Energy Probe

Karen Howlett
Globe and Mail
July 21, 2005

The record-shattering heat wave in Ontario has sent energy costs soaring in the province, leaving consumers facing higher bills next spring as the government moves to cover a growing deficit.

As things stand, the cost of buying electricity on the open market exceeds what the government charges consumers to run their air conditioners and televisions.

That gap is widening as this summer’s sweltering heat and high humidy drive up consumption levels, making electricity even more expensive.

The province has paid 7.9 cents a kilowatt-hour on average to buy power from generating companies so far this month, up from an average of six cents in the first half of this year.

Consumers, by comparison, are paying five cents a kilowatt for the first 750 kilowatt hours of power they use each month, and 5.8 cents for the remainder.

Contrast that to yesterday afternoon, when the price of power jumped to just over 53 cents a kilowatt-hour, a level not seen in some time but below the record of $1.02 back in September, 2002.

"Bottom line: Customers are not paying anything like the real cost of power," said Tom Adams, executive director of Energy Probe, a Toronto-based energy watchdog.

That is expected to change April 1, when the Ontario Energy Board unveils its new price plan.

The agency tracks the difference between what the province is paying for electricity and what it collects in revenue in a so-called variance account.

As of June 30, the account had accumulated a shortfall of $42-million over three months, up from $6-million in May.

Mr. Adams says the shortfall between the government’s revenue and costs could climb to $160-million by the end of the summer, a level that would allow the OEB to trigger a price increase for consumers before April.

Angie Robson, a spokeswoman for Energy Minister Dwight Duncan, said the prices set by the OEB are to cover the true cost of generating electricity and will be adjusted to reflect the unusually hot summer. She said any price increase would be partly offset by a rebate consumers will receive for last year, an amount that has not yet been determined.

Denise Harrington, an OEB spokeswoman, said she cannot say definitively that consumers will pay higher prices for electricity next year. But she acknowledged that this summer’s unrelenting heat wave is having an impact on prices.

"Definitely, the spot market prices are going to be passed on to consumers," she said. While a lot of money has been paid to power generators in June and July, the OEB does not know how the rest of the year will shape up, she said.

New Democrat Party Leader Howard Hampton said the province’s 4.5 million residences and small businesses are facing a significant rate increase next year. "If we continue on the path we’re on . . . it will be a rate increase that people will feel, especially those living on limited or fixed incomes."

While Mr. Adams said he is expecting only a modest price rise to consumers for the electricity itself, regulatory, debt retirement and delivery charges are also in every electricity bill. The OEB could also increase what is known as the wholesale market surcharge, currently 0.62 cents a kilowatt-hour, to recover guarantees and other premiums associated with importing power from neighbouring states and provinces.

As the hot weather pushes up demand for electricity, the province has had to rely more on expensive imports.

The energy-supply-shortfall problems emerged under the previous Progressive Conservative government. But they have not ended under Premier Dalton McGuinty’s Liberals, according to a recent 10-year forecast from the Independent Electricity System Operator, the agency responsible for managing the province’s electricity system.

PC Leader John Tory criticized the government for not having a plan to address the problem and leaving the province at the mercy of outside sources.

"It’s only going to get worse," he said.

"Unless there’s a lot of shovels put in the ground very soon to increase capacity for Ontario, we’re going to probably have continuing problems with supply and upward pressure on prices."

Doug Alexander
Bloomberg.com
July 22, 2005

Ontario is in its worst energy crunch in three years as a heat wave, record electricity demand and idled nuclear plants force Canada’s most populous province to rely on imported power.

Energy authorities this week asked residents to reduce consumption as temperatures climbed as high as 34 degrees Celsius (93 Fahrenheit), boosting demand from air conditioners. The maximum temperature in Toronto so far this month has averaged 30.3 degrees Celsius, or 3.5 degrees higher than the norm since 1971.

Suzanne Witlarge, a Toronto banker, has taken the warnings to heart. She turns off her air conditioner when she is at work and now sets the thermostat higher than usual when she is home.

