Treating new nuclear reactors as a key component of Ontario’s electricity future is like treating a tunnel under Highway 401 as a viable option for improving transportation in the GTA.
But despite calling out Doug Ford’s 401 tunnel, the Ontario NDP has been hesitant to acknowledge that nuclear energy is a costly and time-wasting choice when it comes to addressing the need for urgent action on climate change.
Credible sources (e.g., Lazard; Ontario’s Independent Electricity System Operator; Energy Futures Group) make one thing clear: new nuclear reactors are the most expensive way to produce electricity – two-to-eight times more expensive than onshore wind and solar power.
The nuclear industry claims that its high costs are justifiable because nuclear reactors can operate without interruption. But in fact, no electricity generation technology operates 24/7 since they all need to go offline for maintenance and repairs. The Darlington Nuclear Station for example has been out of service on average more than one hour out of every five during the last three decades requiring back-up power.
Historically, Ontario has used fossil generation (e.g., coal and gas) to provide back-up power. Today, the Ford government is ramping up climate-damaging gas to fill in the gaps while they rebuild our aging nuclear reactors. Since being elected, the Ford government has quadrupled the amount of gas it burns for electricity generation, and it is set to increase by a further 50 per cent by 2030.
With wildfires burning around the world, we need to invest in the options that can reduce our climate-damaging emissions ASAP, not decades from now. We simply can’t afford to wait 10 to 20 years for new nuclear reactors to be built, when solar and wind can be built within months to three years.
The good news is that renewable energy can meet all our growing electricity needs. For example, rooftop and parking lot solar in Toronto could meet 50 to 80 per cent of Toronto’s electricity needs. And Great Lakes offshore wind power could meet 100 per cent of Ontario’s total electricity needs with a lakebed footprint of only 0.64 square km.
And we now have many clean storage options that can provide back-up power for variable wind and solar energy, including stationary batteries, mobile (EV) batteries, compressed air, thermal storage, and Quebec’s vast hydro-electric reservoir system that can act like a giant battery for storing Ontario power. Combine those with AI-enhanced grid management and demand response (e.g. smart thermostats), and you have a system that combines power from multiple sources and manages use to optimize system efficiency and cost. Smart, modern energy, not dumb, last century options that heat the planet and leave a toxic legacy for future generations to safeguard for a million years.
Fortunately, the world gets it: last year, 92.5 per cent of new electricity generation capacity was renewable, mostly solar and wind.
Meanwhile, during the last seven years, the Ford government has not contracted for a single kilowatt-hour of new wind or solar energy. It refuses to even consider leadership opportunities like developing offshore wind in the Great Lakes because it simply hates technologies that could undercut the market for the fossil fuels sold by its friends.
But it does love nuclear power. It has rolled out one farfetched plan after another for gigantic nuclear projects. It is building untested American GE-Hitachi nuclear reactors at Darlington which will require us to import enriched uranium from the U.S. to fuel them. It is also proposing to build a massive new nuclear station on the Bruce peninsula, and the world’s largest nuclear station at Port Hope. All these projects will end up raising our electricity rates.
According to Doug Ford’s plan, 75 per cent of our electricity will be supplied by nuclear power by 2050 – up from 48.5 per cent in 2024, while renewables will shrink from 35 per cent of our supply mix in 2024 to 25 per cent in 2050. We are going in the wrong direction.
That’s left Ontario headed down a familiar path: In the ‘70s and ‘80s the province bet the farm on nuclear energy and lost big. Cost overruns and poor performance essentially bankrupted the publicly owned Ontario Hydro, which was then broken up into component parts, setting the stage for the privatization of Hydro One, and leaving Ontarians with a $20.9 billion stranded nuclear debt. We all paid down that debt with a special debt retirement charge on our hydro bills for close to two decades.
So what Ford’s nuclear + gas ambitions really add up to are a massive betrayal of today’s youth and future generations. They will inexcusably delay action on the biggest problem humanity has ever faced – climate change – while squandering billions of dollars that could be put to much better use (e.g., education). They will saddle Ontarians for generations to come with debt that could be avoided by simply opting for lower cost solutions. And they will ignore the biggest economic opportunity of our time – the worldwide boom in renewable, smart grid and efficiency solutions.
The NDP can lead the way: energy efficiency along with wind and solar energy plus storage can lower our electricity bills and phase-out gas power by 2035 (except for emergency back-up). And by working with publicly owned Manitoba Hydro and Hydro Quebec, we can obtain additional cost reductions and energy security by building an east-west Canadian renewable electricity grid which will be the envy of the world.
This is the future that NDP voters want. According to a 1,200 person telephone survey by Oraclepoll Research, 95 per cent of Ontario NDP voters want Ontario Power Generation to cancel its contract for new U.S. nuclear reactors; 96 per cent of ONDP voters prefer investing in wind and solar energy; and 97 per cent of ONDP voters want to build an east-west electricity grid to increase our ability to import water, wind and solar power from Manitoba, Quebec and the Maritimes.
It’s time for New Democrats to work together to make this province a renewable energy superpower.
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