Mayor Higgins helps nuclear lobby raise electricity rates

Wolfe Erlichman | Oct 13, 2016

Mayor Higgins of North Frontenac, who led the charge against against windmills at the local level in Eastern Ontario, is celebrating the cancellation of wind projects in Ontario. The cancellation is a sign that the nuclear lobby has defeated renewable power in Ontario. Mr. Higgins has his reasons for opposing windmills but his opposition has been enormously helpful to the nuclear lobby, which is celebrating its victory by asking the Ontario Energy Board for a rate increase to pay for refurbishing its dangerous nuclear reactors, which produce 60% of Ontario's electricity.

With the cancellation of large-scale wind projects, the main obstacle to the expensive refurbishments of the aging nuclear fleet has now been removed. Nuclear now has a monopoly on the production of electrical power in Ontario. With the competition eliminated, Ontario Power Generation has wasted no time in submitting a request to the Ontario Energy Board (EB-2016-0152) to raise hydro rates to pay for the refurbishments. Once the refurbishments are complete, there will be no money to pay for or the room for clean renewable energy. The nuclear industry is very aware of the many negative aspects of nuclear plants such as high costs, highly radioactive waste, radioactive emissions, horrendous decommissioning costs, and the terrible consequences of a Fukushima or Chernobyl-type of meltdown, which could shut down electric power all over Ontario. This is a very dangerous technology. A nuclear meltdown in Pickering will be felt in everybody's back yard in Ontario and beyond.

The industry's biggest concern, however, is the high cost of nuclear which, if it were generally known, might put pressure on the Wynne government to opt for the cheaper renewables.

In order to make it look as if nuclear is “affordable”, OPG is proposing an increase of hydro rates of “only” 11% a year for 5 years instead of the 15% it would need to pay for the refurbishing costs. According to OPG, the 11% increase will not cover the cost of refurbishing the reactors and so rate increases will have be higher in later years. This back loading of rates is being done to hide the true costs of the refurbishments in the short term so that it will be too late to stop the refurbishments once the true costs are known. It should be noted that the real cost of refurbishing the reactors will be even higher than the estimates which OPG gave to the Ontario Energy Board since all past work on nuclear reactors in Ontario has never been on time and has always been over budget. To add insult to injury, by not increasing hydro rates to pay for the costs of the refurbishments in the first instance, OPG will have to borrow money and ratepayers will pay the interest charges. As a result, the cost of electricity generated by refurbished nuclear reactors will be really expensive and, with wind and solar costs going down daily, the cost of wind and solar will be a lot lower and very affordable for those who want to escape Hydro One and its nuclear monopoly. With that in mind, Mr Higgins and his supporters will be very happily installing windmills and solar farms in the future and those who won't be able to put up their own solar panels or windmills will be asking municipalities to do that or forming co-operatives to provide electricity on a regional basis. Luckily for the residents of North Frontenac, they live in a very good wind area and will be able to supply their own electricity when they finally realize that climate change is real and that providing electricity locally is cheaper and more sustainable than depending on nuclear reactors in the Greater Toronto Area. Unfortunately, due to Mr. Higgins’ intransigence and resistance to needed and positive change, Ontario will be saddled with expensive and dangerous nuclear reactors as the rest of the world switches to cheaper green energy.