PORT HOPE—At the end of 2016, the Ontario Liberals cancelled their seven-year Feed-in-Tariff (FIT) program to encourage wind, solar, bioenergy and hydroelectric renewable energy projects.
The tariff program, which paid small producers handsome, fixed premiums above market rates to produce small amounts of power, was intended to help offset the loss of coal power and make Ontario a leader in renewable energy.
It was a costly failure.
And long after the plug was pulled, dozens of projects are still being built.
The Liberals ignored warnings about FIT from their own experts, ex-auditor general Jim McCarter revealed in 2011, that they didn’t need costly, small projects to meet provincial environmental goals, but went ahead with the program anyway.
That cost electricity ratepayers an extra $4.4 billion over 20 years, according to McCarter, and was one of the reasons electricity prices in Ontario skyrocketed 71% between 2008 and 2016, according to a Fraser Institute report last year.
When Ontario Energy Minister Glenn Thibeault cancelled $3.8 billion worth of FIT projects in 2016, he admitted the program had “led to sub-optimal siting, uncompetitive prices, and heightened community concern” – in other words, bad locations, increased electricity costs for consumers and upset communities.
Before the Liberals pulled FIT’s plug, they pushed through 390 last-minute projects – within the 4,100 approved since 2009. Those projects are contracted to create 4,800 megawatts of renewable energy generation, enough to power almost 1 million homes.
However, in addition to adding millions to consumer hydro bills for decades, farmers are fighting what they say is the loss of valuable, even prime farmland to the Liberal government’s last-minute FIT projects.
On John Kordas’ farm, a row of tractors sit parked in a line as a form of protest.
Farmers from the Campbellcroft area drove their vehicles to his property recently as a show of solidarity against an approved 500-kilowatt solar project next door which is slated for development this year.
Source : Torontosun