THeBlueCashew

QuoteKathleen Wynne's green energy policies are setting the stage for a 'massacre' of our economy



If you want to see the future of the Ontario economy under Premier Kathleen Wynne's green energy plan, you don't have to look far.



Look at Europe, because we're starting to experience what's happening there, as rising electricity prices driven by the high cost of renewable energy gut its manufacturing sector.



"We face a systemic industrial massacre," Antonio Tajani, European Commissioner for Industry, recently told the Daily Telegraph, "I am in favour of a green agenda, but we can't be religious about this. We need a new energy policy. We have to stop pretending, because we can't sacrifice Europe's industry for climate goals that are not realistic and are not being enforced worldwide." "The loss of competitiveness is frightening," Italian economist Paulo Savona told the Telegraph. "When people choose whether to invest in Europe or the U.S., what they think about most is the cost of energy." European Council President Herman Von Rompuy said reducing energy prices has become a top priority for the European Union, surpassing even the debt crisis.



But rising electricity prices aren't just sending European industries fleeing to places like the U.S., where the shale gas revolution is lowering energy costs.



They're also driving millions of Europeans into fuel poverty, meaning households where people spend at least 10% of their income just to heat, light and power their homes.



Ontario's ill-advised green energy policies are having the same effect here.



In his December, 2011 review of the Liberals' renewable energy program, then auditor general Jim McCarter noted that in 2009, they assured the public their initiatives would add a modest 1% annually to their electricity bills.



But just a year later, they predicted "a typical residential electricity bill would rise about 7.9% annually over the next five years, with 56% of the increase due to investments in renewable energy." Also in 2010, the Ontario Energy Board, predicted "a typical household's annual electricity bill will increase by about $570, or 46%, from about $1,250 in 2009 to more than $1,820 by 2014. More than half of this increase would be because of renewable energy contracts." These are exactly the kinds of steep increases that have spread fuel poverty in Europe.Alarmingly, McCarter found the Liberals embarked on their mad dash into green energy with no preparation.



He had to start his investigation from scratch because the government "had not recently conducted any audit work on renewable energy initiatives." McCarter reported the Liberals failed to carry out a "comprehensive business-case evaluation ... to objectively evaluate the impacts" of their green energy program.



"No independent, objective expert investigation had been done to examine the potential effects of renewable energy policies on prices, job creation and greenhouse gas emissions," McCarter concluded. "No thorough and professional cost/benefit analysis had been conducted to identify potentially cleaner, more economically productive and cost-effective alternatives to renewable energy, such as energy imports and increased conservation."



Regarding what the Liberals called the crown jewel of their green energy program, their multi-billion-dollar deal with Korea's Samsung corporation to produce wind and solar power, McCarter found, "no economic analysis or business case was done to determine whether the agreement ... was economically prudent and cost-effective." The Liberals also ignored the advice of their own experts in deciding what to pay wind and solar developers through their "Feed-in Tariff" (FIT) program.



As a result, McCarter said, Ontarians will be paying billions of dollars in extra electricity costs for wind and solar power over the next two decades, at rates two to 10 times higher than what we would pay for conventional energy sources, some of which don't emit greenhouse gases, or are low emitters.



Because this is happening while Ontario has an energy surplus, McCarter noted, consumers will also be paying hundreds of millions of dollars annually for renewable energy we don't need.



McCarter examined the Liberals' claim their renewable energy program would create 50,000 jobs by 2012 and found it was a myth. In fact, there would likely be a net job loss, he said, because in Europe, higher electricity prices resulted in substantial job losses in the manufacturing sector.Despite McCarter's findings and the European experience, Wynne and the Liberals aren't listening.



They've gone too far to admit they were wrong.



Instead, they keep trying to "fine tune" the disaster they've created, which is like shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic.



The only way to stop them is to vote them out of office, before they do even more damage.

http://www.edmontonsun.com/2013/09/13/ontario-failing-like-europe

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