The Agenda (TVO)
October 1, 2007
Energy Probe‘s Norm Rubin made a strong appearance as a guest on this episode of TVO’s The Agenda, which aired on October 1, and can be viewed in full at: www.tvo.org/cfmx/tvoorg/theagenda/index.cfm?page_id=43.
The following points summarize Norm’s main arguments in regard to the energy policies of the various parties, in the lead-up to Ontario’s provincial elections (Norm appears a third of the way through the video):
Electricity is too important and complex a business to be run at the intellectual level of question period and election slogans. "Coal bad; all else good" is a good example of a stupid policy that makes a pretty good slogan.
Policies to protect health and the environment from nasty emissions should do so directly, rather than pick on energy technologies.
Central planning and 25-year plans don’t work any better for electricity than they do for an entire economy.
There are huge and rapid technological changes on the electricity horizon, including revolutions in solar power, as well as probably wind. Smart investors would never bet against them, but the central 25-year planners could never include them in their plans.
Conservation – improvements in Ontario’s electricity efficiency – have already dwarfed many billions of dollars of generating-capacity additions, and could continue to make a huge difference.
Shutting down all the coal plants, and replacing them, largely with new natural-gas plants, is economically ruinous, and environmentally a waste of time and money.
Replacing coal with nuclear energy is impossible, if the lights are going to stay on.
Energy Probe 