Smart Meters and Stupid Policies, part 3:
Backdoor Nukes
A NETWIT special report
NEW IMPROVED HEAD is pleased to present the last of a new three-part series from the experts at the NETWork Interested In Telling-it-like-it-is. The first instalment was about how yet another government plan to reduce debt isn't reducing it. Last week's instalment was about how Ontario's plan to introduce smart meters is doomed to failure. The finale looks at the Ontario government's vision of future sources of power.We've already mentioned the Ontario Power Authority (OPA). This is positioned by the Libs as the centrepiece of their strategy to ensure that there is enough capacity to meet Ontario's long term electricity needs. If this is their actual plan, then, we say: Ontarians, invest in Honda generators and candles.The real plan, however, seems to be to revive Ontario Power Generation and the CANDU reactor system. Since no one, yet, will come out and say this, we have to infer from the available evidence.
Item: The Canadian Nuclear Association (CNA), under the leadership of powerhouse Lib Murray Elston, former Peterson-era Minister of Health and of Management Board, is spinning the following message: Yes, we all love renewables and energy efficiency but those, alas, will not be enough (take out onion, wailing violins rise); we, the nuclear industry will have to save youse.Item: OPA is designed to ensure that, consistent with the CNA line, efficiency and renewable energy will never amount to more than a hill of beans. Headed by Jan Carr and Chief Conservation Officer, Peter Love, whose collective fame is widespread among consultants who live in Rosedale and environs, the OPA aims to have no less than 100 warm bodies. This to replace the 30,000 strong Ontario Hydro as a credible guarantor of multibillions of bonds to be sold to the hardest-headed pension and mutual funds and insurance corps. We don't think so. This isn't even a credible Plan D. People who buy 30 year bonds denominated in billions demand a lot of comfort.
In addition, the announcement of the smart meter initiative is the death-knell for the Chief Conservation Officer before his first year is out. If he agreed with the announcement, the expiry of that office should be celebrated rather than mourned. If not, he was an ineffective lobbyist. By tying the Lib flag to the mast of metering, energy efficiency is relegated to the familiar wasteland of relying on price effects. The only way energy efficiency will become equivalent to the supply options is to become an equivalent investment option.
Item: In sharp contrast to the vicious treatment of Hydro One's professional union, OPG management have been allowed by McGuinty to settle for five years with its unions on very generous terms. Translation: the Libs don't care if the transmission system degrades but they want happy people at OPG, happy people that are necessary to a nuke revival.
Fortunately, Lib hubris will save us from the realization of the CNA vision. The mistakes of the past will be repeated. Very few people left in the world of electricity policy remember the Porter Commission. This was created in the mid-70s when Ontario, like most US states, discovered that no one wanted power lines or power plants near them and that politically it was not possible to run over or buy off that many people.
This was the era of environmental assessment, which was the legislative equivalent of rope-a-dope. The Porter Commission reached the same conclusions as similar bodies in the US. The only way to get widespread buy-in to any future energy mega projects was to incorporate all conceivable environmental opposition to the formative stages of planning.
It turned out that this approach was successful largely in the negative; very few plants of any sort or transmission projects were built in North America in the succeeding 25 years. But those that were (e.g., Ontario Hydro's Eastern Ontario expansion) did so without the legal guerilla warfare or outright civil disobedience that erupted in the late 60s and 70s.
Fast-forward to now and what do we see? Fragmented planning responsibilities and environmental considerations tacked on at the end. Rather than the integrated Energy Commission recommended by Porter, we have no less than three bodies with roles in planning the electricity system; OPA, the Independent Electricity System Operator, and the Ontario Energy Board. In the past ten years the Environmental Assessment Act has been gutted and municipal approvals have become less integrated into provincial processes. A perfect recipe to ensure that any nukes, which take a long time to build anyhow, will not be available for ten years or more, by which time we will have to have done something else.
Saved, not by smart technology, but by those old standbys, arrogance and stupidity!
Smart Meters and Stupid Policies, part 3: Backdoor Nukes © NETWIT, 2006 Posted March 8, 2006
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