Minister confirms municipal support mandatory for new power projects to proceed
Stephe Lecce, Ontario Minister of Energy and Electrification, announced today that the newest Request For Proposals from the Independent Electricity System Operator is about to launch.
The New RFP, called LT2-RFP, has been in development for months, but will be ready by the end of September, the Minister said today; deadline for project proposals will be February of next year.
Although the Minister said the RFP will be “technology agnostic” he made specific mention of renewable energy. The government wants an “all of the above” approach to generation, he said.
That means more wind power. Despite Ontario’s problems with wind power from 2009 to 2016, where Ontarians saw electricity bills rise by 250 percent to cover juicy operator contracts, and experienced other problems such as the industrialization of rural communities, and the addition of problematic noise pollution.
The Ontario government currently has more than 7,000 files of citizen complaints about noise, many with reports of adverse health impacts linked to low frequency noise and sleep disturbance.
Municipal support mandatory for new power sites
Wind Concerns Ontario actively participated in the development of the RFP and was concerned that in earlier versions of the process, municipal approval did not seem to be part of the procurement framework.
“We’re happy that the Minister clearly stated the importance of municipal support today,” says Wind Concerns Ontario president Jane Wilson. “It’s not 2009 anymore — people know the problems that have occurred with industrial wind power sites, and it should be communities’ choice as to whether they want them.”
Wilson also lauded the statements about the importance of protecting prime farmland. The Minister stated that ground-mounted solar would not be allowed on prime agricultural land, but the process is less clear about industrial wind power sites.
“Wind power sites and turbines with all their associated infrastructure are an industrial land use,” Wilson said. “Power generation sites are not farming. And they use more land than wind power developers claim.”
There are 157 municipalities in Ontario that have passed resolutions to say they are Unwilling Hosts to new wind power sites. Municipalities are concerned that problems with operating wind power sites have not been resolved: there has been no change to setbacks between the power sites and homes, nor has there be a change to noise limits so they are more protective.
Ontario needs reliable, affordable power
Minister Lecce repeated the words “reliable” and “affordable” throughout his announcement, and said that the proposals for new contracts will have to be competitively priced. That’s a big change from the McGuinty and Wynne governments in which wind power developers got above-market contracts, with “must-take” or “first to the grid” provisions, so they were paid even when Ontario did not need the power. That meant that lower cost, emissions free sources of power such as hydro and nuclear were displaced in favour of higher cost wind.
Former Energy Minister Todd Smith said in an interview with Dr Chris Keefer of Canadians for Nuclear Energy a few months ago, that the choice of wind and solar by the former government was based on ideology, not science, and resulted in Ontario taxpayers shelling out $6 billion a year to wind power developers to this day.
Smith also said, it is impossible to “get to Net Zero” with just wind, solar and batteries.
Wind power is known for its intermittency and in Ontario, is often out of phase with demand on a daily and seasonal basis. It is not reliable baseload power, and needs backup from other sources, at present natural gas, to meet demand.
Wind Concerns Ontario will be providing information to communities where wind power projects are proposed.
“We have a lot of knowledge based on experiences from the last 15 years,” President Jane Wilson says.
contact@windconcernsontario.ca
Read the News Release here: Province Launches Largest Competitive Energy Procurement in Ontario History | Ontario Newsroom