Dalton McGuinty and his Wind Farm Dream

Dalton McGuinty is a DISASTER

By not putting the scrubbers on the coal plants he has put the people of Ont. at risk. He said he would shut down the coal plants in 2007. I have yet to find a report saying that was possible. Options for coal plants

He said he got bad advice.

Now he wants to cover Ontario with wind farms.

More bad advice Dalton?

Leamington has joined the Town of Essex in approving a one-year ban on new wind and solar power projects until a county planning study is done to help put some controls in place.

Dalton forgot to put controls in place.

Probably got bad advice Again

When are you going to tell the people about the thousands of megawatts of gas plants in the works to back up your wind dream.

When are you going to tell the people about the massive increases they can expect in their electric bills.

You are either a FOOL or a LIAR. Either way you are not fit to be premier of this province.

I have sent my blog to every Liberal MPP in Ontario asking that they look it over and to get back to me if they find anything they question or disagree with. To date I have had no replies. Therefore it can be concluded that the information on my blog is factual and is accepted as factual by the Liberal Party of Ont.

Tell your Liberal MPP what you think.

If you have any questions please contact me.

Please read the excerpts from

LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY OF ONTARIO

Monday 10 April 2006

Mr. Garfield Dunlop (Simcoe North)

Before I wrap up here, I wanted to just spend a few moments on the blackout in 2003 and where we’re going, as a province, as a result of that. I’ll tell you, we have some very interesting data that’s coming towards us on our hydro supply and where we’re going with hydro in the province of Ontario.

It seems so amazing that we had the blackout just prior to the election. One of the election promises was that the new government, the Liberal Party, would close all coal-fired generation by the year 2007, which is now nine months away — the beginning of 2007.

I recall Dalton McGuinty on Steve Paikin’s show one night. Mr. Paikin was interviewing Mr. McGuinty, and he said, “Mr. McGuinty, would you close the coal-fired generation early in 2007 or later in the year?” He looked like a deer in the headlights when he answered the question. He said, “I’d close the coal-fired generation late in 2007.” That means sometime in November or December, 2007. That’s 6,416 megawatts that we’ll have to close down. As of today in the province of Ontario, the only coal-fired generation that has been closed down is Lakeview, and that’s the one that we had planned on closing down four years ago; Elizabeth Witmer made the announcement and was at the ceremony that actually closed it. The Progressive Conservative Party’s plan for coal-fired generation was that we would close the facilities down by 2015. That is still, today, the most realistic figure we can come up with, because we have to find a way to find 6,416 megawatts in the province of Ontario.

I was really interested today: It’s amazing that the minister’s comments on wind power came up the same day we’re debating Bill 56, we’re talking about blackouts and all that sort of thing. One of the things that really was amazing is that the government is counting on the total capacity of the wind power generation as fact. This all ties in to our need for power, so we don’t have another blackout, another natural disaster. To date: Melancthon Grey wind project, which is 67.5; the Kingsbridge wind project, 39.6 megawatts; Erie Shore’s wind farm, 99 megawatts; the Prince wind farm, 99 megawatts; and the Blue Highlands wind farm, 49.5. That’s a total of 354.6 megawatts. The minister keeps saying that’s how many megawatts she has coming on-stream.

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The reality is that in this book put out by the Independent Electricity System Operator — which I think is a government body, part of the old Ontario Hydro — it says, under an asterisk at the bottom, “For capacity planning purposes, wind generation has a dependable capacity contribution of 10% of the listed figures.” So of the 354.6 megawatts that Minister Cansfield talked about today, according to our own Independent Electricity System Operator, we really only have 35 megawatts, if you consider 10%.

