Before entering politics, I was the director of SWITCH, a south-eastern Ontario sustainable energy association, whose mission is to work with business, public institutions, researchers, professionals, students and forward thinking individuals to position the south-eastern Ontario economy ahead of the transition from burning fossil fuels to cleaner energy. It is a priority of mine to fight climate change and support the transition to a reliable, affordable and clean-energy future. 

Executive Summary

Without new builds, in the near future, Ontario won’t have enough power. It is projected that by 2030, Ontario will need 2,000 megawatts (MW) more electricity generation to meet demand. One reason is that the whole economy must make an unprecedented shift from fossil fuels to electricity. The current government’s apathy towards this reality is reflected in their reliance on building new gas plants and running existing ones full time to provide baseload power. 

Ontario’s transition to renewable energy has to be realistic, which means that transitional fossil fuels, such as natural gas, are essential for now, but Ontario can do much more to be a leader in green energy production and storage, and in conservation.

Since 2018, canceled investments in competitively priced renewable energy have resulted in this increased gas plant output to meet demand. We must do the opposite. We must rapidly scale renewable technology, such as solar, wind, and energy storage, while utilizing natural gas as a reliable backstop. Another step we need to take is to advance efficiency, conservation and demand management. These affordability measures include retrofitting buildings, switching to heat pumps, and other incentives to be smarter about energy consumption. In particular, Ontario’s need for power generation will be less if we use less power at peak times.

Another aspect of policy for a clean energy future is to evaluate power transmission infrastructure and the need for local grid upgrades. Places like Palo Alto, California, which is well along the transition, have bumped up against local electrical grid limits, because of high levels of electric vehicle ownership and heat pump installation. The reality of entire neighborhoods charging electric Vehicles (EVs) is not far off in Ontario. We need to work with local power distribution authorities, and update regulations and incentives, to ensure that Ontario’s grid is robust enough for our clean, electric future. 

Ontario should expand biogas and green-hydrogen blending with natural gas, and make the best use of existing natural gas infrastructure.

Nuclear energy will continue to contribute a large fraction of Ontario’s electricity needs for the foreseeable future. We have experience and expertise here in Ontario and we should continue to invest in it.

Finally, the Ontario Government must have proactive local community engagement at the core of any energy strategy. Renewables, like wind and solar, and energy storage, take up land that can alter the everyday experiences of communities. It is essential for communities to have buy-in, and reap the benefits of green energy projects.

Ontario’s Problem: Lack of Planning for Today’s and Tomorrow’s Needs 

We need affordable, reliable electricity to sustain the energy needs of the people and businesses of Ontario while also fighting climate change. Electrification is happening fast and time is running out to address climate change, with 2023 being the hottest year ever recorded. New cars will be electric vehicles (EVs). Home heating will convert to electrical heat pumps, starting from southern Ontario. Cleaner industrial processes, like electric arc furnaces in steel making, will ramp up electricity use. 

However, power plants and energy grids are not built overnight.

The current government has squandered many years, not just by killing competitively priced renewable energy projects and low-cost conservation programs, but also by failing to invest in flexible storage options, for different contingencies and to complement different forms of renewable energy, that would allow Ontario to prepare for future needs. In the next couple of years, we will begin to risk capacity deficits — our demand for electricity in the province will risk surpassing generation capacity. The government has known about forecasts of this capacity deficit since taking office in 2018, but it ignored it until just recently. Now it is procuring new power generation for the short term, including burning natural gas for baseload power, and extending the life of the Pickering Nuclear station for at least two more years, past the Dec. 31, 2024 expiry of its current safety license.

By the end of 2030, Ontario will need almost 2,000 megawatts (MW) of new electricity generation. This is new electricity, and assumes that current plants will continue to operate past their contract expiry dates, because no other solution has been proposed. The government has two plans to meet these needs. Approximately 300 MW will be covered by the first Small Modular Reactor (SMR) — as long as there are no delays. It’s worth noting that there are no cost savings from SMRs until they are mass produced, which would be into the 2030s at the earliest.

How will the rest of the 2,000 MW deficit be covered? Overwhelmingly, 1,500 MW, by newly-built natural gas plants with long term contracts. This would be a big step backwards on fighting climate change. The contract length greatly exceeds the time until the federal government’s “Clean Energy Regulations” moratorium date on natural gas facilities, putting Ontario at risk of owning expensive stranded assets. This plan also misses out on the federal Clean Electricity Investment Tax Credit which would pay for 15 percent of capital costs.

Costs and lead times of major equipment have greatly increased across most industries in the past few years, including in the electricity sector. The U.S. Inflation Reduction Act pushes us to the back of the lineup to buy that equipment. Even Canadian energy project specialists have moved to work south of the border. No matter what type of electricity generation, purchasing and taking delivery of major components for generation projects has become more subject to shortages and more expensive. It makes the current government’s history of cancellations and delays all the more painful. 

