I’ve heard from a few different sources now that Ontario may be considering imposing a moratorium on solar PV contracts issued under the feed-in-tariff program, and while any future backtracking by this Liberal government wouldn’t surprise me, I don’t think there’s any substance to these rumours. I may be wrong, but this appears to be a clear case of echo-chamber amplification. Sure, the Libs made an incredibly stupid decision by imposing a moratorium on offshore wind development. I say stupid for a number of reasons. One, it used the “lack of science” as an excuse to pull back, even though the previous moratorium on development was lifted precisely because the Ministry of Natural Resources said it was satisfied with the studies — the science – that had been done. Suddenly that science wasn’t good enough? Lame.

Two, it would have been more justifiable to impose another moratorium if the government had let developers keep the sites they had fairly secured. Instead, the government took the sites away and told developers that when the moratorium was lifted they’d have to start from scratch. Not a way to make friends of industry or to make investors feel comfortable in Ontario. It simply made zero sense to go that far, unless of course it was politically motivated — a likely explanation that is no comfort to the developers who put millions of dollars on the line and lost it all.

So, clearly the panicky Liberals are prone to making stupid decisions when under pressure by an opposition party that knows how to press its hot buttons. Will this be repeated for solar? If it was, it would IMHO completely sink the Liberal party heading into this upcoming fall election — particularly if it targeted small solar PV projects covered under the microFIT program. For larger projects, there is technically a moratorium in place. It’s called transmission restrictions, and it means only so many projects can be built in this province until transmission capacity is expanded to accommodate more. There have already been more project contract offers than the transmission system can accommodate, so really the throttle is the pace of transmission updates and the government, through Hydro One, controls that throttle. Better to make this fact clear to voters than to declare a moratorium that does nothing else but prove the Liberal party is on the run from a progressive energy plan it should be proudly promoting, with chest out and head held high.

For the record, I asked the Ontario Power Authority about these solar PV moratorium rumours and the agency flatly denied that a moratorium was coming. “OPA is not planning a moratorium for the FIT/mFIT program,” said spokeswoman Kristin Jenkins in an e-mail. “Right now, we are going through a process to issue contracts for the new Bruce to Milton transmission line which Hydro One recently received approval for. The developers that are eligible are the ones in the Bruce and West of London transmission areas on the FIT priority ranking list.  These developers did not receive contracts in the past because there was not transmission capacity.”

I asked as well about the planned two-year review of FIT pricing. Jenkins said the process will start in 2011, but she could offer no specifics on when. ”We will carry out the required two-year program review in 2011, but a date has not yet been set to start that,” she said. The sooner the better. (note: I deleted a paragraph from the original version of this post which messed up the dates of the upcoming review, leading me to an unnecessary rant. My apologies for the mistake for those who read an early version).

Ontario Progressive Conservative leader Tim Hudak has been great so far at telling Ontarians what he won’t do, or what he plans to kill. As far as what he will do, he’s pretty much a blank slate aimed at fueling taxpayer anger with misleading commentary. Sound familiar?

His latest press release makes clear that he plans to kill Ontario’s feed-in-tariff program and, associated with that, the Ontario government’s deal with Samsung to bring green jobs and green manufacturing to the province. “An Ontario PC government will integrate renewable energy into Ontario’s energy supply mix by ensuring the process is competitive and transparent and, above all, affordable to Ontario families,” Hudak says.

For one, Hudak is delusional if he thinks he can “bring relief” to hydro bills and at the same time assure a “competitive” and “transparent” market, as well as a reliable electricity system.  Bringing relief entails hidden subsidies that keep Ontarians believing they can continue to get cheap electricity while overhauling and cleaning up an electricity system that has suffered years of neglect during the 1980s and 1990s. Such subsidies will come from the tax base, so he’s going to steal from Paul to pay Peter. Great strategy.

Meanwhile, is he going to stop upgrading the power and transmission system and let it deteriorate? He once talked about aggressively building nuclear plants, at least until the disaster at Fukushima. Suddenly, Hudak doesn’t talk about nuclear as much, let alone the cost of building it (which according to a California Energy Commission report (see page 20, Table 5) is much  more expensive than relying on wind and other renewables). And even with an all-out nuclear strategy, that just won’t cut it. Deciding tomorow to build new nuclear plants means we still wouldn’t see that power until 2020. What do we do until then? Burn more coal? Burn more natural gas? Well, Hudak has also criticized the current buildout of natural gas plants, so I guess Hudak’s only answer is to kill the coal phaseout strategy and spend billions of dollars cleaning up half-century-old plants that, even with upgrades, will continue to spew CO2 (since scrubbers don’t capture CO2 and carbon capture and sequestration isn’t an option in Ontario).

