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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Lucknow Sentinel, 2016-08-24, Page 14your,fmoments.ca For Obituaries call: 1-877-750-5054 Fax: 1-866-485-8461 e-mail: obituaries@yourlifemoments.ca All other moments call: 1-888-786-7821 Fax: 1-866-757-0227 e-mail: milestones.sun@yourlifemoments.ca Wednesday, August 24, 2016 • Lucknow Sentinel 15 Ontario electricity has never been cheaper, but bills have never been higher Ross McKitrick Special to Postmedia You maybe surprisedtoleam that electricity is now cheaper to generate in Ontario than it has been for decades. The wholesale price, called the Hourly Ontario Electricity Price or HOEP, used to bounce around between five and eight cents per kilowatthour (kWh), but over the last decade, thanks in large part to the shale gas revolution, it has trended down to below three cents, and on a typical day is now as low as two cents per kWh. Good news, right? It would be, except that this is Ontario. A hidden taxon Ontar- io's electricity has pushed the actual purchase price in the opposite direction, to the high- est it's ever been. The tax, called the Global Adjustment (GA), is levied on electricity purchases to cover a massive provincial slush fund for green energy, conservation programs, nuclear plant repairs and other central planning boondoggles. As these spending commit- ments soar, so does the GA. In the latter part of the last decade when the HOEP was around five cents per kWh and the government had not yet begun tinkering, the GA was negligible, so it hardly affected the price. In 2009, when the Green EnergyAct kicked in with massive revenue guarantees for wind and solar generators, the GA jumped to about 3.5 cents per kWh, and has been trend- ing up since — now it is regu- larly above 9.5 cents. In April it even topped 11 cents, triple the average HOEP. So while the marginal pro- duction cost for generation is the lowest in decades, electric- ity bills have never been higher. And the way the system is struc- tured, costs will keep rising. The province signed long-term contracts with a handful of lucky firms, guaran- teeing them 13.5 cents per kWh for electricity produced from wind, and even more from solar. Obviously, if the whole- sale price is around 2.5 cents, and the wind turbines are guar- anteed 13.5 cents, someone has to kick in 11 cents to make up the difference. That's where the GA comes in. The more the wind blows, and the more tur- bines get built, the bigger the losses and the higher the GA. Just to make the story more exquisitely painful, if the HOEP goes down further, for instance through technological innova- tion, power rates won't go down. A drop in the HOEP widens the gap between the market price and the wind farm's guaranteed price, which means the GA has to go up to cover the losses. Ontario's policy disaster goes many layers further. If people conserve power and demand drops, the GA per kWh goes up, so if everyone tries to save money by cutting usage, the price will just increase, defeat- ing the effort. Nor do Ontarians benefit through exports. Because the renewables sector is guaranteed the sale, Ontario often ends up exporting surplus power at a loss. The story only gets worse if you try to find any benefits from all this spending. Ontario doesn't get more electricity than before, it gets less. Despite the hype, all this tink- ering produced inkeringproduced no special envi- ronmental benefits. The prov- ince said it needed to close its coal-fired power plants to reduce air pollution. But prior to 2005, these plants were respon- sible for less thantwo per cent of annual fine particulate emis- sions in Ontario, about the same as meat packing plants, and far less than construction or agricul- ture. Moreover, engineering Farmers welcome rains; more needed Rob Gowan Owen Sound Sun Times The weekend rains that hit Grey -Bruce over Aug. 13-14 have manylocal farmers breath- ing a sigh of relief, but much more is still needed to bring the area's waterways backup. The Grey Sauble Conserva- tion Authority declared a Level 1 drought on Friday, Aug. 12, 2016, which comes with a vol- untary request that people reduce their water use by 10 per cent, and that remains in effect. "It is really the first rain we have gotten in August that has been any significant event, so it would be nice to get four inches in total in August," said John Bit- torf, the water resources coordi- nator with the Grey Sauble Conservation Authority. "That would take us out of the level." The GSCA's Low Water Response Team requested that the conservation authority declare the Level 1 low water condition statement on Friday after much of the area received below average rainfall over the last four months. The Level 1 conditions exist when precipitation for the last three-month period falls below 80 per cent of average or stream flows