So conservation programs are vital to the urgent issue of how Ontario will source enough energy as our needs increase over the next two decades. Conservation is still considered the least expensive form of electricity “supply” for Ontario and is estimated to be 60% less expensive than energy from natural gas.

Electrification of the economy will put a huge strain on our aging electrical grid. Therefore, there is a rapidly growing need for distributed electricity generation. Distributed generation will become increasingly important in order for Ontario to maintain a reliable system.

Reliable, Affordable and Clean Energy System 

The goal for any long-term energy platform should be to do the obvious: control costs, and provide adequate and reliable quantities of electricity, while lowering GHG emissions. These don’t always go hand-in-hand, but over time, they can. 

The only greenhouse gas emitting sector of Ontario’s electricity system, currently, is natural gas. Those plants are still relied upon because they can be quickly turned on when needed (dispatchable) and because our electricity system faces tight supply in the immediate future. 

By 2040, Ontario will require at least 6,000 MW of new power. This assumes that everything, including gas plants, continues to operate past their current contract expiry dates. We will have to work with a combination of conservation, efficiency, new nuclear, renewable, and distributed generation to cover this energy deficit while replacing base load natural gas generation with renewables and storage. Natural gas plants still provide hugely important flexible generation to cover gaps in supply, so a transition plan for converting them to clean fuels is crucial.

Below are several ideas that form my vision for a path to a reliable, cost-effective, clean energy future:

• Maintaining necessary supply
• Providing reliability with flexible generation
• Promoting energy efficiency, conservation and affordability
• Investing in distributed energy resources and the transmission network
• Developing green hydrogen and renewable natural gas
• Engaging communities proactively

Maintaining Necessary Supply

In 2018 the current government paid to cancel renewable energy contracts and dismantle projects, saying that we had too much electricity. Ontario’s last Long Term Energy Plan, from the previous government in 2017, took into account future shortages, but it has, since then, been ignored by the Premier. Now we are stuck with the consequences. In the summer of 2023, Ontario was already close to the point of lacking enough electricity supply to meet demand. 

Solar and wind energy are the cheapest forms for power generation today, however, they are intermittent, which is why they must be coupled with energy storage. The more storage we have, the more we can make use of cheap solar and wind energy. It is important to proceed without delay in building out storage. In addition to time running out to stop global warming, we are at the back of the line because of the government’s intentional delays and, we are stuck behind the immense procurement resulting from the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act. Even Canadian energy experts have been pulled away to work in the U.S..

We need more electricity in the short, medium and long term, and we need it to be clean, reliable  and affordable. Given the scale of the need in the next 20 years, we should continue to refurbish nuclear plants, including preparing and designing the Bruce nuclear expansion preferably before CANDU institutional knowledge from AECL retirees is lost. 

While gas plants have their use as flexible resources, that should be their sole use. In the last 2 years, gas plant output has increased 62% to now handle one-tenth of the electricity we use. That number, and its associated GHG emissions, will rise. This increase isn’t because of more fluctuating peaks, it’s because of a general lack of supply. This can be made up with renewables without causing system adequacy issues while directly reducing carbon emissions.

Gas and its related  infrastructure will remain a backup, as would wood stoves or propane for off-grid heating. Rural and Northern Ontario will probably transition last. However, that is not the final story on gas. Green Hydrogen and Renewable Natural Gas (such as from the Stanton Farms biogas facility in Ilderton, ON) can help cover the most difficult to replace uses of natural gas, and be used with little modification to existing power plants.

At all times we have to keep a realistic eye on costs and check whether there are other areas of the economy where the same expenditures can result in more GHG reductions. The cement, agri-food and heavy transport sectors are examples of competing opportunities. Not all sectors will transition at the same time. For example, there are agri-food uses of natural gas and propane for drying which will be difficult to replace in a cost-effective way. Heat Pumps will replace natural gas burning furnaces, but their efficiency depends on local climate and surface geology, so southern Ontario will transition first.

There are still modest hydropower resources to be developed in Ontario, about 1000 MW from existing sites and possibly another 3000 MW is possible in northern Indigenous communities that wish to develop them. This renewable resource is a significant contribution to aid our energy transition.

Providing Reliability with Flexible Power Generation 

Beyond providing base load power, we have to consider the reliability of electricity generation. Without reliability there will be economic costs and a loss of political will for the green transition. The biggest challenge with electricity is meeting those few times a year when demand spikes, or when supply is cut off by unusual weather or natural disasters. Very few resources are capable of turning on and off to meet those spikes at a moment’s notice. 

This is why it has been so difficult to compete with the flexibility of gas plants. 

