The only path to a lower…

The only path to a lower cost electrical system is through more distributed renewable energy generation, close to the consumers of electricity.

The Province should not be repealing the Green Energy Act legislative provisions (in the Electricity Act, 1998(EA) and the Ontario Energy Board Act, 1998 (OEBA)) that were designed to promote renewable energy generation projects. Ontario has not built a clean energy supply system!

We have a system that is overly centralized and dependent on 3 nuclear generation locations (60%), this may be 'clean' from a GHG perspective, but is not flexible or resilient, an increasingly expensive. The province is also planning to add new natural gas turbines to add resiliency and address localized congestion issues. When the Pickering site is turned down for maintenance, this issue will be worsened. Every Nuclear plant retrofit in Ontario has been over budget and longer that planned. Why would Pickering be different.

Gas is NOT clean and will become increasing expensive to maintain in standby and operational modes.

The only 'clean' path for the electricity system, that offers a 'declining' cost structure, is one with wide spread renewables, combined with selective battery storage (electricity and hydro), wide spread conservation initiatives and demand response programs. This is also called a proper set of 'Integrated Regional Resource Plans'.

The future of electricity consumption will be very different from the past. We are on the cusp of widespread electric vehicle adoption and air source heat pump cooling & heating!

In the future it will be impossible to provide enough power through long transmission/Distribution lines to the 20,000,000+ remote consumer points across the province.

All regulations supporting distributed renewable electricity generation should be maintained and enhanced.

I welcome speaking to any senior official of the ministry of Energy, IESO or OEB about this question.

Thank you for your time

Dick Bakker
President, CoEnergy Ontario Cooperative
613-404-7712
Member of the Ottawa Renewable Energy Cooperative.