Today, I received a nice offer in my mailbox from utility company ENMAX. These offers often make me angry because I find that they prey on people’s lack of information regarding electricity units and pricing. Today was no exception.
Renewable Energy Policy
Can green energy in Ontario avoid the same fate as Commodore?
In this column in today’s Toronto Star, James Biggar of Leadnow.ca calls on Ontario to, “embrace the green future,” and to avoid becoming the, “Commodore 64 of the world economy, sitting on the trash heap of history.” I agree, but perhaps not for the reasons you expect.
David Roberts and Stephen Gordon are saying almost the same thing about green jobs
Over the last couple of days, my Twitter feed has been swamped with discussion about green jobs. Yesterday, Worthwhile Canadian Initiative blogger and Laval Professor Stephen Gordon (@stephenfgordon) posted a piece on the Globe and Mail’s Economy Lab arguing that presenting, “the employment opportunities generated by a set of proposals…as an additional benefit of the policy agenda..(is) a mistake.” I expected this would generate some push-back when I read the headline, but didn’t expect that Grist.org blogger David Roberts (@drgrist) would be one of those weighing in. He did, with this post. I think they agree on more than either might believe. Here’s why.
In defense of feed-in tariffs…just not this one.
With the release of Ontario PC Leader Tim Hudak’s platform today, it’s clear where much of the focus of the campaign to be Ontario’s next Premier will be – on Ontarians’ electricity bills. Hudak announced no fewer than six major policy changes to Ontario’s electricity system:
- An end to Ontario’s Feed-in Tariff (FiT) program;
- An end to mandatory time of use pricing;
- Closing down the Ontario Power Authority;
- A return to centralized supply decisions, with a focus on gas and nuclear, with, “an open and fair process for alternative energy sources like solar, wind, and biomass;
- Removing the provincial share of the HST from electricity bills;
- Ending the debt retirement charge on electricity bills.
That’s a lot to cover in one post, so I won’t try. Let’s stick with the FiT.
on retrofit subsidies, tax credits, and other expensive policies
It’s easy for people to have a knee-jerk reaction and support policies like the ecoEnergy Retrofit Initiative or US Production Tax Credits for Wind Energy. After all, we want people to have more efficient houses, and we want more renewable energy, don’t we? Well, yes, we probably do. Environmentalists and fiscal hawks should agree that each dollar spent on programs targeting these changes in our energy production and consumption decisions be spent effectively. Unfortunately, broad subsidies and tax credits do not meet that criterion very often.
What can green energy advocates learn from the oilsands?
I think that if you asked most oilsands opponents to categorize their objections to the industry, their responses could be classified under one of three headings. First, they might cite the lack of appropriate planning, monitoring, and mitigation of local environmental impacts (see the RSC report executive summary here). Second, they might cite a failure to consider global implications of oil sands extraction, specifically as they relate to climate change. Third, there would likely be many who would cite the fact that Albertans are simply not getting their fair share of the benefits from the expansion of activity in Northern Alberta despite owning the resource. In general, I think most opponents would agree (and please correct me if I am wrong) that most of these problems boil down to a government policy that focused on ramping production up as quickly as possible, and where the primary measures of success were investment dollars coming into the province and barrels per day of production. The government was unwilling to “touch the brake” on the industry that its own policies had created. I think that the Government of Alberta is now learning some hard lessons and finding that their approach to oilsands development has significantly eroded the social license of the industry both at home and abroad. To their credit the Government has shown signs of turning the tide on this. I believe the government could and should go further, but at least we no longer have our Premier talking about the myth of environmental damage from the oilsands. In the meantime, I believe there is a lot that advocates who would grant a free pass to poorly designed green energy policy can lean from the errors of the past in Alberta.