Highlights:

• 80.2 cents per kilowatt-hour for rooftop solar.
• 19 cents for offshore wind of any size (first jurisdiction in N.A. to set price)
• 13.5 cents for onshore wind of any size
• 14.7 for biogas under 5 MW.
• 44.3 cents for 10-MW-plus solar, sliding to 71.3 cents as projects scale down to 10 kilowatts.

The government will commence eight-week consultation process and expects to have the prices in effect this summer. More to come….

UPDATE: Here’s an article I just filed to the Toronto Star’s Web site. It contains more info regarding the proposed tariffs. Ontario introduced basic feed-in tariffs two years ago under its standard offer program, but project size was capped at 10 megawatts. The new advanced feed-in tariff program lifts the cap (though solar is still capped at 10 megawatts). It also offers higher prices for smaller projects, such as community-based wind and solar projects or residential solar. Most groups seem happy with the pricing with the exception of large solar developers, who despite getting a 2-cent increase to 44 cents per kilowatt-hour still argue it’s not enough to make projects economical (especially if you factor in poor Canadian-U.S. exchange rate and persistently tight credit markets).

Of course it remains to be seen whether this new feed-in tariff structure, despite being generous and being first on the continent, will be enough to attract investment, development, manufacturing and jobs. Curious to hear viewpoints on this.  Michigan introduced a bill last year that proposed similar advanced tariffs but it never got passed. Hawaii has proposed less ambitious tariffs, but Ontario’s will be first to go into effect and will be the most ambitious to date.

Such pronouncements are getting rather tired.

For one, the dot-com folks brought on their own collapse. No revenues. No profits. No real market need. Crazy valuations. Irrational acquisitions. Inflated pay. Too much partying, networking, and elevator pitches and not enough work that mattered. And the dot-com collapse wasn’t spurred by a larger economic decline. In fact, one could argue it was the bleeding edge of a decline that followed. The current situation is completely different. Cleantech companies and stocks that are struggling are caught up in a much larger decline sparked by a crisis on Wall Street. Some cleantech companies are fairing better than others, same as any other industry. One could argue the oil and gas sector has taken an even larger hit. To look at cleantech in isolation and start talking about a bust is, well, is a huge stretch. 

Emerging Energy Research just made the following statement today about solar: “Unfazed by the financial crisis, utility-scale and large commercial PV development activities in the US are exploding.  And with the October 2008 passage of an 8-year Investment Tax Credit, opportunities are expected to multiply in the years ahead.”

That doesn’t sound like a full-scale bust to me.  On the issue of declining oil prices and history repeating itself, let’s remember that oil — in the grand scheme of things — still isn’t cheap at $55 a barrel compared to what industry expected just two years ago. And more and more people are saying prices will be skyrocketing back up in 2009 and beyond as demand begins to creep up again and supply constraints become apparent again. The International Energy Agency says after 2010 the situation could become quite critical and we’re going to need massive investments in clean technologies to help cope with higher oil prices. It’s also expecting an average of $100-plus oil from 2010 onward.

The death of the green movement? Not a chance. Back in the 1980s and 1990s when oil prices were ridiculously low we didn’t have governments talking seriously about carbon taxes and cap-and-trade systems. We didn’t have groups representing more than $1 trillion in institutional investments demanding that publicly traded companies reduce their carbon footprint. We didn’t have a call for green-collar jobs as a way to stimulate the North American economy, or a U.S. president that made it a cornerstone of his platform. We didn’t have China to deal with, or Chinese leaders who understand that their current path to economic growth is not sustainable. We didn’t have mature solar, wind and other green technologies becoming cost-competitive with increasingly costly conventional options. We didn’t have an appreciation within larger corporations that being green isn’t about being a treehugger, it’s about reducing costs associated with inefficiencies, increasing profits and revenues, and staying competitive. We didn’t have an understanding, let alone a mainstream appreciation of the seriousness and certainty of global warming. We also didn’t have billions of dollars in venture capital being poured into cleantech startups, or an SUV-addicted domestic auto sector on the verge of bankruptcy, or blue chip companies like Wal-Mart and General Electric embracing the greentech agenda and providing a counter-balance to the powerful fossil fuel and nuclear lobby.

That fossil fuel and nuclear lobby, by the way, sees the current economic crisis as an opportunity to poke holes in cleantech as a trend that will go away like the hoola-hoop. It’s no coincidence that a number of conservative U.S. think tanks have released reports over the past couple of weeks arguing against renewable-energy and other green technologies and highlighting the incentives and subsidies behind them, of course conveniently ignoring the problems and subsidies that underpin our existing energy infrastructure. They tried this when earlier this year the world was in a tizzy about a global food crisis, and of course ethanol was to blame. A couple of months later this speculator-driven crisis disappeared after we saw grain prices, along with oil prices, plummet. People are still starving around the world, but now that we can’t blame ethanol, it’s like it doesn’t matter. Very sad.

So, let’s get over this discussion of cleantech as a bubble and appreciate that the trends underlying this sector will not go away just because of an economic downturn. Increasingly, the view is that cleantech will be one of the things that gets us out of this economic downturn.

Good on Quebec for driving this deal through. According to REC, it spent 17 months screening more than 100 possible locations in 16 countries. It then narrowed the list to 40 sites before going through intense due diligence. Once a short list was established it engaged in final negotiations. Certain jurisdictions, like Iceland or Quebec, have an advantage over others because they are heavy on renewables — such as geothermal and hydroelectric — and aren’t subject to fuel price volatility. This means they can not only offer power for cheap, but can also offer a price that stays the same for 20 years.