The fact is Hudak doesn’t have a plan, has no concern for climate issues, and has abandoned many of the principles of the PC party to fuel anger and score votes. The little snippets he’s released indicate that his “alternative” approach will also come with a heavy pricetag and may be impossible, given the timelines he is constrainted by.

What Hudak talks about is likely to cost more, not less. He wants to scrap a smart meter program that’s already paid for. He wants to subject the government to potentially billions of dollars worth of lawsuits by breaking FIT contracts, at the same time making Ontario an even less attractive jurisdiction in which to do business, as investor confidence would be all but destroyed. He wants to take away green jobs and green manufacturing that is just beginning to gain momentum in the province. He wants to continue to use tax money to subsidize electricity rates. He wants to aggressively build nuclear, despite the risks, long-term buildout and rising costs.

Now, what would be a reasonable approach that still accommodates voter concerns? Continue nuclear refurbishment projects, which would keep the nuclear industry busy and folks working, but scrap plans for any new builds. Keep but rework the FIT program by limiting the size of projects, adjusting FIT rates lower (as originally envisioned under the program) and requiring that big projects (say, 10 megawatts or higher for wind, 1 megawatt or higher for solar) bid under a competitive process. Also, we should provide guidance to the market by setting a target for how much large wind, solar and other renewables we want on the system by a given date. Beef up the commitment to electricity conservation. And finally, follow through on programs that provide assistance to folks on low or fixed incomes, so they can better cope with what is a global transition to higher energy prices. The Liberals have failed miserably on this front and they’re suffering for it as a result.

Hudak is doing nobody any favours by misleading voters. Sure, some of his criticisms of the existing Liberal plan are fair and changes are necessary. But from what I’ve heard, Hudak’s alternative approach is no better from a cost perspective and certainly much dirtier.

A Los Angeles-based company called Rentech Inc. announced today that it is building a biofuels plant four hours north of Sault St. Marie, Ontario, that will be dedicated to turning forest waste and “unmerchantable” tree species into renewable jet fuel and naphtha, which is a chemical feedstock for making all sorts of products. This is big news for an Ontario steel and forestry area that was hit hard by the economic downturn. The plant, called the Olympiad Project, is expected to be operational in 2015 and will employ up to 1,000 people during peak construction. There will be about 83 direct full-time jobs once the plant is operational and over 300 indirect and “induced” positions — whatever that means.

Rentech’s approach is to gasify the biomass, condition the resulting synthesis gas (syngas), then convert it into jet fuel and naphtha using a Fischer-Tropsch process. The plant, called the Olympiad Project, is being designed to produce approximately 85 million litres (23
million gallons) annually of renewable and certified low-carbon jet fuel. Rentech will get its biomass from Ontario crown land through a deal with the province. In total, Rentech will have access to up to 1.1 million cubic metres (1.3 million U.S. tons) of Crown timber per year. The company has applied to receive up to $200 million in funding from Sustainable Development Technology Canada’s NextGen Biofuels Fund. That amount is expected to be paid back over time from project cash flow.

The ultimate impact of this fuel on the environment, according to Rentech, will be a reduction of 600,000 metric tonnes per year of CO2-equivalent emissions. “This equates to removing more than 100,000 passenger cars from the road,” the company says. The green jet fuel is “virtually” free of sulfur and aromatics. It has lower particulate matter, NOX and  SOX compared to conventional jet fuel (kerosene). The fuel is certified and was tested in 2010, though as a mix that contained 40 per cent conventional Jet-A fuel.

Anyone who has read this blog knows that I’m a big supporter of developing biofuels specifically for aviation purposes and adopting an electrification strategy for light-duty vehicles. We can’t electrify commercial airliners or military jets, so greening up those fleets will require some sort of biofuel solution. The bonus is that distributing this green jet fuel to airports is much easier than delivering to the thousands and thousands of gas stations across North America. Rentech, for instance, could do a deal with CN rail, which delivers jet fuel directly to Pearson International Airport in Toronto.

I plan to chat with Rentech’s CEO this afternoon to get more detail about where the company plans to sell its green jet fuel and related products. Also, next Tuesday, there will be a panel on bio-jet fuel innovation at BIO World Congress in Toronto. I plan to attend and will report back.

The study was focused on California, but new research from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory could give us a peek into how home valuations across North American are affected by the installation of rooftop solar PV systems. The research was based on an analysis of 72,000 homes sold between 2000 and 2009, of which 2,000 had rooftop PV systems at the time of sale. It found that, on average, the premium fetched through the sale of the home more or less matched the initial capital investment in the solar PV system. In other words, not only does a homeowner benefit directly from the clean energy produced while living in the home, but they get a return on their initial investment through the sale of their home. Looked at this way, it dramatically changes the economics of purchasing a rooftop PV system.