"I’m concerned about a blackout," said Witlarge, 24, who works at Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce’s headquarters in the city’s financial district. "They’ve said if people are consuming too much power there will be outages."

Temperatures were above normal in late June as well, prompting three warnings from the power grid operator to cut usage. This is the longest power shortfall ever, based on the number of days utilities have been forced to import electricity, said Tom Adams, executive director of Energy Probe, a public policy research group in Toronto.

"We’re hanging by a thread," Adams said. "What we’ve got is the confluence of a bunch of factors, many of which are self- inflicted, that have pushed us to the absolute limit of our ability to keep the lights on."

The closing of a coal-fired power plant near Toronto to reduce pollution, the shutdown of two nuclear reactors and the heat have contributed to the crisis, he said.

The shortage has been front-page news. The National Post on July 19 said "Ontario Faces Outages," while the Toronto Star, Canada’s biggest circulation newspaper, had a page-one story on the costs of buying electricity from the U.S. The Star has a chart on its Web page with the province’s daily power supply and usage.

Ontario’s provincial government spent the past seven years reorganizing its regulated electricity industry, changing rates to better reflect the cost of power and encouraging companies to build natural gas plants and non-polluting power projects such as wind turbines to replace coal plants.

The 1,140-megawatt Lakeview Generating Station near Toronto closed in April as part of Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty’s election promise to eliminate coal as a power source by 2007 to reduce pollution. The government last month said it would keep the Nanticoke Generating Station, North America’s biggest coal plant, open until 2009 to ensure the province has enough power.

"We’ve been having the highest demands ever on the Ontario power system," said Paul Murphy, chief operating officer of the Independent Electricity System Operator, which oversees the power grid. "We’ve been managing to meet those demands but it’s really requiring all our resources, and we’ve been importing electricity from outside Ontario as well."

The hot and humid weather pushed Ontario’s power needs to a peak of 26,160 megawatts on July 13, forcing the province to import about 2,500 megawatts from Quebec, Manitoba and the U.S. The imports were at prices as high as C$1.23 a kilowatt-hour, or 25 times what homeowners pay under the government’s lowest subsidized rate.

While Ontario often imports power when it’s cheaper than running its own power plants, it rarely does so to keep up with demand, said Lisa Pearson, a spokeswoman for the system operator.

The province imported 4,273 megawatts during a heat wave on Sept. 20, 2002, reaching its import limit for the transmission system. The current shortage is the worst since then.

‘Critical’

"If this weather keeps up, it looks like we could be approaching a critical situation," said Matthew Kolodzie, senior vice president of utilities at Dominion Bond Rating Service, which follows Ontario’s energy market. "Things are getting tight. If you get another big plant down, there could be a problem."

Utility companies have been told to put off repairs. Ontario Power Generation, the government-owned utility, on July 18 restarted a 515-megawatt reactor at its Pickering plant east of Toronto that had been idled for 3 1/2 months for unexpected repairs. An 840-megawatt reactor at a nuclear plant on Lake Huron owned by Bruce Power LP has been out of service since May 8 and won’t be restarted until early August. Combined, the two generators produce enough power for about 1.3 million homes.

New Plants Needed

Ontario today has 30,114 megawatts of generation capacity. The biggest share is nuclear power, representing about 36 percent of total supply. Hydro-electricity accounts for 26 percent, while coal is 21 percent and oil and gas runs 17 percent.

Toronto could face rolling blackouts during heavy demand to stop transmission facilities from overloading, the grid operator said in a 10-year forecast released July 8.

They hope to avoid a repeat of the Aug. 13, 2003, blackout, when 50 million people in Ontario and eight U.S. states lost power after an unexpected shutdown of an Ohio generator.

"New generating and transmission facilities, particularly in the Toronto area, are urgently required over the next decade in order to meet the expected demands for electricity," the system operator’s chief executive, Dave Goulding, said in a statement.

Josh Pringle
580 CFRA Radio
August 13, 2005

It has been two years since Ontarians spent the night in the dark and experts say residents have not learned the lessons of the blackout.

It was a sweaty August 14th, 2003 when a fault in Ohio led to a massive power outage across Ontario and the eastern US.

