The Globe and Mail claims to have seen a leaked confidential seven billion dollar Ontario master plan, for all new homes to use geothermal or electric heating by 2030, and to provide grants to retrofit older buildings.
Ontario to spend $7-billion on sweeping climate change plan
The Ontario government will spend more than $7-billion over four years on a sweeping climate change plan that will affect every aspect of life – from what people drive to how they heat their homes and workplaces – in a bid to slash the province’s carbon footprint.
Ontario will begin phasing out natural gas for heating, provide incentives to retrofit buildings and give rebates to drivers who buy electric vehicles. It will also require that gasoline sold in the province contain less carbon, bring in building code rules requiring all new homes by 2030 to be heated with electricity or geothermal systems, and set a target for 12 per cent of all new vehicle sales to be electric by 2025.
…
- $3.8-billion for new grants, rebates and other subsidies to retrofit buildings, and move them off natural gas and onto geothermal, solar power or other forms of electric heat. Many of these programs will be administered by a new Green Bank, modelled on a similar agency in New York State, to provide financing for solar and geothermal projects.
- New building code rules that will require all homes and small buildings built in 2030 or later to be heated without using fossil fuels, such as natural gas. This will be expanded to all buildings before 2050. Other building code changes will require major renovations to include energy-efficiency measures. All homes will also have to undergo an energy-efficiency audit before they are sold.
- $285-million for electric vehicle incentives. These include a rebate of up to $14,000 for every electric vehicle purchased; up to $1,000 to install home charging; taking the provincial portion of the HST off electric vehicle sales; an extra subsidy program for low– and moderate-income households to get older cars off the road and replace them with electric; and free overnight electricity for charging electric vehicles.
If I lived in Ontario, I would be deeply concerned about this plan.
Electric home heating is fine, until the electricity fails. When my family lived in Britain, our 6Kw coal burner was indispensable, especially when power lines were damaged by blizzards.
Geothermal systems, heat pumps which take advantage of the relatively constant ground temperature, are expensive, and require electric power to operate.
As for electric cars, a petroleum or diesel car can keep the occupants warm and safe for many hours, if the car is trapped in heavy snow. An electric car, with its much lower energy density, and the susceptibility of batteries to cold, not so much.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Uh.. how are they going to generate all that electricity?? Natural Gas?
Nope, wind and solar, they want to eliminate natural gas entirely. 65% of homes, some 80% of all buildings use natural gas.
When you get these massive Arctic highs in the winter drop down into Canada and the US, you get a lot of very, very cold air and no wind at night. So solar and wind is out during the long winter nights. Energy storage is the only way, but heating requires a lot of energy. And the ocean temperature cycles indicate 2030 may just be a pretty cold year.
Electric heat pumps aren’t very efficient below 5 deg C, and especially when you are in the minus territory (C or F) and resistance heating or geothermal is about the only option. I would hope some group of physicists would volunteer their expertise to explain to these people what is involved.
People will go along with about anything until they are hungry and/or cold, then lookout. About all I can say is “Good Luck”.
Solar in Ontario? They better get used to the sight of windmills and dead eagles.
Windmills don’t do well during snow storms.
Even wind in Ontario is pathetic. The median capacity factor (their output half the time) is below 7% in the summer (40% of the time they produce nothing at all).
It’s ok to use rope and trees limbs to solve certain crimes against humanity. 😉
It ought to be a felony to use Electricity for “heating” (verb).
Now I’m not talking about, industrial process situations, where a precise controlled Temperature is required for some process, chemical or otherwise to take place, and electricity is the only rapid response precision control mechanism.
But wasting electricity just to make people a trifle more comfortable, when other forms of energy that MUST pass through the “heat” (noun) form to be useful anyway, seems criminal to me.
PS: If you know of a process that converts stored chemical energies; for example coal natural gas, petroleum, bio-mass, whatever, directly to electricity, or lighting, efficiently, WITHOUT first converting that energy to “heat” (noun); do please enlighten (pun) the rest of us. Same gose for nucular !
G
Just my personal opinion of course.
rbbcock: True that an air to air heat pump doesn’t work that well when it is cold out. But a lot of ground heat pumps are used in frozen Alberta. I have been using a water to water heat pump for 13 years (to supplement my wood heat and to keep the house above freezing when I am away skiing). It works just fine. COP is 3.5 but it is still expensive at 40 below. I am putting in a propane fired loop on my heat storage tank given the low price of propane these days. Won’t help those poor sods in Ontario, but then, by the time these regulations come into place, the current government will likely be long gone.
Richad Wakeup.
