Ontario Power Generation released its second-quarter earnings on Friday and, little surprise, the province’s largest power generator saw its output drop by 19 per cent compared to a year earlier. A similar plunge was seen in the first quarter. Some of this drop has to do with conservation, good weather, and increased supply from private supplier of wind and gas-fired generation, but a big chunk has to do with the recession and its impact on a manufacturing-heavy province like Ontario.

But there is a silver lining. Ontario Power Generation saw its fossil-fuel generation, mostly coal, fall by a whopping two-thirds. It means that during the second quarter 91 per cent of electricity generated by OPG was free of greenhouse gases and other smog-causing emissions, thanks to our hydroelectric and nuclear fleet.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could hold the line on emissions as the economy recovers? (more…)

Ontario Power Generation, the province’s power utility, issued today a “call for expressions of interest” to potential suppliers of biomass fuel, which could include agricultural residues, dedicated non-food crops, and forest waste. Read the story here. The company said it wants to find out if there’s enough biomass in the province for it to convert several of its coal-fired generating units in Ontario so they can burn 100 per cent biomass instead of coal. They also want to get a sense of how it would be collected and delivered and how much all that would cost. To assist the effort, the Ministry of Natural Resources put out its own call for interest to see what companies would be interested in harvesting biofibre — tree branches and tops, diseased and fire-damaged trees, etc. — from sustainably managed crown forests.

I wrote about the government’s coal-to-biomass power generation strategy last fall and it appears to be gaining some momentum. It’s an ambitious project. Not just from a technical perspective, in terms of the actual plant conversion, but perhaps even more so from a logistical perspective. (more…)

My Clean Break column today takes a closer look at efforts by Ontario Power Generation to convert some of its coal-fired generating assets into biomass-burning power plants, including potentially several units at its Nanticoke Generating Station – North America’s largest coal plant. The provincial Liberal government has vowed to shut down the last of Ontario’s coal plants by 2014, and biomass conversion is being seriously considered as a way of partially getting there. It’s an ambitious undertaking, given the scale of such a project, but successfully making it happen would solve many problems with one solution. (more…)