The executive director of Energy Probe says the province continues to hit record consumption levels.

In an effort to avoid rolling blackouts this summer, Hydro officials have instituted rolling brownouts to conserve electricity.

Gillian Livingston
Ottawa Sun
August 16, 2005

The oppressive heat wave that prompted Ontario residents to crank up their air conditioners has subsided but it has left a costly electricity bill in its wake.

To date, residents on the regulated electricity rate plan have underpaid their hydro bills by $113.5 million for the period from April 1 to July 31.

At the end of June that amount was $42.1 million, but it skyrocketed after electricity demand broke records during July’s heat wave, and tight supply caused a dramatic spike in market prices.

"It’s a big jump," said Tom Adams, executive director of Energy Probe. "There’s going to be sticker shock."

Bill Rupert, the managing director of strategic planning and policy development for the Ontario Energy Board, said he’s not surprised the price of power has exceeded the rate residents pay because of the sweltering weather.

Normal forecast

When the board set prices earlier this year, it didn’t forecast such a hot summer, he said.

"Our forecast was really based on more or less a normal weather year," Rupert said. "We did not do our forecast based on an extreme weather year."

Hot weather and the need to use higher-priced natural gas electricity generation were factors that boosted the market price, Rupert said.

A household using 1,000 kilowatt hours of electricity every month for an annual total of 12,000 kilowatt hours would owe an extra $18.50 if it had to settle that bill right now.

But the regulated price residents pay won’t change before next spring.

However, the Ontario Energy Board will factor in the difference between what’s been paid versus the actual market price when the regulated price is examined early next year.

That amount will fluctuate depending on the weather and what effect it has on the demand for power and the market price.

The board said it’s too early to tell how this might affect prices in the future.

Fixed-rate plan

Ontario residents and small businesses are on a fixed-rate plan, so they don’t pay the market price like big industries do.

Ontarians currently pay 5cents per kilowatt hour for the first 750 kilowatt hours used, and then pay 5.8cents per kilowatt hour beyond that level.

The average market price since May 1 is 7.68cents per kilowatt hour, and the price so far in August is nearly 12cents per kilowatt hour.

Adams expects that over the next two years, overall electricity prices in Ontario, including the cost of transmission, will rise by 25%.

Rupert urged Ontarians to conserve when overall demand is high because rising demand pushes up market prices, and that eventually factors into the regulated price.

Doug Alexander
Bloomberg.com
August 18, 2005

Ontario Power Generation, the utility that provides most of the province’s power, will spend C$985 million ($807 million) to build a water tunnel that will boost production at a hydroelectric plant near Niagara Falls. see Niagara Tunnel Project.

The German unit of Austria’s Bauholding Strabag SE has received a C$600 million contract to construct the 10.4-kilometer (6.5-mile) tunnel, which will supply water to the Sir Adam Beck Generating Complex, provincially owned Ontario Power said today in a statement.

Construction is scheduled to start in September and finish by 2009, the utility said. The tunnel will let the plant, six kilometers downstream, boost production by 1.6 terawatt-hours, enough to meet the yearly needs of a 160,000-person city.

"It’s a step in the right direction," said Tom Adams, executive director of Energy Probe, a research group that advocates energy conservation. "It is a modest increase in output, but the operating costs will be low and it’s located close to places where consumers are drawing a lot of power."

Hydroelectric plants generally cost less to operate than nuclear power plants or natural-gas-fired ones, Adams said.

Ontario faces energy shortfalls in the next decade as it plans to shut down four coal-fired plants, which represent about a fifth of Ontario’s power supply, by 2009.

Austria’s ILF Beratende Ingenieure, Morrison Hershfield of Toronto and Dufferin Construction of Oakville, Ontario, and other Ontario subcontractors will be working on the project, Ontario Power said.

The additional C$385 million will be spent on consultant fees, interest costs, environmental work, insurance and remedial work at retired power plants at Niagara Falls, according to the utility.