The most obvious direct competitor to a gas plant in terms of flexibility is energy storage. Coupled with renewables, storage provides clean, flexible generation when we need it most. Examples of storage include chemical batteries, pumped hydro, flywheels, thermal energy and hydrogen. This is a rapidly developing technology sector, and should also be viewed as a potential source of economic growth. Gas plants, while they may be carbon emitting resources, still have value as quickly available reserves to ensure reliability. Most are tied into long term contracts already, so eliminating them would be a poor financial decision. There are ways of making these plants run cleaner than they do now while still providing the same level of flexibility to the system.

Promoting Energy Efficiency, Conservation and Affordability 

When asking how we lower electricity costs in the short term, aside from government subsidies which simply shift the cost to the tax base, conservation and efficiency is the place to start. It is the lowest cost way to help electricity supply meet demand, by far. Conservation and efficiency at home save money that people can see on their monthly bills.

Examples include insulation in older buildings, replacing oil or electric baseboard heating with heat pumps, individual water and electricity metering, or reflective roofs. Smart land use, building standards and transportation policy can contribute immensely to reducing energy usage.

Time-of-use pricing has long been a means to shift people’s usage away from peaks and burning less natural gas as a result, but the incentive to do so has always been lacking, and many people don’t fully understand the system. Education, along with a more dramatic price swing between peaks and valleys of demand, can provide the incentive to save significantly more money, lower peak demand for the province and burn less gas. The government has just started to understand all of this, but the effort must be maintained.

In situations such as rental dwellings, where, frequently, the owner and the consumer are different people, incentives don’t work as well and energy efficiency standards will be required. Waste in the system can also be a demand driver. Simple changes resulting in a smarter grid-to-home system (smart thermostats, time-of-day controls) can cut waste and leave the province needing to supply less energy overall.

Investing in Distributed Energy Resources and Grid Modernization

The transition to an electrified future has begun. More and more people are purchasing, and plugging in electric vehicles (EVs). This trend is expected to grow as Ontario becomes a powerhouse for EV production. But even as Ontario ramps up production of cars and generation of electricity to meet new demand, this doesn’t solve the glaring issues at the distribution level. 

It doesn’t matter if we have enough electricity in the long run if the local transmission/distribution infrastructure can’t handle it. Think about what it’s like when a fuse blows at your own house because too much energy is being sent through one area. Guess what it’s going to be like when every house on the block wants to charge their EV? Cities like Palo Alto, California, with high per capita ownership of EVs, have encountered difficulty with inadequate infrastructure for local power distribution. We need to learn from their experience and plan ahead. The province needs to work with local distribution companies to come up with cost effective means of making this transition before it becomes too late and too expensive. It is most cost effective if developers are tasked with making appropriate plans in their new subdivisions.

Distributed energy resources don’t necessarily need to be limited to the grid, but can be in individual homes as well. The government should invest in programs to promote adapting small-scale storage in the home. This can help reduce the burden on the grid during peak times, make better use of rooftop solar panels and help people save money when prices are the highest. 

Developing Renewable Hydrogen and Green Gas

Hydrogen is abundant and can be used as fuel. Hydrogen fuel can be made renewably. The technology is still improving but it exists and can be used at first to soak up any excess renewable supply. The vast majority of natural gas plants’ existing gas turbines can blend a certain level of hydrogen without needing any major upgrades or changes to the plant itself. At that point, it becomes an issue of economically making clean hydrogen in large enough quantities. 

The government has taken the first steps to better understand hydrogen’s role in the electricity sector, but it needs to be accelerated to make a notable impact. The uses of hydrogen for energy storage extend far beyond the electricity sector into industry and heavy transport, but electricity is a good place to start. Renewable Natural Gas can be generated from landfills, livestock, municipal organic waste and wastewater, and agriculture and forestry residue. Its potential in Ontario would cover less than 5% of current natural gas usage, but it’s important as a source of GHG-free gas for the uses which are the hardest to replace. It is also a source of revenue for farms and the rural economy.

Engaging Communities Proactively 

The generation of solar and wind energy occupies much more land than nuclear or natural gas plants and so it affects many communities. Therefore this transformation of our energy economy requires widespread political support.

On the other hand, the benefits from renewable energy, conservation and efficiency, beyond the environmental benefits, include:

• Lower cost of living from conservation and efficiency,
• Revenue from energy sales,
• Jobs from construction and procurement,
• Diversification of local government revenue sources,
• Local generation for security from international disruptions,
• Possibility of local ownership shares

Energy conservation and efficiency, while important for the whole economy, most affect people at home and most affect households struggling with cost of living. There is still much to be gained from reducing wasted energy at home, especially from older housing stock. People can see the cost savings and that earns political will for the transition we need.

Local communities must be given time to learn and become comfortable with renewable energy and storage projects. A project’s economic benefits should be shared as widely as possible. Communities must be given time to debate the costs and benefits. That is why community engagement must be proactive. We must take the time to proactively build trust and earn the free, prior and informed consent of Indigenous communities. Community engagement should be a cornerstone of any plan to stop burning fossil fuels.