Wind power is a big bust in Ontario, just one problem in the winter is icing of the wind turbine blades creating an unbalanced generator which if left to run will shake it self to death, guess what, the operator has to shut down till the temperature goes above freezing or call in a helicopter to spray the blades with deicing fluid or hot water – Yea that’s really cutting down on fossil fuel.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/01/23/saturday-silliness-wind-turbine-photo-of-the-year/
To fix the “problem” a helicopter is employed (burning aviation fuel) to spray hot water (which is heated in the frigid temperatures using a truck equipped with a 260 kW oil burner) on the blades of the turbine to de-ice them.
Where does the electricity come from the 80% of the time the turbines aren’t producing electricity?
Oh so sorry, silly question…
___ _____ _____
Solar has big problems in winter and fall due to cloudy skies, frosting, icing and snow accumulation rendering the panel to zero output. Plus heavy snow and ice can warp and degrade panels and roof mountings stressing roofs and causing leaks into buildings.
https://eponline.com/articles/2014/03/06/2014-winter-blasts.aspx?admgarea=Features
Richard sorry for the name spelling it is a great and royal name.
highflight56433
May 16, 2016 at 8:50 am
Ahhhh!
Channelling ‘Lades who Lynch’.
+ shedloads – and I didn’t spill my wine – just!
Auto
george e. smith, you are correct that using electric resistance heaters to heat homes is very wasteful way to generate heat. Residential electrical power has a very high available work (negentropy) because all of the waste heat was thrown away somewhere upstream.
If natural gas is simply piped into a home and burned rather than making electricity at a power plant with it, a far higher portion of the energy in that gas can then be made available as heat.
Hmmnnn….
I’ve heard of still cool, cloudy days, but perhaps they don’t get them in Ontario.
And then there is the efficiency of using electricity for heating.
Turn your solar photons or wind molecules into electricity [ efficiency ?], transport it along wires [loss during transport ?] and turn it into heat.
So,….less excess hydroelectric for neighboring US states to buy? Cool!
“65% of homes, some 80% of all buildings use natural gas.”
And your going to add all of the heating requirements of those buildings to the electrical grid in the form of heat pumps and heating coils? Wind and solar simply won’t generate the required capacity and would not be stable enough, especially during extreme weather events. So…the question remains: how is all that extra electricity going to be produced?
Tom Yoke
If natural gas is simply piped into a home and burned rather than making electricity at a power plant with it, a far higher portion of the energy in that gas can then be made available as heat.
The point is not to most efficiently convert natural gas to heat or reduce CO2 emissions, but rather to break the OPEC cartel. The Ontario strategy is a good start but is missing 2 legs of the stool.
1. electricity from nuclear (missing)
2. electricity for heating
3. natural gas to methanol for transportation to cap the price of oil at about $50 per barrel. (missing)
Electricity from wind and solar is nonsense especially in Ontario. Battery electric vehicles are too expensive.
Nuclear is competitive if regulations that do not contribute to safety are removed. Electrical heating is competitive. Methanol is competitive.
This energy strategy does not require government subsidies. Changing government regulations that prevent the adoption of nuclear for electricity and methanol for transportation is the only assistance required from the government.
Eventually nuclear will be able to separate hydrogen from water competitively, the hydrogen can be combined with CO2 from the air to produce methanol, and the waste products from methanol in an ICE or fuel cell are the water and CO2 that you started with.
Nuclear is a non polluting, sustainable, and safe energy source. Nuclear can be used to break the OPEC cartel’s control of oil prices in the transportation sector. For those obsessing about CO2, nuclear will also end CO2 emissions.
I’m wondering just what the hell is low carbon gasoline made of?
I was wondering that myself. If (rooftop) Solar produces the Electricity for the individual houses in the province, and winter is when most heat is needed, and winter brings snow that covers PV panels, and GEO-Thermal is inadequate for individual houses, then the only other source of heat is Wood Burning which of course still adds CO2 as a product of combustion. Last time I checked, Canada isn’t really a Hot Bed of Geothermal activity. Will they be drilling down Miles to try and capture the mantle heat? If so, what kind of pumps can circulate a liquid up against gravity for Miles/Kilometers distance to bring that heat into individual houses.
Does this have the same limitations that traditional Pumped Storage would have in that the Column of water would be too heavy to lift by any pump if it is over about 1500′ or so in elevation?
Or does the height matter if it is going from ground level down to bottom and back to ground level?
Is there sufficient heat down 1500′ to be useful?
Would the energy expended for the Pump exceed the benefit gained from the ground heat?
Bryan A, I agree with everything you said except on Geothermal heating.