Tyler Hamilton
Toronto Star
August 22, 2005

The Ontario government is preparing to unveil a program next month that would encourage homeowners, farmers, schools and community co-ops to set up renewable energy systems by letting them sell "clean" power to the grid at a fixed premium.

Energy Minister Dwight Duncan, in an interview with the Star, said the program would be limited to smaller projects, typically less than 10 megawatts, but over time could add thousands of megawatts of renewable power to a strained provincial grid being weaned from coal.

"We support it entirely . . . It encourages small businesses, farms, individual households and others to come to the table," said Duncan. "I would anticipate an announcement, probably in September."

He has instructed the Ontario Power Authority to investigate a workable pricing scheme and the Ontario Energy Board to look at necessary connection-policy changes that would ensure non-discriminatory access to the grid.

Ontario would become the first province in Canada, and possibly the largest jurisdiction in North America, to open its electricity system to small suppliers of renewable energy and pay a premium on each kilowatt of clean electricity it purchases.

In a letter sent last Thursday to both regulatory authorities, Duncan urged that work begin "immediately" with the goal of having an implementation plan before year’s end.

Duncan said the program would be open to solar, wind, biomass and micro-hydro projects. It’s largely expected to mirror a proposal submitted to the energy ministry in May by the Ontario Sustainable Energy Association (OSEA).

At its heart is a so-called feed-in tariff or "standard offer contract" that provides attractive fixed-price contracts, typically for a period of 20 years, and offers a right to interconnect with the grid. The idea is to price high enough to encourage production and have the premium spread across all ratepayers.

"I think people are prepared to pay a higher price for cleaner energy," said Duncan.

Paul Gipe, a U.S.-based wind-energy expert who recently served as acting executive director of the energy association, said it would be the most extensive policy of its kind on the continent, going beyond what California did during the 1980s.

"Ontario would be far ahead of any jurisdiction in North America, assuming it gets the prices right," said Gipe, who was lead author of the proposal.

The approach has been implemented successfully in Europe, allowing countries such as Germany and Spain to add a significant portion of renewable energy to their overall power mix while capturing early solar and wind manufacturing opportunities.

For example, most of the 16,600 megawatts of wind energy in Germany comes from small projects built since 1991. The wind industry is now the second-largest consumer of steel in Germany and is expected to employ 110,000 people by 2010, up from 45,000 today.

"There’s no question if the Ontario ministry of energy puts in feed-in laws, that puts out a powerful signal saying we’re in this for the long haul," said Sean Whittaker, policy director for the Canadian Wind Energy Association. "We’re very much in support of it."

Rob McMonagle, executive director of the Canadian Solar Industries Association, said he’s pleased the province is looking beyond wind and including other options such as solar.

"We just need some government to take the lead. Once you get that first major program announced, it opens up the floodgate for other programs to follow," he said.

Prince Edward Island has embraced feed-in tariffs, and Oregon, Minnesota and Washington states are moving in that direction. But experts say Ontario, if it can move fast on its program, can blaze a trail and capture the investment and industrial opportunities that come with it.

"This makes enormous sense," said Duncan, pointing out that it serves the dual purpose of meeting clean energy demands and sparking economic development.

"Somebody has to build the windmills. Somebody has to build the solar panels. Somebody has to build the anaerobic digesters. Right now Ontario is ideally positioned, not only to serve our own market, but to also serve the North American market."

Industry experts say many foreign manufacturers of wind turbines, eager to tap North American demand, are scouting out places to set up manufacturing and assembly facilities.

"What these manufacturers are looking for is a strong, stable policy message," said Whittaker.

Spain’s Ecotecnia, Denmark’s Vestas and Enercon of Germany are considered three of the most likely wind-turbine manufacturers to consider operations in Canada. Gipe said Ontario would be wise to court Enercon, which has labour-intensive technology that would make the biggest impact in terms of job creation.

Duncan said he’s had "fairly advanced" negotiations with wind turbine manufacturers, and while he wouldn’t say which ones, he said stimulating small renewable energy projects in Ontario makes the province more attractive.

"We shouldn’t miss that boat," he said.

