“There’s a lot of clarity in hindsight.” – Julia Hartz
In 2009, the Legislative Assembly of Ontario passed the Green Energy Act (GEA), a bill that was meant to transform the province into a global leader in climate change. Championed by the ruling Liberal Party, the GEA was openly modeled after Germany’s Energiewende strategy. Like Germany, Ontario operated a fleet of nuclear power plants with a track record of providing reliable, safe, and carbon-free electricity for decades. The province also leveraged ready access to renewable hydroelectric power, making it home to one of the least carbon-intense electricity grids in the world. Despite these enviable energetic anchors, the Liberals were hellbent on shifting the province to wind, solar, batteries, and biomass.
Although the Liberals had promised 50,000 “green jobs,” expanded economic activity, and a healthier environmental future for generations to come, the GEA ultimately devolved into one of the greatest political scandals in Canadian history. Against the advice of its own expert advisors, the government entered into a series of one-sided and ironclad feed-in tariff agreements (FITs), enriching all manner of insider cronies at the expense of the public. As electricity rates soared, the howls of protest grew along with evidence that the GEA was nothing more than an expensive cocktail of grift and mismanagement. Hoping to obfuscate the negative impacts of the bill, the government moved billions of annual expenses from the ratepayers’ electricity statements to the province’s general budget in the form of “price mitigation subsidies.” All told, the boondoggle will cost Ontarian taxpayers more than $60 billion CAD over the life of these FITs. On a per-capita basis, this is the equivalent of the US wasting over a trillion.
By 2018, the citizens of Ontario revolted, handing the Liberal Party the most comprehensive defeat a government has ever experienced in the province. The Progressive Conservatives—led by former Toronto City Councillor Doug Ford—swept into office, winning 76 of the Assembly’s 124 seats. The Liberals secured just seven seats, the worst result in its 161-year history. Among the new leadership’s first acts was a total repeal of the GEA (emphasis added throughout):
“Ontario's Government for the People is delivering on its promise to repeal the Green Energy Act, 2009, that led to the disastrous feed-in-tariff program and skyrocketing electricity rates for Ontario families.
‘The Green Energy Repeal Act eliminates a piece of legislation that introduced disastrous changes to Ontario's energy system that led to rising electricity rates for families and businesses,’ said Minister of Energy, Northern Development and Mines, Greg Rickford. ‘By repealing this act, we're restoring planning decisions to municipalities that were stripped by previous government and ensuring local voices have the final say on energy projects in their communities.’”
In the intervening years, the province’s leadership embarked on a remarkable reconciliation with physics, culminating in a series of historic announcements in the past few weeks that detail their commitment to a full-blown nuclear renaissance. The moves represent a huge victory for our friends at Canadians for Nuclear Energy (C4NE) and offer a blueprint the US can follow to substantially decarbonize without sacrificing the standard of living of its citizens. The details couldn’t be more encouraging.