UPFRONT

Ontario Liberal Plan A Breath of "Fresh Air"

As Ontario sets new records for electricity consumption and smog this past summer, provincial Liberal leader Dalton McGuinty unveiled an ambitious plan for cleaning up the air.

Anyone who dared ventured outside on any +30C day, was astonished at how bad the air in Southern Ontario has become. Global warming from greenhouse gases? Only US President George Bush would disagree.

McGuinty didn't need to be convinced how serious our air pollution problem has become in southern Ontario and politics being what it is, the air we breathe has breathed new life into the Ontario Liberals' hopes for the upcoming election. McGuinty has some statistics to bolster his argument and his election plan: doctors say smog causes 1,900 premature deaths annually in Ontario; it necessitates 13,000 additional emergency room visits; and costs the province $1.1 billion in health care and lost productivity.

He claims that Ontario Power Generation's five coal-fired plants are the biggest source of pollution in the province - casting them as "Enemy Number 1", and has promised that (if elected) he will shut them all down by 2007. There is some merit to his argument. However, more than half of Ontario's air pollution comes from U.S. power plants and other sources and no amount of retooling here would eliminate crossborder pollution.

With that laudable goal the centrepiece of the Liberal strategy - closing OPG's coal-fired plants would cut emissions of four of the worst pollutants by 20 per cent- McGuinty's critics are quick to condemn his clean-air plan. They claim McGuinty's proposed clean-power initiatives could not begin to bring sufficient replacement power on stream in such a tight time frame. And pointing to the province's inability to generate enough power this summer to keep up with demand, they warn that Ontario would suffer blackouts and huge price spikes if McGuinty were to follow through on his promise to close the dirty coal plants.

However, the McGuinty plan makes a convincing case that enough new power generation can be brought on stream to make up for the 7,500 megawatts (MW) of power now generated at OPG's coal-fired plants. Citing information from the Independent Market Operator, which oversees Ontario's electricity supplies, McGuinty notes that 4,500 MW of clean new power will come on stream in the next two years as a result of repairs to nuclear facilities and construction of natural gas plants already underway. In addition, the IMO has identified another 5,400 MW of new capacity from private sector natural gas plants that are now in the planning stage.

The fastest way, McGuinty says, to get these proposed plants up and running would be for Queen's Park to announce the closure of the coal plants.

Finally, the new government sponsored initiatives in McGuinty's plan - the addition of a third turbine at Niagara Falls, and the investment of more than $150 million a year in new renewable energy generators - would contribute another 1,750 MW, bringing total new capacity to 11,600 MW of power.

That, together with a new conservation plan designed to reduce Ontario's power consumption by 5 per cent, would appear to be more than sufficient to maintain a balance in supply and demand without the capacity of the coal-fired plants.

But, McGuinty's clean-air plan goes well beyond the elimination of coal.

In a welcome move, McGuinty would double Queen's Park's current contribution to public transit by dedicating 2 cents per litre of the provincial gasoline tax to municipal bus, trolley and subway investment.

And he would promote cleaner fuel by requiring the oil companies to introduce clean-burning Ethanol into gasoline - starting at 5 per cent in 2007 and rising to 10 per cent by 2010.

In this overall plan, there is a breath of fresh air in more ways than one.

Not only would the plan improve our air quality, but it would take Ontario three-fourths of the way to meeting the province's share of the country's obligations to cut greenhouse gases under the Kyoto protocol on climate change.

On the subject of Kyoto, this November, The Electricity Forum is sponsoring a forum titled: "Innovative Opportunities: Implementing Renewable Generation Technologies" where we will examine the political, economic and technical application of emerging small scale generation options into the current Canadian energy mix. For more information, visit:http://www.electricityforum.com/forums/courses.htm ET