The government has committed to closing down by 2009 four coal-burning power plants representing 6,400 megawatts of generating capacity. It plans to replace that power with a mix of renewable energy, nuclear and natural gas facilities as part of a more distributed electricity system.

To date the province has been focused on large-scale renewable energy projects, such as wind farms, which are selected after a formal request for proposals. Last November, the government announced 10 projects that would provide 395 megawatts of clean power, and it’s closing a second round of requests for up to 1,000 megawatts for projects of 20 megawatts or higher.

A third round announced in July for up to 200 megawatts is seeking small to medium-sized projects of less than 20 megawatts. The target is to generate 5 per cent of Ontario’s energy capacity from renewable resources by 2007, rising to 10 per cent by 2010.

In its proposal, OSEA said using such a costly tendering process makes it difficult for smaller projects to participate, even though many of these projects taken together can make a significant contribution to the province’s energy needs. Establishing a feed-in tariff would create a more inclusive environment, making it easier for any Ontarian to play a role in the province’s energy future.

"European experience indicates that small, distributed projects with community or local participation result in more renewable energy developed more quickly and increases the public’s acceptance of the technology," according to the association, adding that increased distribution of generation typically results in increased system reliability and reduced line losses.

Gipe, who consulted with farmers on the program, said he expects to see increased investment in rural Ontario, where wind turbines, biogas facilities and even solar photovoltaic systems would be ideally located.

"The farmers, they understand markets. Every place we went their question was, when do we start?" he said.

"I think farmers are not only a natural constituency for doing this, but they’re also a natural constituency for making this happen."

Monica Wolfson
Windsor Star
August 23, 2005

Enwin Powerlines paid $5.2 million too much for a new computerized billing system that it bought for the deregulated electricity market, an accounting audit shows.

Auditors also said Enwin mismanaged the computer project with poor planning and a lack of oversight over private contractors hired to design and program the system. Managers bungled the project by not making sure the system was delivered as ordered and on time, documents said.

The allegations are made in a KPMG audit used as part of Enwin’s application to provincial regulators asking to recoup $101 per customer or $13.3 million in expenses incurred when the city-owned utility prepared to deregulate.

The Aug. 12 petition is the second application Enwin has submitted. Last summer, Enwin asked regulators for $18 million, but withdrew the filing when new management took over the utility and discovered the application was inaccurate, said Mayor Eddie Francis.

"We are not going to recover this money," said Francis, who sits on the Windsor Utilities Commission, which oversees Enwin. "There is no reason the ratepayer should pay for something they had nothing to do with."

The rate filing asks for an average rate increase of $7.39 per month, if the customer uses 1,000 kwh of electricity. If approved, the rate hike, which includes an increase in distribution costs, will take effect May 1.

Employees who managed the computer project are no longer working for Enwin, said Enwin’s acting president and CEO Maxwell Zalev.

"We believe we are getting the confidence of our board and the confidence of our ratepayers," he said.

The sophisticated computer systems, which could bill customers the actual price of electricity as it fluctuated, are now useless because the price of electricity is capped, said Keith Stewart, smog and climate change campaigner with the Toronto Environmental Alliance.

In its annual report Enwin wrote off $6 million last year in anticipation of not being able to recover the entire $11 million spent on the computer system. Consumer groups said the loss should result in the City of Windsor receiving less revenue from the utility. But Francis said the city has been guaranteed it will receive its $1-million yearly dividend.

Enwin officials could not say exactly where the money came from to pay for the project. Francis speculated Enwin might have put other projects on hold while it set aside money to pay for the computer system.

Enwin’s request for $101 per customer is still double what most utilities requested, said Tom Adams, head of Energy Probe, an environmental advocacy group.

"Even the pared down claim is still very high," Adams said. "Enwin still faces a difficult challenge in proving even the pared down claim is reasonable."

Last year Toronto Hydro sought a rate increase of $48.71 per customer, while Ottawa tried to get $21.85 and London requested $66.74.

Buried in the rate application under extraordinary events, Enwin is seeking to recover $1.1 million in costs associated with a January 2002 ice storm. While she was unable to say how the ice storm was related to electricity deregulation, Victoria Zuber, Enwin’s finance director, said it meets the "criteria." Adams said he doubts Enwin will be able to recover the ice storm costs.

