Task force: spend $1.6 billion on Ontario smart grid over five years
Thursday, February 5th, 2009
It’s been a long-time coming, but finally the electricity sector in Ontario has taken a close look at what a smart grid might look like and what it will take to get us there. The Ontario Smart Grid Forum, made up of electricity sector executives and officials, released a white paper this week that, among other things, recommended that the province spend $320 million annually for the next five years on smart grid technology deployment — and that’s above and beyond existing budget allocations for grid maintenance, expansion and smart meter deployment. (See my Toronto Star article here).
It would be a decent chunk of change, at least measured against the pittance the federal government has allocated for the entire country — that is, some unknown portion of a $1 billion “green” fund spread over five years. In the United States, a stimulus bill under discussion would devote $11 billion (U.S.) over two years. (more…)
Tyler Hamilton is editor-in-chief of Corporate Knights magazine and a business columnist for the Toronto Star, Canada's largest daily newspaper. In addition to this Clean Break blog, Tyler writes a weekly column of the same name that discusses trends, happenings and innovators in the clean technology and green energy market. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005. It is not an official blog of the newspaper.
