It is very important to me…

It is very important to me that Ontario align itself with a sustainable future.  As part of this alignment we need to move towards 100% renewable energy sourcing.  This is not an easy task, but it is possible as has been shown by countries such as Germany.

Further, I believe the true cost of energy must be paid by the consumer.  With energy subsidised to such a large extent by government support and by a failure of regulators to incorporate estimates for externalities, our economic decision-making is highly skewed at both the personal and industrial levels.  These skewed consumption levels serve to prevent meaningful movement towards sustainability and instead allow unsustainable activities to continue and government debt to mount in a vain attempt to maintain the status quo.

Instead of supporting the status quo with government debt, I believe the Ontario government should be implementing policies to move the price of energy to its full cost, while encouraging private investment in sustainable energy development.  Although the Ontario government is worse than broke, the private sector is sitting on huge unused capital reserves that could be directed towards investment in sustainable infrastructure if our government led the way.  An example of such leadership was the Feed-In Tariff Program, which was overrun by investors putting money on the table for the chance to participate.  Although the program was not well run by the government, with overly generous contract pricing, it could have been done with a little more caution by issuing smaller contract bundles at a time, while gauging the market and adjusting the price of the next contract issue according to the market response.  Be that as it may, the concept was still good and was successful and bringing local capital out of mothballs and into use to build renewable energy systems.  This is an example of how I want our government to proceed towards 100% renewables within a reasonable period of time, starting NOW.

[Original Comment ID: 205993]