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Author Archives: energyprbe
Mike Harris is forcing us back to Nuclear Power
Nuclear power is back. Mike Harris has played into the hands of the pro-nuclear lobby by stopping the emergence of a competitive market. As Harris told reporters on the day the government announced it was delaying competition indefinitely, he is resurrecting the Pickering nuclear reactors to keep the lights on in the province. Without competition, the nuclear industry is back in the driver’s seat.
Free-market energy: Privatizing Hydro is bound to make information scarce
Letters to the Editor
Judging from his track record of extending secret subsidies to industrial power guzzlers, using Cabinet orders to undermine the independence of our energy regulator, and exempting Crown-owned electricity corporations from Ontario’s Freedom of Information Act, Mike Harris is intent on keeping the public in the dark about key aspects of his electricity restructuring.
Free-market energy
Power to the People – that’s the title of a recent Royal Ontario Museum exhibit on the history of public power in Ontario. And real public power? Well, you’ve missed that too. In the real world, the electrical industry in Ontario slipped out of public control a couple of years back.
Power Crunch
When Mike Harris’s Progressive Conservative government announced plans to open the province’s power market to private competition, it looked like the moment Mike Dupuis had spent his entire life waiting for.
Electricity market to be open by May, 2002
Energy Minister Jim Wilson says Ontario’s electricity market will be opened to competition in a year – or about 18 months later than planned – and that consumers should be better off.
But some electricity-industry watchers say the further delay hints that the province lacks resolve. And the union representing Toronto Hydro workers vows to campaign against electricity competition.
Wilson has said a competitive market will attract investors who will build new generators and offer consumers better choices.
Harris backs power sales to U.S.
Ontario should consider building new power plants and sell output to an energy-hungry United States, Premier Mike Harris said yesterday.
But the idea revealed in the Legislature yesterday raised fears among critics that an expanded energy market would send Canadian rates soaring.
The Tory premier said he and Prime Minister Jean Chrétien discussed such a scheme after Chrétien met with U.S. President George W. Bush during last month’s Summit of the Americas.
Deal sparks controversy
Up to 70 per cent of the electricity from the newly privatized Bruce nuclear generating plant is destined for big Ontario industries, says the firm holding the lease on the facility.
Meanwhile, critics of the deal say the private lease could break Ontario’s electricity market wide open, forcing the province to open its power grid to U.S. buyers, and driving prices higher.
Watchdog blasts Ontario over rebate
Toronto – Ontario consumers may be unwittingly signing away a valuable electricity-price rebate to private utility companies, the head of an energy watchdog group says.
The market power mitigation rebate was created in 1999 to offset a potential rise in power prices once Ontario’s electricity market is opened to competition next spring.
Sales representatives from private electricity-marketing companies have been knocking on doors in Ontario for months, asking homeowners to sign on for a fixed electricity rate when the market opens.
Finding reason for hydro hike wasn't easy
The electricity you use this month will cost you 8 per cent more, thanks to an increase imposed by the Ontario government to cover rising debt charges.
The extra cost is $7.35 a month, or about $90 a year, for the average household that consumes 1,000 kilowatt hours of power a month.
With power rates unchanged since 1993, you might expect the government to make an effort to tell customers what’s behind the June 1 increase.
Think again.
Consumer rebates end up in utilities' hands
The province’s failure to educate the public on the changing electricity landscape is costing homeowners a valuable rebate, says the head of an energy watchdog group.
By signing up with private utility companies, consumers have been unwittingly signing away their rights to the "market power mitigation rebate" – worth an average of $130, says Tom Adams, executive director of Energy Probe.
Energy Probe 