http://business.financialpost.com/
They promised green and clean. What they deliver to Canadians instead is expensive and in the red
From Bonavista to Vancouver Island, from the Arctic Circle to the Great Lake waters, this land really belongs to electric-power monopolies and politicians who routinely bulldoze property rights, ratepayers, taxpayers and the regulators that have become puppets of governing political string-pullers.
They promised green and clean. What they deliver to Canadians instead is expensive and in the red. From coast to coast, provincial governments continue to plow ahead with power-generating mega-projects and green-power schemes whose only certain output is massive debts and soaring costs to deliver electricity that may never be needed.
Out Bonavista way, Newfoundlanders are saddled with Muskrat Falls, a giant dam project under construction in Labrador. Nalcor Energy, the provincial power monopoly in cahoots with provincial and federal politicians, started with a cost estimate of $7.4 billion to ship electricity from Labrador to Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. The latest estimated cost is $12.7 billion.
The original rationale for the project: Green and clean electric power. There is no way the project can return its costs, which means electricity consumers will be paying higher than market prices for electricity and/or taxpayers will be picking up most of the debt.
DBRS recently gave $8 billion of Muskrat Falls’ debt a triple-A rating, but only because the bonds carry a “flow-through” rating from the federal government.
For the rest of this column: http://business.financialpost.com/opinion/terence-corcoran-another-green-power-boondoggle-sinks-taxpayers-and-consumers-in-the-red