From the horse’s mouth: the Ontario PC plan to abandon green and go nuclear
Saturday, January 5th, 2013
Not that this comes as a surprise, but in case you thought the PCs plan to be gentle on the green energy file if elected, think again. Below are comments made on Dec. 19 by Progressive Conservative MPP Monte McNaughton, representing Lambton-Kent-Middlesex. McNaughton was speaking at a municipal council meeting, during which he outlined how his party, if elected this year, plans to obliterate the province’s feed-in-tariff program, including reneging on thousands of projects in the queue. It seems the PCs don’t just want to get rid of the FIT program, but are hostile to wind and solar power altogether and plan to alter course dramatically, starting with a moratorium on all green energy development. This would include a big commitment to build new nuclear reactors at a time when there is nothing but controversy around the high cost and long-term dangers of the nuclear option. In other words, the PCs would bring Ontario’s grid back to the dark ages with a false promise that doing so would cause electricity prices to fall, which couldn’t be further from the truth. As usual, McNaughton spews mistruths about the high cost of wind and fails to mention the much higher cost of going nuclear.But you can read for yourself where the PCs stand by reading excerpts of his comments below:
TRANSCRIPT of EXCERPTS:
On PC plans to get out of FIT contracts…
…we realize that when we make the commitment, we’re not going to build them, if they’re not built. So scrap the 50,000 projects that are in the queue. We realize that there is going to be a cost, our lawyers have told us that there are opt-out clauses and we sure as hell are going to pay those out because it’s going to be cheaper to pay them out than to honour contracts for 20 years. So we’ve been clear that we will not going ahead with however many projects are left, if we’re fortunate enough to form the next government after the next election. But clearly there will be a cost associated with that, but it will be cheaper to buy them out than to honour them for 20 years.
Secondly, I guess we’re not going to know the entire extent of all of these contracts signed until if we form government, until we actually get in and take office. That’s why we’ve been clear that in the 24 hours after the election, we’re going to call for a moratorium. But we are going to call for a moratorium almost immediately so we can figure where the hell things are at and how deep a hole energy has gotten us into.
We have been extremely clear that we are are going to end the wind & solar projects across this province. We’re going in a completely new direction. We’re not going to continue abiding by the special interests that are at Queens Park every single day of this government. We’re taking Ontario down a completely new path and we’re not going to continue what’s been going on the last 10 years. We’ve been crystal clear about it. We’re going to really explore Hydro. We’re going to expand nuclear … which isn’t that popular in a lot of corners. But we are going in a different direction including part of our energy supply is going to be buying energy from other jurisdictions.
Tyler Hamilton is associate publisher and editor-in-chief of Corporate Knights magazine and former business columnist for the Toronto Star. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005.