Enwin is not the only utility backing away from trying to get reimbursed for all its expenses, Zalev said.

"It’s not an unusual circumstance compared to other utilities," he said.

Toronto Hydro requested $32 million despite spending $44 million to get ready for deregulation. Hydro One sought $59 million even though it incurred $105 million in expenses.

Electric utilities were duped into buying fancy computer systems because in the chaos of deregulation, electricity officials didn’t know what they wanted or needed in the new market, Stewart said.

"There probably was mismanagement in a lot of places, but they were also changing their business models," Stewart said. "They didn’t entirely understand what they were doing."

Adams said that is a poor excuse for a utility that didn’t pay attention to how it spent the public’s dollar.

"Other utilities were able to do it for a reasonable cost," Adams said. "So I don’t accept that these were high costs utilities couldn’t avoid."

Karen Howlett and Omar El Akkad
Globe and Mail
September 16, 2005

Consumers in Ontario should brace for a double whammy of higher electricity and natural gas bills as a hot summer combined with energy shortages begin to hit home.

Consumers are now paying artificially low prices for electricity and natural gas. But that is about to change.

Ontario’s energy regulator announced yesterday that the shortfall between what the province is paying to buy electricity on the open market and what it charges consumers doubled to $228.8-million at the end of August from $113.5-million at the end of July.

This translates into an increase of between $28 and $37 a year for the average household, depending on consumption levels, said Bill Rupert, a managing director at the Ontario Energy Board.

He acknowledged that many observers are expecting higher prices when new rates come into effect next May.

"The lowest income people in Ontario are already being hit hard, and [Premier] Dalton McGuinty is going to hit them even harder," said New Democrat leader Howard Hampton.

The OEB also approved a 5-per-cent price hike this week for Union Gas, which has just over one million customers in Southwestern Ontario. Consumers are facing another 38-per-cent price hike to reflect soaring market prices for natural gas.

This week’s price increase does not take into consideration the effect of hurricane Katrina, or the sharp spike in natural gas prices in August, said Gregg Scott, a partner at Energyshop.com, an energy price comparison service. The increases associated with those changes won’t hit consumers until the next time natural gas providers can change their rates, Jan. 1.

"Consumers are saved for the first part of winter, but they’re going to get blasted in the second part," Mr. Scott said.

Ontario Energy Minister Dwight Duncan said he is worried about the impact of rising gas prices on consumers. "I don’t think Ontarians have really factored that into their winter budgeting," he told reporters.

Union Gas won OEB approval to charge customers about 30 cents a cubic metre effective Oct. 1. This amounts to a yearly increase of about $65 on an average customer’s bill, said company spokeswoman Andrea Stass. Enbridge, which has 1.7 million customers in Toronto and surrounding areas, is also asking to raise rates to about 35 cents a cubic metre. Both companies pass their costs directly onto consumers.

Mr. Scott said the companies based their recent projections on gas purchased at lower prices during the summer. That supply will quickly dwindle in the winter, he said.

The current market price of natural gas is about 44 cents a cubic metre, he added.

Tom Adams, executive director of Energy Probe, an energy watchdog, criticized the regulator for underestimating electricity costs. This summer’s sweltering heat has driven up consumption levels, forcing the province to import expensive power from the United States on many days to meet soaring demand.

"The bottom line is that the supply outlook is terrible, the demand outlook is up, up, up and the underlying bankruptcy of the power system is more ad more evident," Mr. Adams said. "This $229-million is a warning sign of higher prices."

Howard Wetston, chairman of the OEB, said in a speech this week that the regulator assumed normal weather conditions when it forecast that electricity prices would average just over 5.3 cents a kilowatt-hour over the fiscal year beginning last April 1.

"I cannot predict what prices will be next year," Mr. Wetston said. "Much depends on supply and demand conditions for the next six to seven months.

The province has paid 9.85 cents a kilowatt-hour on average to buy electricity from generating companies so far this month, up from an average of six cents in the first half of this year.