I use it in my house and it works marvelously. It is the only electric heating/cooling system that is worth doing if you want electricity only. The only real downside is that it requires a fair degree of ground loops which takes a fair amount of sq meters of land per house. I am sure there are ways to scale it up for neighborhoods but not for 20 storey apartments/condos.
I am in Canada and with my GHP, I consume 50% less power per sq ft than a comparably insulated house with electric baseboard.
what the hell is low carbon gasoline made of?
========================
Sort of like low fat margarine:
Mixing equal parts Dihydrogen Monoxide and regular gasoline will cut the carbon content in half. In most cases this will cut vehicle emissions to near zero.
Low fat margarine and Carbon Free Sugar
@ur momisugly Ferd, Thanks for the laugh about mixing gas with H20, hard on screens though!
Maybe its like carbonless paper? Still made of cellulose of course. 🙂
Low carbon gasoline is made from unobtainium with fairy dust added to boost the octane rating, in very cold climates an anti-freeze of powered unicorn horn is added but this does add some carbon, so an alternative is being sought.
Oxygen
g
My guess is that gasoline mileage is approximately proportional to carbon content. Reduce the carbon, increase the fuel consumption for no net benefit (and possibly engine damage because the engine really expected something that’s worth burning).
The progressive just keeps on putting Ontario into a mess. They have got to be the worst provincial Government Canada has ever had. From a “have” province for decades they have now got to beg for Albertan petro $$ to keep them afloat. And soon those $$ will be gone with Alberta’s new NDP that is “hell bend” to destroy the Oil, Coal and Gas industries there! It has not take long to push Canada to the edge in the last 7 months. I just can’t believe the lack of thinking of these people!
They want to ditch the CANDU fleet too
Funny, no part of the faux plan bothered to tell me what the expected payoff was to be. Does this woman who’s expertise is linguistics and education see a world that’s 0.0001 degrees cooler in 2100 after crippling her economy and causing the deaths of countless people (per the reasons stated in this piece) or 0.0002 degrees?
This woman has zero expertise – nada, zilch, none, And like Mr. O, she’s a puppet.
..It’s female ??
The pessimist in me believes that it is the countless deaths that are the goal.
I think she self-identifies as a politician. What could possibly be worse?
The government wants to make Canada colder!! Traitors!
It’s no accident that this idiocy was leaked to the Globe and Mail. This is the most corrupt and incompetent provincial government in the country and it is divided into those who are licking the bottom of the Kool Aid jug and those who have the sense to be embarrassed by their association with this clown show. Either those in favour of this policy monstrosity leaked it to sound out the reaction or the faction opposed leaked it to generate opposition and stop it in its tracks. My money is on the former as its chief proponent, Environment Minister Glen Murray (our idiot of the month), is quick to point out that none of this is “written in stone”. This government is on life support and trying to reach for support from the Green Party and NDP in the next election, otherwise known by the Liberals as Armeggedon
Just wait until solar activity weakens to the point that Earth’s temperatures really start to drop. Anyone who buys into this nonsense will freeze. And this term ‘carbon footprint’ really annoys me.
I live in Ontario and I am deeply concerned. Our Premier is insane, truly insane. The costs will be far too much for people to suffer. For example, there are row housing units across the province built in the 1960s that use baseboard heating, all the rave in those days. Those poor people pay some $1500 PER MONTH to heat their homes. They cant even sell them and get out. No one wants them. The good news is we have a provincial election in two years, and the liberals will be tossed out. Their approval rating is below 25% at the moment, and only going to get worse. Manitoba threw out their socialist government just recently for a conservative government.
..Yes, they will be slaughtered in the next election but the damage done to us in those two remaining years will be “Unprecedented” ! I wish Ontario had impeachment or some such thing !!
The Ontario Conservative party must stand up now and promise to fight it, and to ultimately dismantle and eliminate this ideologically driven behavior modification program. Whatever the cost.
Ontario already is the most indebted sub-national territorial entity in the world:
http://www.debtclock.ca/provincial-debtclocks/ontario/ontario-s-debt/
Nevertheless, the provincial government always finds money for climate change and other symbolic social justice stunts. Appalling.
Once the imminent global financial crisis hits and the fed can no longer print enough money to keep the bond market artificially suppressed, interest rates will spike world wide and our poor liberal cousins from Ontario won’t be able to afford the interest payments on the massive debt that they have run up. Once the FSA (Free Shit Army) looses all of their welfare benefits, they will riot and Toronto will burn. I wonder how much CO2 will be generated then?
