Friday, February 4, 2011

Hey Kid, can you lend me $50 million for something Smart?

An article begins with "The Canadian Province of Ontario has announced plans to launch a $50 million smart grid initiative aimed at driving investment in research, capital and demonstration projects."
They didn't do that on any Government of Ontario site I can locate.

If by announced you mean whisper it in a foreign jurisdiction through a City of Guelph employee aligned with yet another organization with yet another adorable name (Ontario Clean Technology Alliance) made up of yet another grouping of different local governments - well, maybe they did announce it.

Some things not in the announcement:

In 2010 our coal use went up 29%, our natural gas use 33%, our imports (many for US coal plants) 31% -- all to meet a 2% increase in consumption over 2009.
Since 2003 Ontario has taken out of service about 3200MW of coal capacity ... and added over 5200MW of natural gas capacity.

The most comically dishonest statement in the release is “Ontario’s Long-Term Energy Plan is on track to eliminate coal by 2014,” which is hilarious because the LTEP came out late in November 2010, 7 years after the first plan to eliminate coal by around 2014 (2015 - from the Eves government) - and it is a working paper for the minister to ignore in writing up a supply mix directive to another government organization, for them to build another plan for the same minister, or another in his spot, to ignore.
Which is exactly what happened the last time around.
And the LTEP doesn't actually doesn't contain any serious thoughts on replacing coal.

If it did we wouldn't be dropping another $50 million down another wishing well - hoping one more stupidity will yield something smart.

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