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Author Archives: energyprbe
Will California's power struggle come to Canada?
TORONTO–With California struggling to avoid blackouts because of a severe shortage of electricity, critics say Ontario is in danger of making the same mistake.
The problem: deregulation.
In 1996, California introduced legislation some thought would become a model for other parts of North America.
The law allowed companies to sell power on the open market, with some of them making profits in the first few years.
Electricity deregulation
Tom Adams, Executive Director of Energy Probe will be discussing the pros and cons of deregulating electricity with other guests, and asking questions like: Should Ontario Hydro be resurrected, or was it a feudal fiefdom leading us to California-style blackouts? Whatever happened to conservation anyway? Can our power supplies keep up with the high-tech cyper-world driving our economy? What’s the future of energy in Canada and how will this impact Canadians, the economy and the environment?
Why deregulate?
While electricity deregulation has proved a disaster in California, it has been a shining success in Europe
Beginning in Britain in 1990, the trend spread through Scandinavia and then to other European Union countries such as Germany and Spain, all seeking lower electricity prices in a more competitive environment. Parts of Australia have also deregulated their electricity systems, and prices have fallen as a result.
Tories study California electricity crisis
Ontario is delaying its move to a competitive electricity market in the wake of blackouts in California associated with deregulation, Premier Mike Harris says.
“I think there are some steps that we are committed to do to achieve the advantages of competition . . . but our primary concern is for our consumers and industries here in Ontario,” Harris said yesterday.
Both California and Alberta consumers have faced brown- outs and unexpectedly high price hikes since their electricity markets were deregulated.
Delays hurting power consumers
Even the most inflexible free-market ideologue must feel some compassion for Ontario Premier Mike Harris and his Energy Minister, Jim Wilson.
The Ontario government has spent 5½ years carefully laying the groundwork for an open market in electricity. After numerous delays and course corrections, the province is almost ready for the big bang of deregulation, ready even for the outrage from homeowners when they see their energy bills shoot up.
Ontario's restructuring seriously flawed, Adams says
"Ontario’s electricity restructuring is degenerating into a liability for consumers, taxpayers and the environment … Restructuring has become a crazy quilt of beneficial and harmful ideas stitched together without an easily discernible pattern … Ordinary consumers in Ontario are going to be paying more for electricity … Many of the problems remain fixable, although in some cases time is running out." These are some of the dramatic charges made in a speech by Energy Probe Executive Director Tom Adams at a conference in Atlantic Canada on Oct. 27, 2000. Continue reading
Delay in new hydro market to cost $42 million
Delaying the opening of Ontario’s competitive electricity market has increased the cost of the new system by $41.8 million, according to estimates by the agency that will run the market.
The new figure pushes the total cost of setting up the market well beyond a quarter of a billion dollars, according to the Independent Electricity Market Operator (IMO).
Altogether, the IMO says the cost of installing the systems needed to track the complex electricity auction in a competitive market will be $285.1 million.
California power debacle seen as anomaly
With the meltdown of the meltdown of the California electricity sector, "deregulation" has become synonymous with blackouts, shockingly high prices, energy shortages and system failures. Fear and loathing of California-style electricity chaos have prompted one-third of the 24 states contemplating deregulation to either delay or back out of it.
In Canada, the government of Ontario is similarly stalling on deregulation, delaying the liberation of its electricity market from last year to this year to an indeterminate date in the future.
Reducing emissions not cheap
The article by John Spears on the cost of the delay in implementing the new hydro market quotes Tom Adams of Energy Probe as saying that under a competitive market the Darlington nuclear generating station would not have been built. But Tom, that’s the problem with the competitive market, we would have gone to the lowest coal provider, coal.
An equivalent sized coal station would now be spewing out millions of tonnes of greenhouse gases a year, together with all the other evils of coal combustion.
Harris critic loses energy agency job
A frequent critic of the Ontario government’s energy policies has failed to win reappointment as a director of a key agency set up to run the province’s new electricity market.
Tom Adams, executive director of Energy Probe, has not been reappointed to the board of the Independent Electricity Market Operator (IMO). He was the only one of six directors not reappointed to the IMO when their terms came up for renewal. The IMO has 16 directors in total.
Energy Probe 