Over the last two years, I have posed questions focused on Ontario electricity rate drivers to Ontario’s Energy Minister Bob Chiarelli on Twitter. Minister Chiarelli is an active Twitterer. He has yet to respond to any of these questions. Here’s a sampling of those questions.
Two themes of my public comments on the sale of Hydro One have been that there is no windfall available from the sale to fund government spending initiatives and that creating a Potemkin windfall will hasten Ontario Electricity Financial Corporation’s (OEFC) collapse into insolvency. Supporters of the Hydro One sale, including the Globe & Mail …
Continue reading ‘Grabbing Cash from Municipalities to Fund Hydro One “Windfall”’ »
(This posting contains both our speaking notes, posted about 20 minutes after presentation, and the official Hansard transcript. Following our presentation, Ed Clark made a presentation to the Finance Committee and made comments to the press. His comments and my reaction to his comments are ably reported here by Antonella Artuso for Sun Media. Our …
Continue reading ‘Deputation to Finance Committee on Sale of Hydro One’ »
Electricity protesters will converge on the Ontario legislature starting at noon May 13. The protest will be an important gauge of the extent of public anger over soaring rates, particularly Hydro One’s rural rates. But, when it comes to solutions, expect more heat than light. The protest has coalesced around a Facebook site, a petition, …
Over the last two weeks, there have been a dizzying swirl of announcements and reports on various aspects of Ontario electricity prices. With official Ontario working hard to keep the issues confused and impacts spread out over time, it is challenging for consumers to follow the multiple shell games going on at once. Here are …
Continue reading ‘Ontario’s Power Rates Are Going Up How Much?’ »
Responding to two recent recommendations of the Ontario Auditor General (AG), the provincial Finance Minister Dwight Duncan released a summary yesterday of what he would have us believe is the debt left over from the old Ontario Hydro. He also issued a regulation defining some of the idiosyncratic terms used in Ontario’s electricity legislation since 1998. …
Continue reading ‘Ontario’s Electricity Debt Disclosure: Opaque Transparency’ »
Of all the generation sources operating substantially unchanged since the days of the old Ontario, which ones are the most costly for consumers today?
I will appear on CBC’s “Ontario Today” show on March 4, 2011 at 12:05 discussing the recent debate in the provincial legislature on the Debt Reduction Charge (DRC) on power bills in the province. Originally introduced in 2002 as a temporary 0.7 cents/kWh tax on electricity consumers to manage the insolvency of the former Ontario …
Continue reading ‘Upcoming Radio Appearance – “Ontario Today” on CBC’ »