The real cost of renewable power in Ontario

If the electricity grid were a car, then we could describe it this way: during the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s, we were paying the lease on our brand new car. It worked well, needed little maintenance, and was seen as a reasonable expense.

After we paid the lease off, we still had a relatively new car that was very inexpensive to own, and required little maintenance. But, like all cars, it eventually either needs maintenance or will need to be replaced, and we’ll end up paying to fix it or to replace it.

In Ontario we’ve put off properly maintaining this “car”, and our electrical system is now going to be very expensive to fix.

The most recent Liberal government began those fixes (that’s part of why utility rates have increased in recent years), but previous governments of all stripes (Conservative and Liberal) had their share in neglecting the grid until it came to the relatively poor condition it’s in now.

No matter what we build or repair over the next decades, whether coal or nuclear or wind or solar, we will have new grid infrastructure worked into our electricity prices, and we will either pay for it on our electricity bill as $/kWh, or it will be subsidized by the government, and we’ll end up paying for it somehow through taxes.

Scapegoat

It is rumored that the Green Energy Act is responsible for rising electricity bills. This is simply not true.

The average Ontarian pays $0.13/kWh for their electricity, and most of the recent increases are due to upgrades for our aging transmission system, the largest portion of which is earmarked to help the privately managed Bruce Nuclear Plant (ie: our public tax dollars are paying to help this private corporation make more money off of us all).

In fact, the Ontario Energy Board recently reported that only 6% of the increase in Ontario’s average price of electricity is due to renewables: 45% is from nuclear, and the remainder is spread across gas/coal/large hydro and system improvements. Of the $0.13/kWh paid by the average consumer, $0.002 was enough to cover all the renewable energy currently connected to our grid system: only 1.5% of the bill! That includes wind, solar, and everything else, at only 1.5% of our electricity bill.

Wind and solar are not causing our electricity rates to rise: nuclear rebuilds and transmission upgrades are.