The Berkeley Lab research is the first to empirically explore the existence and magnitude of residential PV sales price impacts across a large number of homes and over a wide geographic area. “This is the most comprehensive and data-rich analysis to date of the potential influence of PV systems on home sales prices,” says co-author and San Diego State University Economics Department Chair Mark Thayer. The research controlled for a large number of factors that might influence results, such as housing market fluctuations, neighborhood effects, the age of the home, and the size of the home and the parcel on which it was located. The resulting premiums associated with PV systems were consistent across a large number of model specifications and robustness tests.

There’s no saying this research is representative of other markets, such as Ontario, where general attitudes and perceptions of solar technology are likely quite different from those in California. However, it’s encouraging to know that if a homeowner does invest in such a system as part of participation in the province’s feed-in-tariff program, there’s a good chance that if you decide a few years later to sell your home there’s some like-minded individual out there willing to pay a premium in recognition of the investment you have made. An Ontario-focused study, similar to the one done by the Berkelely Lab, should probably be done in the 2013-2014 timeframe. Perhaps this is something a university, such as Queen’s or U of Waterloo, should start planning.

The Ontario government, to my surprise, has caved to public pressure from a small group of anti-wind folks and backtracked on its previously stated commitment to encourage the development of offshore wind in the Great Lakes. It must be election time. This news release just came out:

Ontario is not proceeding with proposed offshore wind projects while further scientific research is conducted. No Renewable Energy Approvals for offshore have been issued and no offshore projects will proceed at this time. Applications for offshore wind projects in the Feed-In-Tariff program will no longer be accepted and current applications will be suspended. Offshore wind in freshwater lakes is early in development and there are no projects operating in North America. The recently installed Lake Vanern pilot project in Sweden is one of the only operational freshwater offshore projects in the world and a pilot project has been proposed in Ohio. Ontario will monitor these projects and the resulting scientific knowledge. Ontario will work with our U.S. neighbours on research to ensure any future proposed projects protect the environment on both sides of the Great Lakes.

It was three years ago when McGuinty confidently lifted a moratorium on offshore wind projects and declared that such projects, after extensive study and consultation with authorities on the U.S. side of the Great Lakes, could be done responsibly without impact to lake ecosystems. Then came the feed-in-tariff (FIT) program less than two years later, which broke new ground in North America by including a FIT rate for offshore wind – 19 cents per kilowatt-hour compared to 42 cents for large-scale solar projects.

The government has regularly trumpeted its commitment to offshore wind development, and Ontario was well positioned to lead North America in terms of attracting manufacturers and a supporting supply chain that could serve Ontario and the U.S. northeast. One project, to be developed by Windstream Energy, was actually offered a contract under the FIT program, while developer Trillium Power was quite advanced with its project development and preliminary studies and had worked hard to attract foreign manufacturers to Ontario. These companies and others must be furious, having invested millions of dollars already only to have the province do an about-face. I mean, is McGuinty admitting that the consultations and study done three years ago were bogus?

This sends a horrible message to the market. If the government can so easily backtrack on previous commitments, what’s next? What other projects will have their plugs pulled?

Offshore wind was the one truly new opportunity in green energy where Ontario had the opportunity to lead and capture the economic development that would come with it, as this Conference Board of Canada report recently pointed out. Companies such as Siemens and Vestas were seriously eyeing Ontario as a place to lay down their North American anchors. That opportunity is now gone. What’s odd is that it’s apparently okay to have a company like Talisman drill for natural gas in the middle of Lake Erie or to ship radioactive material from a nuclear plant through the Great Lakes, but we can’t erect wind turbines with proper setbacks from shore?

Meanwhile, the U.S. is picking up steam on offshore wind. Just as Ontario is backing away, Maryland is moving forward with legislation that would require its utilities to purchase offshore wind capacity. Virginia is getting its act together, as is New Jersey. The Obama administration has pledged to fast-track offshore wind projects in the mid-Atlantic. New York, Ohio, Michigan and others are all moving forward. Ontario, which had the lead, has decided to disqualify itself from the race and watch from the sidelines.

A truly shocking and disappointing development. There’s no reason why the government couldn’t have honoured its FIT commitments but put in place regulations that made sure only the best sited projects got built. At least this would have got the ball rolling, even if it was just one or two projects that qualified. Environmental concerns can be addressed without having to outright derail the train.