Goodbye 2011.
This blog was new as 2010 turned to 2011. My first
post
of
2011 noted huge exports in December of 2010, negative
pricing records for January 1, 2011, and record wind production in
hour 21 of January 1st. It took about a week before the first
reporter picked up on the subsidized exports story, which generated
some
interest
in
the
mainstream
media
(MSM).
Remarkably, in hour 18 of January 1st, 2012, wind would again set a
production record (1633MW).
Comparing the immediately available data for New Years' Day 2012 to
the 2011 data, we see why the price disaster of 2011 was curtailed,
to only intermittent periods of negative pricing, this year.
Nuclear was idled: one unit at
Darlington just for this weekend (we'll see if they get it back up
for tomorrow's deep freeze), and one at Pickering they seem to have
decided not to bother with this season (a Bruce A unit is also
offline for a fairly substantial project).
 |
| Net Imports are only up compared to last year: 1/1/2012 we were still a net exporter - of over 1000MW/hour |
It's important to note another small piece of data in this graph,
which is that coal use was up somewhat, and natural gas down. It is
increasingly clear, as has been claimed by many, including Donald
Jones
on
my
Cold
Air
Currents
blog,
and the Ontario Power Workers' Union, that coal units are
frequently a better compliment to unpredictably intermittent
generation, such as wind. That's unlikely to find a champion
anywhere -I mention it out of a habit of attempting to be truthful.
The difference between New Years' Day 2011, and New Years' Day 2012,
is partly the killing off of nuclear; the goal of the architects of
Ontario's Green Energy Act (I wrote about them here).
A look at annual production since 1990,
inclusive of net imports (negatives showing net exports, as has
become commonplace in the past half decade), shows Ontario's aging
nuclear fleet continues to be the dominant reason for low greenhouse
gas emissions in our electricity sector - and 2011 will be
neck-and-neck with 2009 and 1994 for lowest annual emissions, and
lowest emissions intensity (1994 is the record year for nuclear
generation).
Records do get the MSM's attention, but they are far less important than trends. In July, 2011, Parker Gallant and I would share the writing credit on an article on the export situation, "Power Dumping", as part of Parker's ongoing "Ontario's Power Trip" series in the Financial Post. The trends, and forecasts, noted there may have had an impact as, shortly thereafter, the 12-month moving average of net exports began dropping rapidly. Perhaps our use of the term 'dumping' helped to discourage the practice of selling power at half the price Ontarians pay.
Or, maybe not - as later
in
the
year
I
would
discover
OPG's
Saunders
hydroelectric
plant
was
increasingly
being
redirected
to
supply
Quebec's
grid,
a move which essentially has hidden over 500GWh of exports.
My few entries on politics were notable for providing relatively
accurate data-driven predictions. The article
corresponding
to
the
start
of
our
federal
election
noted the likelihood of a majority (not widely viewed as a likely
possibility at the time), and the article mid-August on the
provincial campaign, "Time
for
Hudak
to
Step
Up,
or
..." also wrote the road map for a McGuinty
victory - which happened.
December 2011 started encouragingly, but a flood of reports later
pointed to trouble ahead. Early on the Auditor
General
of
Ontario
Annual
Report
supported almost every criticism of the Green Energy Act, and this
blog's early conclusions on the
Debt
Retirement
Charge.
But it became apparent reports were being buried in December under
cover of the holiday.
The Environmental
Commissioner
of
Ontario issued
Volume 2 of his reporting on conservation issues in 2010, and he
promises yet another volume. The Commissioner buries the lead late
in volume
2, after spending a lot of time of the bureaucratic
self examination that made me, earlier in the year, write on
Parkinson's
Law
in
connection
with
Volume
1. 56 pages into Volume 2 we get:
Natural gas and transportation fuels accounted for about 70 per cent of the total energy used. Meanwhile, electricity accounted for 20 per cent of Ontario’s overall energy demand. Propane, oil and other fuels accounted for almost 10 per cent of Ontario’s overall demand. This trend is almost identical to what was observed in 2007 ...This informs us that the bulk of 3 volumes of bureaucratic navel gazing will be spent on electricity generation, where 20% of the production of electricity had a significant emissions component - that's 20% of the 20% of energy consumption that is electricity, or 4% of overall energy consumption.
The Ontario Power Authority (OPA) would squeeze their reporting on
their 2009 and 2010 Conservation efforts into the end of the year.
Add in 2011's spending and that's about $1 billion (it's charged to
Ontarians through the global adjustment mechanism), and the one
snippet that should be of interest in this December
report
was that energy conservation targets weren't met due to demand being
depressed.
Conservation targets weren't met because demand has dropped too low.
It's hard to question the wisdom of the report - as I'm not willing
to wade through the hundreds of pages on the rules for measuring
programs, but it's yet another example where the bureaucracy fails to
see the obscenity of their waste of public funds. Just as the
Environmental Commissioner spends the bulk of his time on the tiny
piece of our emissions coming from our electricity generation, so the
OPA, an entity that exists to provide the long-term planning it never
has, is now stealing from Ontarians to fund conservation programs
that are overwhelmingly aimed at having businesses focus on
electricity consumption instead of concentrating on competitively
producing something (Parker and I noted how reductions are
overwhelmingly in the wholesale/manufacturing sector here).
By no means were the bureaucrats the only bodies to miss the point in
efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and emissions of actual
pollutants. Doctors and nurses appeared stupidly throughout the year
- in some instances citing soaring rates of asthma and other
respiratory ailments as if that was linked to the decreasing use of
coal in electricity generation, and not our increasingly
dysfunctional, traffic-clogged, cities.
Perhaps most disappointingly for many
of the folks who believe in rational argument and good planning, was
the issuance of a draft policy from the Ontario Society of
Professional Engineers on Wind
and
the
Electrical
Grid.
It's not every day I, holding only a B.A. in Political Science, can
condescend on Professional Engineers - publicly - but this document
is exemplary of the current state of personal responsibility and
professionalism in Ontario today. Tasked with integrating ever more
wind power, Ontario's shrinking base of working engineers dutifully
relegate nuclear energy to the role of supporting technology, and an
interim solution at that. In fairness to OSPE, the role of engineers
as problem solvers is important. But it is wildly irresponsible to
accept the creation of a problem in the hopes introducing
inefficiency will return the jobs lost to being unable to compete
with jurisdictions concentrating on efficiency/productivity.
From the World Trade Organization to NAFTA we started to see the
legal issues, internationally, with a centrally planned economy
characterized by professional prostration before the ruling party.
As 2011 closed, the annual average for the Hourly Ontario Energy
Price (HOEP) would fall below even 2009's depressed pricing. The
vast majority of the commodity charge in Ontario is now the cost of
publicly guaranteed, secret, contracts gifted on no defensible basis.
While the 'market' rate dropped about 17% as demand stagnated in
2011 (the fourth quarter of 2011 will have lower demand than not only
2010's fourth quarter, but 2009's too), the cost of the contracts,
conservation, and assorted other element captured in the global
adjustment, surged almost 50%.
2011: a year the market died; a year a
recovery ceased; a year where Ontario became an outlaw; and a year
Ontario's professionals chose to switch to the oldest profession.
---
Figures for the comparison of January 1st, 2011, and January 1st, 2012, are here
All other graphs are based on data in this Google spreadsheet