Consumers, by comparison, are paying five cents a kilowatt for the first 750 kilowatt hours of power they use each month, and 5.8 cents for the remainder.

Globe and Mail
October 8, 2005

A New Brunswick coal-fired power plant is the dirtiest power generator of its kind in North America, says a national energy and environmental research group.

The report by Energy Probe says New Brunswick Power’s Grand Lake station has the worst acid gas pollution rate among more than 400 coal plants on the continent.

The station has been operating since 1931.

The report also ranks three Nova Scotia coal stations – Point Tupper, Lingan and Trenton – low on the list, while three Saskatchewan stations – Shand Power, Boundary Dam and Poplar River – also fared poorly.

Two units from Ontario’s Lambton station ranked well, placing fourth and ninth among the continent’s cleanest.

Steve Erwin
National Post
October 10, 2005

Ontario has no plans to listen to "Neanderthals" who want the province to keep its coal-burning power plants operating, even if that’s what a report being prepared for the government recommends, says Energy Minister Dwight Duncan.

"We are moving to close the coal plants, period, full stop," Duncan said in an interview with The Canadian Press.

More than 80 per cent of the province’s power generation needs to be rebuilt or replaced over the next 20 years. The OPA has been meeting with energy industry stakeholders to determine what sources of new power generation the province should invest in.

Ontario is currently powered 49 per cent by nuclear reactors. Twenty-five per cent is supplied by hydro, 17 per cent by coal, seven per cent by gas and the remainder from wind and other alternative energy sources.

Duncan has said the government will agree to build new nuclear reactors should the OPA recommend it. But he says those lobbying the authority to recommend so-called cleaner coal technology and keeping the plants open are a century behind the times.

"I say to the Neanderthals . . . we’re moving forward responsibly to ensure that we clean up our air," Duncan said.

"We’re in the 21st century. They’re in the 19th century."

Air pollution remains a key concern in Ontario. Fifty smog advisories have been issued for the province this year, including a rare October advisory issued last week.

"I am sick and tired of having smog days in October," he said. "We had a smog day in February. We’ve had smog days in Algonquin Park." He’s also unimpressed with a report by Energy Probe, a national energy and environmental research group, which last week listed two Ontario coal-fired plants as being among the cleanest in North America.

"So we may have among some of the better of the worst forms of energy producers in North America. Who cares?" Duncan said. "We want to get rid of them. It’s the equivalent of taking every vehicle, every car and every light truck off the road in this province."

Duncan’s resistance to coal is a mistake, argues Energy Probe executive director Tom Adams.

Adams wants the province to keep at least two units at its Lambton station, south of Sarnia in southern Ontario, which rank fourth and ninth out of 403 in the report’s list of the cleanest plants on the continent.

Adams argues that closing the units would end up requiring the province to import coal-fired power from the United States, which would "exacerbate adverse environmental and human health impacts to Ontarians." Adams said some of the dirtiest coal-fired generators are in American states neighbouring Ontario: the Picway and Richard Gorsuch stations in Ohio and the AES Greenridge station in New York.

According to Power Workers’ Union president Don Mackinnon, the province can refurbish its coal plants with "the latest and greatest" clean technology for $3.3 billion. Mackinnon says that’s $1.8 billion cheaper than it would cost to replace coal plants with natural gas.

"We’re trying to convince the OPA and the government to rethink this," says Mackinnon, whose union represents some 1,200 coal plant workers in Ontario.

"I’m hoping the OPA will keep the door open on it. But in the end, all they can do is make a recommendation. The minister has the power to issue a directive with regards to the supply mix."

The David Suzuki Foundation has maintained renewable energy, such as wind, biomass, solar and geothermal sources, can replace the power that will be lost by shutting down coal plants.

"Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the direction that the Ontario government is taking," said Dale Marshall, the foundation’s climate change policy analyst.

Marshall said he believes the province has pre-determined it will look to more nuclear power to address future supply concerns.

He said that’s a multibillion-dollar mistake that will raise further environmental debates about the storage of nuclear waste.