Charged up over electricity

In Fort Frances we know that we have the lowest electrical power rates in the province. It is a nice benefit of living in this community. Either this week or next, every resident in the district will be receiving a pamphlet explaining Ontario’s new electricity policy and telling you that you will receive a rebate of 10% on your hydro bill. The Ontario government is spending $1 million to persuade you that paying higher electrical rates will be good for you.
First they take your money and then they bribe us by giving some of it back-but none of it will go into your pocket directly. The rebate will come as a credit.
Ontario has chosen to be a leader in green energy and has bribed new electricity producers with guaranteed high selling prices of electricity. It is the carrot to persuade companies to build green energy sources in the form of wind turbines, hog fuel boilers, and solar energy. Ontario has turned to foreign companies such as Samsung to build these solar units hoping that they will transfer knowledge to Ontario companies.
Residents of the region will join the rest of the province in paying for these new technologies.
And Ontarians are paying through the nose for all this new electrical generation technology. And combined with the HST, they are seeing a 20% increase this year, and can expect to see another 46% increase in hydro bills in the next five years.
In Northwestern Ontario, where hydro dams are now producing an excess of power for the region, rather than using the surplus as an incentive to attract industries with lower electrical rates, industries too are facing higher costs.
Sometimes governments have to pave the way for the use of new technologies. The Ontario Liberal Government has as part of its last election mandate promised the electorate that it would reduce green house emissions from the Ontario atmosphere.
In this case the province is eliminating coal fired plants that have high carbon pollution problems with solar and wind power. Coal fired thermal plants produce power at a much lower cost than these new technologies. In the United States, the coal industry, and the government has committed to spending millions on research to make coal a clean energy source.
Coal is plentiful throughout North America, and the US is betting that it can remain a thermal electrical generating fuel source for centuries to come.
The most effective electrical generation come from nuclear power plants that produce electricity for 4¢ kilowatt hour (KWH) compared to the new technology of 80¢ KWH. But environmentalists have us fearing nuclear energy, just as they now have residents fearing wind turbine energy.
And other environmentalists believe that solar panels laying across fields of farmland is an eye sore.

–Jim Cumming,
Publisher