The reason is that we can never shut down the other systems. We can’t shut down a nuclear reactor and use all 354 megawatts. We can’t shut down a power dam. We can’t shut down a natural-gas-fired system, because it takes too long to fire them up. Even if we bring all these wind turbines on stream, we still have to leave all the other ones in place. So not only do we have to replace 6,460 megawatts of coal-fired — we should even maintain that, or replace it with something other than wind, because the wind turbines certainly don’t have the ability to work all the time. If you have a hot summer day — 30 or 35 degrees Celsius outside — and there’s no wind, there’s no wind power. There’s no turbine going to operate that will feed our air conditioning systems across the province of Ontario.

The same thing applies to the ones that she has planned. The Wolfe Island wind project, the Leader wind project A, the Leader wind project B, Prince II wind power, Kingsbridge II, Ripley wind power project, the Kruger energy port and the Melancthon II wind project total 955 megawatts. The reality is that, under the Independent Electricity System Operator, they will only have a total capacity, probably, of around 130.9 megawatts, if you take into account the fact that this booklet says they’re only at 10% of capacity.

My concern is that we’re creating this illusion out there that we’re doing all these wonderful things in power. I’m very, very concerned that if they do close those coal-fired generators down in 2007, like they promised they would to the citizens of the province of Ontario, we won’t have nearly enough power to operate in the province and we will be in a serious blackout right here in Ontario.

Up our way, we’ve got a couple of projects, one by a company named Ventus Energy. They’re one of the companies that want to put wind power into Simcoe county; apparently there are a couple of proposals there. I understand now that a guy by the name of David Peterson is one of the members of the board of directors. I hope that’s not the David Peterson that was the Premier here. In my opinion, his ties to the Liberal Party would make this very, very uncomfortable if we go towards awarding contracts to this company. I believe that the contracts will be awarded for a 20-year period at 8.5 cents or nine cents a kilowatt-hour. My understanding, talking to people who have a lot more knowledge about wind turbines than I do myself, is that they stand to make a fortune out of this over the next 20 years, because the first 10 years will pay off the cost of the turbines.

If there’s anything we can do around electricity, because it has such an impact on emergency planning in the province of Ontario, if there’s anything we can do whatsoever, it’s to make sure we tell the people in the province, our citizens, that wind power may be wonderful — everybody wants to have their energy come from green, if it possibly can — but let’s not put them under an illusion that there’s something seriously wrong here, and we’re spending millions and millions of dollars for only 10% of the capacity they actually perform at. That scares me, particularly if someone is foolish enough to actually close down that coal-fired generation in 2007, as Dalton McGuinty promised in his Liberal platform. That is a scary thought.

I understand that they’re going to put one on hold — I think it’s Atikokan, or maybe Nanticoke — but the reality is, if we close the other three, we’re still in a serious problem. If we thought we had a blackout and emergency planning was required in the summer of 2003, God only knows what we’ll need if we shut that coal-fired generation down without a proper, adequate supply of electricity for the future.

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Mr. Norm Miller (Parry Sound-Muskoka): It’s my pleasure to add some comments on the debate this afternoon on Bill 56, An Act to amend the Emergency Management Act, the Employment Standards Act, 2000 and the Workplace Safety and Insurance Act, 1997.

We just had our leadoff speech from the hard-working member from Simcoe North, who spoke for an hour on this bill. Toward the end of his speech, one of the points he brought up was the emergency that is being created in this province by this government, by its irresponsible plan to shut down coal-fired generation in the province before it has an adequate supply of electricity to replace that coal-fired generation. I can tell you that there’s an emergency being created in northern Ontario. Every week there’s another paper mill, another forestry company announcing layoffs or slowdowns.

When they talk about some of the recent announcements to do with electricity and solar power at a cost of 42 cents a kilowatt hour or wind power at a cost of 12 cents a kilowatt hour, I can tell you that will not sustain the economy of the province.

Originally, their plan was to shut down coal-fired generation in 2007; that was the first announcement. That has now been backed up to 2009, and I hear rumours of maybe 2011. Of course, that’s well beyond the next election, so this will be another broken promise, thank goodness, that this government will not be able to keep.