Huffington Post Joins in Greenpeace Canada's Campaign of Deceipt

Adam Scott: Green Energy Prices Aren't High, Its Detractors Are!:

"If you live in Ontario, you know there's an all-out assault on renewable energy like windmills and solar power. What you might not know is that despite all the nay-saying, clean energy is actually responsible for emissions going down, not for prices going up"

So begins a stream of bullshit from another Greenpeace Canada salesman.

Emissions are back down to the levels they were in 1994 - before Bob Rae's appointee to head Ontario Hydro, 'environmentalist Maurice Strong, started to idle nuclear units and coal started cranking out intermediate supply.  Not to be too strong on the point, because we did have an oversupply of inflexible generation then, and since 2005 we have been recreating the problems of 1994, albeit with more types of inflexible, intermittent supply.  Both the Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) and the Ontario Society of Professional Engineers (OSPE) are working on the problems that look to send emissions far higher as more renewables are brought online.  Glancing at what's actually occurred since 2003, it's pretty clear the main contributions to reduced emissions are increased nuclear, decreased demand, and, most sanely, the replacement of intermediate supply needs with natural gas-fired generation.  Renewables have little to do with the reduction in emissions.

Because of years of neglect, Ontario's energy system simply needed rebuilding.

Hydro One is not spending more on OM&A.  Where would this neglect present itself numerically if not there?

You might think the cost of generating electricity in Ontario is reflected in "market rates."

You might think that if you were stupid enough to get your information from Greenpeace's website yesterday (explained here)

In fact, the cost of new contracts for wind power and natural gas are almost identical: about 11.5 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh).

Most wind is contracted at 13.5, and the gas contracts guarantee suppliers a set revenue - which means the less gas is used, the more expensive it is.  Without renewables gas could be less than half that price - which is what is keeping prices flat in the US despite a rapid decline in coal usage in electricity generation.

It's a bit like going to an airport -- in the old days, we could fly for free, but as airports have privatized, we usually have to pay a surcharge on tickets.

Yeah, it's like going to an airport - if you are paying your own ticket you head to Buffalo or Vermont because political meddling causing fantastic terminals, as cathedrals to air travel (a greater source of emissions than burning coal),  drove up rates so high in Canadian airports.

Forty-year-old nuclear plants need to be retired, ageing transmission systems modernized and polluting coal plants are shut down, all while demand for power went up.

Demand is not going up.
Transmission is going higher because of political choices, not operational ones.
40 year-old nuclear plants don't need to be retired (Fukushima Daiichi was hit be a tsunami, not a mid-life crisis).
Polluting coal plants can only be shut down if replaced by polluting gas plants.

Windmills and solar panels are dropping in price every year.

They aren't windmills, and the early contracts in Ontario were around 8 cents/kWh - within a couple of years they were 13.5 cents/kWh.  Now they might go down to 11.5.   Whoopee.

The other bit of good news is using more renewable energy means fewer of the nasty consequences of the old-school generation. No greenhouse gases contributing to global warming. No smog forming pollution making us sick. No toxic waste to dump on future generations. 

This is fundamentally nonsense.  No jurisdiction with a push into wind/solar has anywhere close to the low emissions intensity from electricity generation as Ontario does.  Germany's plans to eliminate nuclear are halted as they figure out how to pay the cost of building new gas/coal plants, as are the UK's.  That doesn't make Ontario perfect, but pick and important metric outside of the existence of nuclear power, and it hardly makes sense to drive Ontario's lower income, particularly fixed lower-income, households, in order to get off on being green while pushing emissions higher.

Adam Scott is dedicated to stringing transmission lines everywhere, threatening wildlife many places, especially near the shorelines of Lakes Erie, Huron and Ontario, bumping up the generation of electricity with natural gas, discouraging the use of electricity in home heating and electricity, and in driving more and more households into fuel poverty.

He's an environmentalist like I'm a pothead.