Richard is not wrong about the cost. I presently heat with electric, and live in Southern Ontario. This winter, a mild one by comparison, saw a 28% decrease in my electric usage for the peak winter two month billing period over last year, but rate increases this past year saw my bill within a few dollars of last winter’s brutal cold bill. Geothermal? Maybe she’s planning to frack/crack the mantle under Toronto. The Liberal party in Canada, fed or prov, is utterly insane. Intellectually stunted adolescents. Apparently the voters too.
Paul Coppin, are you saying that your bill can be as high as $1500/month ($3000 for two month billing period)?
I live in Quebec. Last year, I replaced my 65% efficient natural gas furnace with a 95.6% efficient unit. My heating bill dropped by $650 over the heating season. Even allowing for the milder winter, I saved about $450. The furnace cost $5,000, and I was due for a replacement after 15 years in any case. Although I’m not an eco-nut, I do believe in using our precious fossil fuels carefully.
“””””…..
Trebla
May 16, 2016 at 7:49 am
I live in Quebec. Last year, I replaced my 65% efficient natural gas furnace with a 95.6% efficient unit. ……”””””
Well Trebla, the way I figure it, your natural gas flame, must not be putting out more than about 4.4% auxiliary lighting to your Chalet. Well even if it does, that too is gonna be “heat” (noun) PDQ anyway.
That is an impressive result you are getting. While it is not clear, just how they are calculating the conversion efficiency, at least we can presume, that they use the same efficiency recipe, for your new unit, as the old one.
The poor efficiency performance of badly designed chemical energy “heaters” is presumably a result of the “heat” not being delivered to a useful space, but leaking to the rest of the universe.
I’m impressed, that someone has figured out how to do that properly. You should tell us who makes your new high efficiency unit.
G
No, Richard’s example is for a different style of house. My two month bill this year is $750 in peak winter (same as last year, even though my usage for the same period is down 28% over last year). That’s up from about $475-500 not more than 3 years ago. This winter my bills were about $1300 for 4 months. I don ‘t have the early spring/late winter bill yet, but based on the cold spring I’m expecting about $650, if I’m lucky. That’s 2 grand +/- for 6 months worth of heat.
Quebec has cheap hydro electric power. Paying for renewable energy is not yet a problem for Quebec electric rate payers.
Paul Coppin, I only ask because you stated “Richard is not wrong about the cost” seemingly corroborating his assertion that a number of people living in row houses across Ontario are paying $0.80/square ft/month heating with baseboards. Yet your monthly bills, assuming the average house size of 2000 sq ft, would only amount to $0.18/square ft/month. That’s less than a quarter the cost.
It is no better here in Nova Scotia. The inmates have completly taken over the asylum. i have tried the simplest math on believers, basic percentages to show the futility of any action we take, whatever your opinion on AGW, yet the windmills go up, coal (we have lots) is regulated out of use and power rates skyrocket. Our entire GHG production is something like an hour of annual world production, and they don’t care or can’t grasp it.
Ontario here as well. These insane freaks want to further cripple our economy, electrical rates have already doubled from the original green plan, closure of 8 coal plants and FIT. How are they going to heat anything on a -30C windless night? Based on last years emissions, China will emit more CO2 between now and 2020 than all of Canada has since confederation. As our manufacturing bleeds due to high power costs, China will just add more as they take over everything we did.
Scary thing is, the architect of the original green plan is Gerald Butts, now senior advisor to PM Trudeau. Not safe to move anywhere in Canada. Butts was also a former radical commie Sierra Club leader.
Greg commented: “… These insane freaks want to further cripple our economy,..”
Yes, that’s the goal of the UN. The people carrying it out are either useful idiots who believe they are saving the world or UN supporters of a one world governance.
Also, heating with electricity is about the most inefficient and costly method available. That’s why electric baseboard heaters are rare, while natural gas heating is commonplace.
Butts is the puppetmaster and has his hand up Trudeau’s butt (figuratively speaking)?
@dbstealey
“…electricity is about the most inefficient and costly method ”
Heat pumps work well (air-source = good; ground-source = better).
Our electrons come from large dams on the Columbia River in Washington State. Issues regarding the dams are beyond the scope of this post.
We have wood stove back-up, and our own wood.
Piped natural gas is not available.
We could get propane. Closest neighbor has a big tank in her front yard that gets filled once a month via a big truck. If our electricity was as expensive as some other places, propane would be my alternative choice. A colder location than ours (or if climate cools) would be best served by a hybrid heat-pump/propane system.
@ur momisugly Robert of Ottawa, will that be not regulated out by these insane people!, Oh another thing I read some where that if you build a pit the right size and installed the generator inside of it the noise level would go down drastically ( does any one know about this? I have always wanted to buy one but until recently they were really noisy.)
