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Category Archives: Reforming Ontario’s Electrical Generation Sector
Hydro revises target for nuclear division
Performance sliding: Production shortfall means $60M hit to bottom line Ontario Hydro appears to have moved the goal posts for its troubled nuclear division by lowering its 1998 nuclear production target.
The adjustmen allows Hydro to say that it has met and exceede its target.
Based on its original target, Hydro had a production shortfall of 3.4% or an estimated $60-million in lost production. Instead, Hydro lowered its target by about 10% and is now saying its 1998 production was ahead of target by 6.4%.
Ontario Hydro's smog-causing emissions up 30% in ‘98
Ontario Hydro’s emissions of nitrogen oxide from its coal and oil-fired units jumped by 30% in 1998, from 43 kilotonnes in 1997 to 56 kilotonnes, based on preliminary data from Ontario Hydro.
Ontario Hydro’s emissions of sulphur dioxide also increased by 15% in 1998 from 124 kilotonnes in 1997 to 143 kilotonnes.
Nitrogen oxide emissions are rising against a backdrop of the utility’s commitment to decrease nitrogen oxide emissions to 38 kilotonnes in the year 2000.
Hydro creates more smog
Ontario Hydro spewed more smog causing gases in 1998 despite promising to slash emissions by 2000. With eight of its 20 nuclear reactors shut down, and the rest requiring more down time than planned, Hydro stepped up its use of coal, which creates air pollution. In 1997, Hydro’s coal fired stations produced 43,000 tonnes of nitrogen oxide fumes. Last year that total jumped to 56,000 tonnes. “We were breathing a lot more pollution,” said Tom Adams of Energy Probe. Continue reading
Power play: Why did Mike Harris take a pass on his biggest privatization candidate-Ontario Hydro
When Mike Harris strode to the apex of Ontario political power that summer of 1995, the agenda, as it was, was crystal clear. Centrally directed economies: bad. Turbo capitalism: good. The ideology was textbook – an affectless pursuit of deficit-slashing and ledger-balancing; the reduction of the high cost of government not just by paring services, but by swapping public debt for private equity.
Power Play
Why did Mike Harris take a pass on his biggest privatization candidate – Ontario Hydro, the country’s largest electrical utility?
Energy Probe's first NP article on municipal distribution rate increases
Ontario’s municipal electric utilities – Toronto Hydro, Ottawa Hydro and other local distribution companies that deliver power to city consumers – will be allowed to raise their rates to the average customer by about one-third next year under a proposed Ontario Energy Board staff plan.
Pickering groups want full hearings
Efforts to reopen Canada’s oldest nuclear power plant — shut down for two years — aren’t receiving enough scrutiny because the federal government refuses to put the project through a full environmental assessment hearing, say groups of citizens who live near the plant.
Community groups want the government to impose a full series of public hearings and not what they call a "whitewash" review of plans by Ontario Power Generation to resume operations at its Pickering A nuclear facility, east of Toronto.
Electricity restructuring is degenerating into a nightmare on consumers
Mike Harris’s electricity restructuring is degenerating into a nightmare attack on consumers, taxpayers, and the environment. Continue reading
Environmentalists victorious in fate of coal-burning plants
re. "Environmentalists victorious in fate of coal-burning plants" May 18, 2000
The Ontario government’s moratorium on the sale of coal-fired power stations unnecessarily increases the cost of cleaning Ontario’s air.
The Harris government’s coal-fired power station sale moratorium appears to be based on the theory that emissions from government-owned stations do less harm than emissions from privately owned stations. It may be no coincidence that the sale moratorium strengthens the monopoly of the government’s power generation company.
Energy Probe 