By Don Waffle, The Windsor Star February 2, 2011
What's the dirty secret behind Dalton McGuinty's clean energy program? Why did McGuinty choose the most expensive plan possible for harnessing wind power to generate electricity?
Public ownership of wind energy generation would supply kilowatts at rates competitive with traditional hydro generation.
Once equipment was paid for, electricity from wind would be virtually free.
McGuinty chose private ownership. In doing so, he designed profit to private developers so generous they can contemplate the horrendous cost of building wind farms out in the Great Lakes.
He opted to commit ratepayers to the high cost of private borrowing from private banks. Turbines erected on public land like hydro corridors would save farmland and save ratepayers almost $200,000 over the life of each tower.
For this, Ontario gets obsolescent and short shelf-life technology.
Governments in the earlier part of the last century worked to keep the cost low on vital services. Hence the term "public" applied to hydro and water utilities and highways.
Directly after the Second World War, Ontario converted from 25 to 60 cycle AC power.
Every electric motor in the province was removed, rewound and replaced. This was done without disrupting the economy.
In contrast, the primary function of politics and the parties today is to shovel the public's money into private pockets.
The debacle of power privatization in California seemed to slam shut our Ontario government's agenda to turn hydro over to private ownership.
With the clean energy program, party strategists saw McGuinty's great chance to please profit-hungry banks and global corporations and investors, at the expense of Ontario's economy and its people.
He did an end run. Clean energy is henceforth privately owned.
Ontario ratepayers are on the hook with home and industry-busting private electricity rates.
Does the McGuinty government really care about clean energy or Ontario saddled with obsolete wind technology?
DON WAFFLE, Harrow
Read more: http://www.windsorstar.com/technology/Follow+wind+power+money/4208909/story.html#ixzz1CoxdFxRG
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