The Co-chair of the Trudeau campaign was Dan/Daniel Gagnier who was Board Chair of IISD/International Institute for Sustainable Development, Winnipeg, Manitoba.
Butts played a role but not like the “big-fish” named above. Look up what else Dan Gagnier has been involved in regarding energy issues in Canada.
Gagnier resigned as co-chair a short time prior to the 2015 election.
Sustainable Development Technology Canada/SDTC
Board of Directors includes:
Daniel Gagnier, webpage has short biography.
https://www.sdtc.ca/en/daniel-gagnier
This same government is trying to get a “made in Ontario” pension plan up and running. My parents would be on the poster, I’m sure: some savings, no company pension, relying on federal “social security” (here in Canada called the Canada Pension Plan).
However, they applied to the government program to have their electricity bill lowered (they use fuel oil and wood).
They were turned down.
Seems that they are too “rich” (see above: qualifying for Ontario pension).
Sure, I’ll trust these watermelons with my power when I’m my parent’s age. Sure thing…
I’m buying a diesel generator.
You, I mean the people voted for this result, so……
Surely high quality insulation of homes will be the first objective of this plan, as without it all energy-however generated- is needlessly and expensively wasted.
tonyb
I think it is important to note that these plans seem to have the support of about 80% of the people here.
Climate Change and Electrical Generation Mathematics are taught in the public schools. The mathematics supports the use of wind and solar.
One survey from 2013 — I have seen later.
http://www.environicsinstitute.org/uploads/news/focus%20canada%202013%20-%20public%20opinion%20on%20climate%20change%20-%20english.pdf
I happen to agree with Richard and further believe that the school curriculum does not always provide valid information.
Most of the government people (I would say more than 97%) have little or no training in the physical and electrical sciences and little if any education in advanced statistics. Typical education of our senior ministers is “High School” (George Smitherman — Energy Minister who negotiated the Samsung deal and the Green Energy Act), Our then Premier and the Minister of the environment had a pass degree in Biology, subsequent minsters had two year college degrees in business, BA’s in Music and the like. Enegineers and Power Engineers have had little if any input. Climate Activists and Social Workers far outnumber the technical people who have contributed to the climate plans.
It’s all available in Hansard and the public documents and the biographies. Once I pointed out that the proponents of these plans had little or no relevant education or training — the bios were modified to remove qualifications.
Just sayin’
Cheers!
Richard, I think you need to check your sources on that figure. The average heating bill for a 2000 square foot home with baseboards in Ontario is closer to $350 per month and only during the coldest months. A row housing unit would be closer to 1200 square feet.
Two possible explanations come to mind for your inflated figure. Many people will quote their electricity bill as the monthly cost, when in fact, it represents two months of billing, so $750/month rather than $1500.
The second explanation is that these homes are very poorly insulated, causing an abnormally high energy bills. That’s not necessarily the fault of baseboard heating, a poorly insulated home will cost more no matter how it’s heated. Either way, $1500/month to heat a 1200 square foot home seems unlikely.
http://forums.redflagdeals.com/baseboard-heating-only-whats-your-cost-hydro-1368171/
Would you like people to post their Ontario electric bills here?
Michael S; no, it’s not unlikely, very few houses are of the 2010 or later vintage with the latest in insulation and windows. You say it’s not the “not necessarily the fault of baseboard heating,” but you miss that it is the faulty of 17 cent per kilowatt wind/solar expensive electricity charges (and increasing). This is driving people into energy poverty !!
Yes, Barbara, I would like people to post their $1500 monthly hydro bills for their 1200 square foot homes.
No, Sun Spot, it is very unlikely that people living in 1200 square foot row houses are paying $1500 per month to heat them with baseboards. If you can provide a source to confirm the statement that, “there are row housing units across the province built in the 1960s that use baseboard heating… people pay some $1500 PER MONTH to heat their homes”, I will gladly acknowledge this to be the case.
Where do they plan on getting all that electricity? Fossil fuel? It’s more efficient to heat directly with that NG than convert it. How many windmills will it take? Does anybody involved in this idea know how to read or use a calculator?
More than can physically be built in that time frame. There is no way they can build heating units that fast. Geothermal, which I have, is expensive to install, and takes a lot of time to install, and no one in the suburbs has enough land to put one in. Their plan also includes forcing everyone to live within walking or biking distance to work. No more suburbs. This plan is clearly the UN’s Agenda 2030. It’s a pipe dream that will never happen. They’re going to be booted out of government in two years.
Booted out in two years? By whom? The Progressive Conservative leader Patrick Brown, believes in global warming, and believes it is a threat to civilization! Even if he defeated the Liberals (not based on any conservative principals) he has promised to continue the insanity. There is no hope for this province.
