VANCOUVER (miningweekly.com) – Ontario’s misadventures in energy policy formulation hold a critical cautionary tale for the federal government’s plans to phase out coal-fired power generation by 2030.
Closing Ontario's coal-fired power plants had a negligible effect on reducing air pollution, helped fuel skyrocketing energy costs and should serve as a lesson to policymakers across the country, a new study published Tuesday by Canadian public policy think-tank the Fraser Institute has found.
According to a report entitled ‘Did the Coal Phase-out Reduce Ontario Air Pollution?’, the findings did not confirm the provincial government’s internal forecasts before the coal phase-out, and are particularly important as the federal government plans to force the phase-out of coal-fired power generation in Canada by 2030.
"Ontario's example should serve as a warning to the federal government, which is making the same grandiose claims about the benefits of eliminating coal, while seemingly ignoring the crisis of Ontario's soaring energy costs," University of Guelph professor of economics, Fraser Institute senior fellow and co-author of the report Ross McKitrick stated.
INEFFECTIVE POLICY
The study analysed air pollution changes in Hamilton, Toronto and Ottawa from 2005 to 2014, and found that the coal phase-out had no effect on nitrogen oxide levels, an important component of smog, and produced only a small reduction in fine particulates, a common measure of air pollution.
In Toronto and Hamilton, the reduction in fine particulates was statistically insignificant.
In fact, had the province completed its modernisation of the coal-fired plants, instead of shutting them down, fine particulate reductions of the same size could have been achieved at a much lower cost, the institute found.
Likewise, in 2005, all electricity power generation – including coal – comprised just 0.7% of fine particulate emissions in Ontario. In fact, the Fraser Institute believes that residential wood-burning fireplaces contributed 20 times more fine particulate emissions than electrical power generation.
"Ontario closed its coal-fired plants with promises to greatly reduce air pollution and save billions in health costs, neither of which came true. Now the province has some of the most expensive electricity in North America," the Fraser Institute’s senior director of natural resource studies, Kenneth Green, noted.
"Policymakers in Ottawa should note how Ontario's coal phase-out failed to achieve its stated goals as they promise to impose the same failed strategy nationally," McKitrick warned.