Mainstream Media Wakes Up to Record Ontario Hydro Global Adjustment Fees

I made a blog post a little while ago (December 4th), about how the electricity surcharge, i.e. the global adjustment that gets added to Ontario electricity bills to cover Green Energy initiatives reached a record high in November.

Here's an article from the Toronto Star (December 13th) where they too mention the record high for November. So they're catching up to Surly Hamiltonian. Some good info:

"It’s a lot of money. In November, the total global adjustment payment came to $847 million. Of that, $192 million went to OPG, and the remainder to private power companies."

$847 million in one month? That's a colossal amount of money for Ontario considering the population is just shy of 13 million. That's a lot of money to be taking from the residents of Ontario and can't be helping consumption and further, for poor people is especially damaging.

How high will the global adjustment fee be in 2014? More wind is coming online and the big problem is when the wind blows strongly overnight when demand is low. That power has to be paid for and has been dumped to the Americans in the past for negative rates (i.e. the province pays the Americans to take our excess power). If overall Ontario power demand stays low, the global adjustment could go higher.

Ontario's Green Energy Program Loses at WTO

Here's a Globe and Mail article about Ontario liking losing a World Trade Organization tribunal decision about requiring wind and solar installations having a percentage of Ontario equipment.

This is hardly a surprise and one wonders what advice the Liberal government got from their relatively high paid government lawyers. One also wonders if this news was the final nail in the coffin for Dalton McGuinty when he stepped down yesterday, as this pretty much invalidates his entire green energy strategy. One caveat is that though the judgement is really against Ontario, the federal government is technically on the hook for any damages.

So Ontario is left with high electricity rates, which will keep rising from some time to come due to the high prices guaranteed to producers of green power, little local green manufacturing capacity to speak of and the end of requirements for local content going forward.