Hang in there, I’m on the Energy Policy Advisory Committee for the PC. Brown had no right to make that pronouncement. He doesnt make policy, the party members do.
Richard, the only chance the PC’s have of being elected is if Brown promises to undo ALL of the liberals garbage that has been forced upon Ontario !
I’ll keep my ears open Richard. I feel pretty desperate these days.
Richard, then we should talk.
Genuine question: If you put in wholesale geothermal in a city the size of Toronto, wouldn’t you end up creating permafrost? How much heat can you take out of the ground without freezing it entirely?
Ground source heat pumps and real geothermal, e.g. California’s Geysers field, are not even in the same league.
..Someone, anyone !! Save us from this liberal insanity …FFS…We are still waiting for Spring in Southern Ontario !
If longer term forecasts are correct, the continuing cooling of the weather will save you. Even arts graduates will come to understand the problem of cold and no power.
Has nothing more to do with democracy or freedom:
I want to buy the cheapest energy on the market. Don’t want to subsidice other peoples domestic heating nor other peoples electric cars.
You don’t want your tax dollars helping people get $15k rebates on Teslas?
Would anyone like to to try escaping a disaster such as Fort McMurray in an EV?
Michael Jankowski on May 16, 2016 at 9:47 am
You don’t want your tax dollars helping people get $15k rebates on Teslas?
You know Michael, people subsidizing people is win/win – //sarc of
5 years after: battery capacity 50% down you’ve won experience.
@ur momisugly Johann, 6.18 am, “I want to buy the cheapest energy”,
NO truer words were ever spoken!
“If I lived in Ontario, I would be deeply concerned about this plan.”
Matters not if it’s in Ontario or the USA or Australia, ect…
All common sense humans should take heed.
It’s all a deceptive plan, surely to include those massive bird chomping, LFN emitting, people property rights crushing, wind turbines or solar panels.
Looks to me like a “sustainability” plan.
I live in Virginia, which has a relatively moderate winter climate. My heat pump with electric heat works well although I’d prefer gas heat. When I lived in Michigan, my gas heat was indispensable for winter heating. Maybe the climate in Ontario is more like Virginia.
???
Have you looked at a world map lately, Don’t much think Ontario shifted on the continent lately.
Surely you were being sarcastic? right?
EJ, Mea culpa. I thought anyone would realize I was being sarcastic. Yes, I can read a map and Yes, I was being sarcastic.
EJ
Try this – there is looking at a map and then there is interpreting it!
http://www.redpowermagazine.com/forums/topic/101347-proving-the-media-is-as-smart-as-they-think/
My apologies Bob, sometimes you just never know.
I live in Ontario, they can take my natural gas furnace over my dead body. To use electricity for heat would triple/quadruple my bills and rates are still going up. Went to look at a house a year ago, used baseboards installed in the 60’s, would not touch it. The first thing the new owners did (real-estate agent told us), they retrofitted to gas for 25 thousand (furnace, ducting, etc.). That’s how justifiable it is.
Glad I did not vote for these Liberals but as long as the ‘free’ money keeps flowing everyone jumps on board. It’s hard to win elections spouting financial responsibility.
This is a great website to see Ontario’s power price/source, etc. clicking on the various tabs you can see Ontario sources (click 7-day tab) most of its power from Nuclear and Hydro. If you did deeper, for most of the times in the year, there is enough power from just these two sources but there is a preference to use wind and solar when it is available. They throttle the hydro even though they don’t need to, nuclear is base load. You can also see the price spike when the sun rises (click on price tab).
http://www.ieso.ca/pages/power-data/default.aspx#supply
In Ontario renewable energy has first priority to be used if available. This guarantees the renewable energy owners an income stream. Otherwise projects would not be developed.
I live in Ontario and I can tell you that electricity is a very expensive way to heat a home here. My house was built in 1972 and was electric heat. Like most houses in the neighbourhood, mine was long ago converted to forced air gas heating. The Liberal government has closed all of the coal power plants in the province and has only replaced them with wind turbines. Electricity prices keep rising. How they would expect to be able to generate enough power for millions of new homes is beyond me, but why should they care? They are saving the world.
They are saving the world with my money and jobs
Got it in one, Robert.
But the plan will work well.
The Ontario Government will borrow the money to start with and when the lights go out everyone will leave Ontario and go and live in Florida or somewhere like that, (New Cajuns?) taking their businesses with them, so there will be no need for much electricity anyway.
Thus the governmental plan will be hailed as a success.
It will bankrupt the province of course but since it will be deserted there won’t be anyone to pay back the borrowed money anyway and the debt will be written off.
