Ontario Economy

https://nationalpost.com/

Ford government’s plan dares to put new emphasis on nuclear energy to meet future supply needs

The age of energy ideology is over in Ontario, replaced by power pragmatism. The Ontario government’s new and ambitious plan to meet the province’s power needs until 2050 draws on pretty much every known technology to meet a demand for power that could double by that year.

One doesn’t have to look too far back to remember the era of overhyped and overpriced wind and solar projects that former premier Dalton McGuinty’s Liberal government was so eager to foist off on Ontarians. Across the province, the countryside is scarred with wind farms and solar installations.

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https://www.thestar.com/

Business opportunities — or the loss of them — are driving Doug Ford’s new energy strategy, David Olive writes.

In the space of just a few days, Ontario has unveiled a thoroughly holistic new approach to securing the province’s energy future. Last week, the Ford government committed to building as many as five additional reactors at Ontario’s Bruce Power nuclear facility.

That could expand Bruce Power’s electricity generating capacity by as much as 76 per cent, with the first new reactors coming onstream in the 2030s. Bruce Power, near Kincardine, about 240 kilometres northwest of Toronto on the shores of Lake Huron, is already one of the world’s biggest nuclear power plants.

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https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

It’s an utterly predictable chain reaction. Any proposal to expand nuclear-generated electricity as part of the effort to reduce carbon emissions is met with instant condemnation from environmentalists who can’t see past their historical antipathy to atomic power.

So it was last week in Ontario, when the Progressive Conservative government sensibly proposed further expansion of its nuclear-generation capacity, which already supplies about half of the province’s electricity.

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https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Ontario is charging ahead with its bet on small modular nuclear reactors, announcing that its electricity utility will seek approvals for three more of the units on the grounds of its Darlington power plant, where it has already applied to build one of the new and largely untested systems.

Energy Minister Todd Smith unveiled the province’s plan for the SMRs on Friday at the site next to the existing Darlington nuclear facility in Clarington, about 80 kilometres east of downtown Toronto. Preparatory work is already under way, with newly paved roads leading to a large expanse of sun-baked dirt that has been cleared and flattened by a fleet of bulldozers.

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https://financialpost.com/

When you factor in its reliability, nuclear is cheaper than solar or wind, which are available only intermittently

If Ontario wants to keep its lights on and its economy stable, it needs to abandon the fantasy that wind and solar power can make a meaningful contribution to its energy needs. In the absence of untapped hydroelectric sites, the provincial government’s determination to outlaw fossil fuels in pursuit of an all-electric society means Ontario has no choice but to go nuclear.

Large-scale wind and solar have never been competitive, despite the narrative since the first Earth Day in 1970 that plummeting costs eventually would see them overtake fossil fuels. Today, a half century later, wind and solar in Ontario remain two to four times as expensive as nuclear, four to eight times as expensive as hydroelectricity, and 10 to 20 times as expensive as fossil fuels would be in a free market.

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https://globalnews.ca/

Ontario’s electricity generator has yet to file an official application to extend the life of the Pickering nuclear power plant, more than eight months after the Ford government announced it planned to give the plant a longer life.

As the province faces an electricity capacity crunch in 2025 and beyond, the Ford government scrambled to prolong the Pickering power plant until September 2026, in order to guarantee a steady supply of power as the province experiences a rise in demand and shutdowns at other nuclear power plants.

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