by the Wind industry into thinking that these turbines will do anything other than provide a superficial feel good gesture, political move for the McGuinty gov’t to appear environmentally conscious and an opportunity for the “Windies” to make a lot of money off the taxpayer’s back. You constantly read how the increase in price of electricity is the price of progress. I say what a load of bunk! The subsidies the wind industry receives, do not reflect the quality of the energy product, it’s proximity to load, transmission congestion constraints, it’s ripple effects on the load balancing resources in our grids, it’s sprawl factor nor the value received for the energy tax dollar compared with other technologies. The industry’s statements, which have induced these subsidies, constitute fraud in my opinion, and until proof of benefit can be quantified and verified (measured), it is beholden on our governments to cease paying hard earned tax dollars to this industry. It’s time for a reality check.
February 13, 2010 at 1:32 pm
Soon there will be the need to subsidize the industrial wind production plants for the high costs of electricity caused by the industrial wind developments. I guess it ends when we go broke. This whole mess will be difficult to watch when struggling families are unable to pay more for electricity and are cut off. For them there will be no subsidies and no need for industrial windturbines.