Kate must be jailed, no other solution.
‘Saving the World,’ is a certifiable syndrome.
Electric heating is one of the main causes of heating poverty. It is vastly expensive.
The death toll of seniors in the UK in winter is a prime example
I wish I could say that those deaths were an unintended consequence. But after listening the same clowns go on and on about how over crowded the earth is, I can’t be sure.
Not to worry. GHG use and population growth in SE Asia to balance it out!
The key to ending poverty, diseases, starvation, violence is affordable, reliable energy. Progressives would just as soon line up the over populated everybody they consider “excess”, “unproductive”, and “unnecessary”, shoot them in the head and process them into Soylent Green. But that’s too obvious for these closet eugenicists. They’ll use the consequences of green energy to achieve their utopia.
George Will
“Authoritarianism, always latent in progressivism, is becoming explicit. Progressivism’s determination to regulate thought by regulating speech is apparent in the campaign by 16 states’ attorneys general and those of the District of Columbia and the Virgin Islands, none Republican, to criminalize skepticism about the supposedly “settled” conclusions of climate science.
Four core tenets of progressivism are: First, history has a destination. Second, progressives uniquely discern it. (Barack Obama frequently declares things to be on or opposed to “the right side of history.”) Third, politics should be democratic but peripheral to governance, which is the responsibility of experts scientifically administering the regulatory state. Fourth, enlightened progressives should enforce limits on speech (witness IRS suppression of conservative advocacy groups) in order to prevent thinking unhelpful to history’s progressive unfolding.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-settled-science-consensus-du-jour/2016/04/22/46acd802-07de-11e6-a12f-ea5aed7958dc_story.html
Beware this is a new left-tard idea…”electrification of your economy” where everything and I mean everything is electric powered and the electricity must come from renewable resources (no gas, coal, oil, or nuclear). I saw a slide presentation that “proved” Canada could do this (produce 10 petajoules of energy with no fossil fuels) but the presenter neglected to do the arithmetic that showed you’d need to blanket an area the size of Ontario (1.5 Texas’s) with wind and solar farms to do this.
In Ontario’s case we are currently producing more power than we can consume but because it is non-predictable excess wind power we lose money exporting it. The governments response to this electricity savings is to raise the price to cover fixed costs. Their “logic” is if they can increase the demand by forcing electric cars and electric furnaces onto the population, then this will justify increasing the supply of inefficient wind and solar — all around dumb-assery.
How many people will die when a massive ice storm shuts down the windmills and covers the solar panels with 2 inches of ice?
Several thousand excess deaths in a single month in UK didn’t even cause a question in Parliament, and only one or two muted newspaper stories. So I would say that the politicians will not be concerned at deaths from their policies. It certainly has not stopped the UK ‘government’ from raising taxes on ‘carbon’.
all around chicanery.
At current availability rates you would need 160,000 1.5 MW wind generators to supply Ontario’s power needs. That works out to one wind turbine for every two square miles of the land area of Ontario. The Nanicoke coal fired plant was 40 MW all by itself and when they closed it a few years ago the US steel plant that was beside it closed down. No one is saying it but I work at Arcelor Mittel – Dofasco and we had an agreement with Ontario Hydro for a preferred power rate. I suspect so did US Steel and when the coal plant closed the power deal evaporated. Without cheap power they couldn’t make a profit so they left. Power costs at my work are about $800,000 per year and that stupid woman(?) has plans to double the cost so I don’t think my employer will be around much longer either.
ANNOUNCEMENT
ANNOUNCEMENT
The gravy train is leaving the station. Everyone interested in investing in renewable energy companies that will harvest the windfall of Government subsidies, please board at this time.
I’d rather invest in a wood stove company. Anyone know of a publicly traded wood stove manufacturer?
..Wood stoves are illegal in Ontario now!
seriously marcus ? wood stoves are really illegal in ontario ?
They’re not called wood stoves anymore, they’re referred to as Biomass conversion units.
FFS, I can just imagine how much this fiasco will add to our already World Class debt ?
http://business.financialpost.com/news/economy/with-twice-the-debt-of-california-ontario-is-now-the-worlds-most-indebted-sub-sovereign-borrower
And America thought they had problems…sheesh
I live in Ontario, and our Premier can stick her electric heat plan up her bony little butt where the sun will never shine. Our home is already equipped with electric heat, but, we use 2 natural gas units for heat. This woman has already jammed electricity prices up, so high, that many seniors on fixed income are living in electricity poverty. She has also made Ontario the most indebted sub sovereign state in the world and has surpassed the debt levels of Greece. She’s installed so many useless wind turbines that Ontario now pays other jurisdictions to take our excess electricity. My grandchildren will be paying for the debt she has inflicted on this once economically viable province. The next election can’t come soon enough for most Ontarians so we can rid ourselves of the worst Premier in the history of the province and begin the long recovery to fiscal sanity.