fall below 70 per cent of the lowest average summer flow. The main reason for the level 1 condition was that pre- cipitation was consistently below the 80 per cent threshold. While stream flows were not below 70 per cent, they were dropping quickly, according to the statement Bittorf said the rain on the weekendhelped, though it didn't bring the streams up much "The rain more or less soaked into the ground because the ground was so dry," said Bit- torf. "Any areas that we had larger systems might have got direct rainfall on it" Bittorf said rainfall amounts on Friday and Saturday varied across the GSCA's watersheds — which include the Sauble, Sydenham and Beaver River systems across much of cen- tral Bruce and northern Grey counties. "We had anywhere from a half an inch to an inch -and -a - half throughout our watershed;" Bittorf said. Meanwhile, the area's farm field greened up almost instan- taneously after the rains fell on Friday and Saturday. studies showed that improve- ments in air quality equivalent to shutting the plants down could be obtained by simply complet- ing the pollution control retrofit then underway, andatafraction of the cost. Greenhouse gas emissions could have been net- ted to zero bypurchasing carbon credits on the open market, again at a fraction of the cost. The environmental benefits exist only in provincial propaganda And on the subject of envi- ronmental protection, mention must be made of the ruin of so many scenic vistas in the prov- ince, rowince, especially long stretches of the Great Lakes shores, the once - pristine recreational areas of the central highlands, and the for- merly pastoral landscapes of the southwestern farmlands; and we have not even mentionedyet the well-documented ordeal for people living with the noise and disturbance of wind turbines in Les Nichols, president of the Bruce County Federation of Agriculture, said on Monday that in the Formosa area where he lives they received about two -and -a -half inches of rain, which definitely helps some of the com and soybeans. "There were some com fields that were really past helping very much, but a lot of the com and even more so for the soy- beans it definitely helped," said Nichols. "It is still not going to be record yields, but they should be improved:' Nichols said every day they didn't receive rain, the crops their backyards. We will look in vain for benefits in Ontario even remotely commensurate to the damage that has been done. The province likes to defend its disastrous electricity policy by saying it did it for the chil- dren. These are the same chil- dren who are now watching their parents struggle with unaffordable utility bills. And who in a fewyears will enter the workforce and discover how hard it has become to get full time jobs amid a shrinking industrial job market Electricityis cheaper to make than it's been for a generation, yet Ontarians are paying more than ever. About the only upside is that nine other prov- inces now have a handbook on what not to do with their elec- tricity sector. Ross McKitrick, Professor of Economics at University of Guelph, is Research Chair, Fron- tier Centre forPublic Policy. were looking worse, so the rains fell in the nick of time, though it would have been nice to receive it sooner. "The crops certainly aren't going to be what they could have been as they were off to a really good start," said Nichols. "It looks like they had capacity for record yields, but it certainly reduced those and we won't know just how much until the combines get there:' Ray Robertson, executive director of GreyAgricultural Ser- vices, said the second cut of hay is done and it was very thin, but there could still be athird cut Marking your milestones. Obituaries 1 In Memoriam i Thanks i Births Celebrations i More Coming Events Coming Events LUCKNOW PHARMASAVE SUMMER SALE ON NOW Ladies Summer Fashions 50% OFF - - Ex- cludes Bamboo and Incoming Fall Arrivals. Selected Summer Giftware and Wall Art up to 50% Off- Sale runs until supplies last! All Sales Final. Hours Mon -Fri. 9 - 6, Sat. 9 - 5. Located on Hwy 86, downtown Lucknow. Cards of Thanks Cards of Thanks ALLEN My sincere thanks to Lucknow Fire Depart- ment, Wingham paramedics, doctors, nurses, and CCAC nurses after my surgery and medical distress. Excellent professional care and response. Your prayers, cards, visits and phone calls made my recovery much easier. Thanks to all & especially nurse Win. -Karen Share your moment.. yourlift moments.ca In Memoriams In Memoriams KIRKLAND In loving memory of David Kirkland who passed away August 17, 2013. Memories are a gift from god That death cannot destroy. They never wear out, They never get lost And can never be taken away. To some, you may be forgotten, To others a part of the past, But to us who loved you and lost you, Your memory will always last. 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