-
Support our campaign
to stop disastrous global
warming policies!
Getting Zapped: Ontario electricity prices increasing faster than anywhere else
Read Our Report On Wind Subsidies in Ontario
Author Archives: energyprbe
Outcry in Ontario over energy prices
Across much of North America this fall, electricity bills are being held in check by a slack economy and intense competition among producers. But not in Ontario, where politicians are scrambling to quell a public outcry over soaring power prices.
Six months after deregulating its power market in hopes of promoting competition and encouraging investment in new capacity, the government of Ontario, Canada’s most populous and industrialized province, backtracked late Monday and said it would freeze retail electricity rates for the next four years.
Study finds power rebate will cost Ontario dearly
The Ontario government will have to raise taxes or cut spending by more than $800-million to pay for its planned rebate to power customers, a new analysis shows.
Premier Ernie Eves has said the government’s plan to freeze power prices to 2006 and rebate consumers retroactively will be covered from money set aside by Ontario Power Generation in a consumer-protection fund. He has insisted that taxpayers will not be on the hook for the rebate.
Focus Ontario
On Saturday, Nov. 16, Energy Probe‘s Tom Adams joined Guy Giorno, former Chief of Staff and counsel to Mike Harris, to take a closer look at recent events in Ontario’s tumultuous energy market on Global-TV’s Focus Ontario program.
The following is a transcript of this discussion.
VOICEOVER: From Global News, this is Focus Ontario with Graham Richardson.
Bruce sale talks spark fears
British Energy confirms it’s trying to unload 82% stake
Cash-strapped British Energy PLC confirmed yesterday it’s in talks to sell its 82 per cent stake in Bruce Power, the nuclear generating station on Lake Huron that is Ontario’s largest electricity provider.
The move raised concerns on at least two fronts – that the potential buyers have no experience running nuclear power plants and that blackouts could result next summer if Bruce Power’s $400 million plan to restart two reactors is delayed by the sale.
Bruce Power deal close, chief says
Negotiations to buy out Bruce Power’s troubled majority partner British Energy are "quite far advanced," Bruce Power’s chief executive Duncan Hawthorne said in an interview yesterday.
Bruce Power has been in discussions with a group led by Cameco Corp. to buy out British Energy’s 82.4 per cent stake.
"Before Christmas, I think we’ll have made a pretty clear announcement of where we are," Hawthorne said.
Public outcry inspires electricity price cap
Market players were flummoxed following Premier Ernie Eves’ November 11th intervention in the competitive electricity market. Most participants were expecting a rebate, but few, if any, foresaw a dramatic 4.3 cent per kilowatt-hour (kWh) price cap.
Ontario Hydro: gone but not forgotten
Taxpayer-backed electricity liabilities, which the government promised would begin shrinking and would soon disappear, are rising. The basic facts of this issue and the underlying problems related to taxpayer electricity debt are not widely enough understood.
New market fails to keep up with supply and demand
Earlier this year, Ontario opened its electricity market to competition. Consumers could buy their power from municipal utilities or from a retailer licensed by the Ontario Energy Board, a government body that regulates transmission and distribution rates. 
Energy minister under fire
Ontario’s energy minister was accused yesterday of being cavalier about the province’s supply of electricity.
During debate in the Legislature, NDP Leader Howard Hampton was questioning the government about keeping secret the names of power companies that suspend electricity production and increasing fears of blackouts or brownouts.
Bright lights, big pity
Energy industry watcher Tom Adams has a dream. Someday, he hopes, the provinces of Canada will rise up and live out the true meaning of energy market deregulation. In his ideal world, individual and corporate consumers alike would pay bills based on the actual price of the power they use at the time they use it. Residential users would say goodbye to that robotic-looking, glass-faced device that some folks (those who know watts from volts) call the Ferraris disk meter, which was invented in 1890 and has lived well past its best-before date. Why? Continue reading
Energy Probe 