Which of the 3 other provincial liberal parties do you suppose will stop this nonsense? Certainly not the Progressive Conservatives. They have promised to continue this insanity.
http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/canadian-politics/ontario-pcs-face-big-changes-under-patrick-brown-an-enigmatic-tory-leader-who-supports-carbon-tax
Ontario was by a long way the wealthiest jurisdiction in Canada when I was a kid. Now it’s a sad clown on skid row. Move to Saskatchewan before the West cuts off the aid.
Don’t worry everybody, by 2030 Ontario’s climate will be like Florida’s and everyone will look back at the misguided kind of fretting on this thread and give a wan, sad smile. We’ll wonder why more wasn’t done to implement mandatory air conditioning, because 4 months of humid, bug-begotten hell is bad enough, but 8 months is simply unbearable! And alligator prevention – where was the government program for that?, or so we’ll think, in those sad, very warm days ahead. The -25 C days I experienced in SW Ontario will be gone forever by, say, 2020. I know this because the media always tell me it. Or words to that effect, anyhoo.
Just think–we in the US can elect Hilary or Bernie and have that sort of thing here! 🙂
All the better to make sure the maximum number of citizens die when the wind doesn’t blow and snow covers the solar panels in the middle of winter.
Isn’t goal? The maximum number of dead people.
Sorry…
Isn’t that the goal?
Ontario is becoming the new California. Nutcases from wall to wall. I hope this government gets booted, along with Notley and all other climate idiots. What an utter waste of resources!
Considering ALL of Ontario is under ice when normal temps return they should be for all the global warming they can muster (not that anything can help forstall the inevitable)
Forestall*
Ontario to spend $7-billion on sweeping climate change plan
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/ontario-to-spend-7-billion-in-sweeping-climate-change-plan/article30029081/?click=sf_globefb
This province already runs a 20 billion deficit, with a 300 billion debt, worse than California on a GDP basis. The province already has had credit rating downgrades (higher interest rates). Their interest payments is already 10 billion a year. The liberals are going to bankrupt this province.
As always, it’s worth listening to Steve McIntyre:
“If change over the next 50 years is more likely to be of the same order as change over the past 50 years, as opposed to the accelerated changes contemplated in the climate models, that is surely relevant to the development of policies that are commensurate with and appropriate to the actual problem. Unfortunately, it also seems to me that much of the climate science community has, in the name of doing “something”, promoted feel-good but pointless or resource-dissipating self-indulgences such as windmills.
In Ontario, unwise subsidization of wind resulted for example in purchase of 3 TWH of power from wind cronies at a cost of $450 million in 2015-4Q alone, which was sold to neighboring jurisdictions for $5 million. We not only lost $400 million in one quarter, but over charged hard pressed industry in Ontario while subsidizing competing industry in Michigan, New York and Ohio.
A more toxic policy is hard for me to contemplate. And yet our politicians want to expand this program.”
I live in Ontario, for half the year now. When this insanity started, we decided to live in the Bahamas for the winter 6 months of the year. But this spring (if you want to call it that) is freezing. It snowed yesterday. Both April and May are down 4 C according to Hydro One temperatures. Each spring, people in Ontario make the same “spring is cancelled” jokes. Every spring and summer is colder than the one before. I don’t think I can live here at all any more.
Been a cold April here in the UK. Makes me wonder how the wondeful GISS manufacturer “TheWarmistAprilEva”!
they just plain flat out lie now. you will rarely find any significant anomalies displayed on a global map near any meaningful population centre. the excess atmospheric heat apparently prefers the siberian wastelands and antarctica to hide out in. very convenient .
same goes for sst .
This reminds me of Clark AB, PI, about 1960. They were upgrading base housing and the electrical system. They ordered diesel generators, washers and dryers. You guessed it, the washers and dryers arrived and were installed first. Result: rolling blackouts.
It seems to me greenie politicians — especially those in cold climates like Ontario — have little or no common sense or knowledge when it comes to electrical supply and demand.
Another fine idea where the King’s horse will founder in the quicksand of reality.
Unfortunately it seems like some more, and probably serious, failures are needed before the adults wrest back control of energy policy and planning from the grasp of the eCO2 zealots. Germany is already quietly backing away and building coal-fired power stations again. The UK is approaching crunch-time soon in the next few years.
Neither of these countries have winters even remotely as severe as Ontario. I wish Ontarians well.