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Author Archives: energyprbe
The Future of Hydro Privatization, Market Pricing, and Restructuring in Ontario
The privatization, market pricing and restructuring of Ontario Hydro was the topic of a recent St. Lawrence Centre Forum.
Panelists: Tom Adams: Executive Director, Energy Probe, and formerly both an independent director of the Ontario Independent Electricity Market Operator and member of the Ontario Market Design Committee.
Howard Hampton: Ontario NDP Leader and Energy Critic, MPP for Kenora Rainy River.
Brascan buys four OPG hydro plants
Ontario’s electricity market has inched closer toward a competitive model with the sale of four previously government-owned hydro-electric generating plants to a private operator.
Ontario Power Generation announced yesterday it has sold four plants in northern Ontario to a division of Toronto-based Brascan Corp. for $340 million.
The sale reduces OPG’s dominance in the marketplace by just 2 per cent. Four other OPG plants remain on the auction block with uncertain prospects.
Canadian Property Management
Energy Probe’s complaints against the infomercial, "Ontario’s Electricity: Lighting the way to a brighter future, A special supplement on Ontario’s new electricity market," published in the Globe and Mail on March 11, 2002.
Local utilities deliver electricity and unbundled bills
If May 1 seemed anticlimactic, that’s only what insiders at local utility companies had expected. They’re gearing up for more intensive consumer reaction after the first new-look electricity bills are mailed out later this summer.
Protect small customers and the environment
All across Canada, big business is fighting to bolster the provincial Hydro monopolies, and the subsidized rates big business gets at your expense.
In British Columbia, big business – especially the major polluters – are livid at the new government’s proposal for market pricing. The corporate opponents of a modern power system include many of B.C.’s largest resource companies, including Teck Cominco, Scott Paper, Canadian Forest Products and the corporate lobbies, the Mining Association of British Columbia and the Council of Forest Industries.
Hydro privatization unplugged by ruling
TORONTO — An Ontario judge has ruled that the province cannot sell Hydro One, throwing the largest privatization in Canadian history into turmoil.
Mr. Justice Arthur Gans of the Ontario Superior Court ruled yesterday that the 1998 legislation creating the utility did not permit the government to sell it.
Hydro One, created through the breakup of Ontario Hydro, operates the second-largest electrical transmission system in North America, serving 1.2 million people.
Electric power firms open wallets for Tories
Donations surge as hydro goes private
Almost a million dollars have flowed to the governing Conservatives since 1995 from companies and individuals with interests in the new privatized electricity market.
More than half came in after Jim Wilson, energy minister before a cabinet shuffle last week, announced the government’s electricity revolution in 1997. Industry players even funnelled thousands of dollars to Wilson’s riding association.
Power for the people
ONTARIO — It’s a lot more complicated than throwing a switch.
As of May 1, Ontario residents will face the confusing and even frightening reality of a free electricity market.
Utility customers used to getting power from one company, be it convenient or irritating, will now have to choose between sticking with that company or signing with a licensed retailer promising deals that may or may not save them money depending on where the market goes.
Court decision won't hinder deregulation, ministry says
Last week’s court decision blocking the sale of Hydro One will not affect plans to open the electricity market to retail competition May 1, government officials insist.
"It’s full steam ahead," said Shane Pospisil, director of communications at the Ontario Ministry of Environment and Energy.
The sale of Hydro One and the deregulation of the electricity commodity market are related issues, but the one does not directly affect the other, Pospisil said.
Bide your time, expert advises consumers
Electricity marketers may offer customers stable prices in an uncertain power market, but for now it makes sense not to sign any long-term contracts, says the head of a Toronto-based energy watchdog group.
While he has nothing against the private retailers who will be selling Ontarians power starting May 1, Tom Adams, executive director of Energy Probe, believes that at the moment the market favours those who sit and wait.
Energy Probe 