OEB Hikes Electricity Rate ... 41% In The Past 2 years.

Today the Ontario Energy Board (OEB) announced new electricity regulated price plan (RPP) rates for the coming winter. In the winter of 2009-2010, the Off-Peak Time-Of-Use Rate was 4.4 cents/kWh. It will be 6.2 cents/kWh for the winter of 2011-12, which is an increase of 41% over the past 2 years; the single-year increase is 21.6%.  In only 4 years the off-peak price, in winter, has doubled through consecutive annual, increases of 33%, 10%, 15.9%, and 21.6% (figures are here).

Is the OEB regulating electricity pricing or selling gas furnaces?

That might not be a fair question, but they sure aren't doing much on the electricity regulation front.

TOU rates were first introduced for the summer (May thru October) of 2006. I've run the data to compare the RPP rates against the average Hourly Ontario Energy Price (HOEP) of the TOU periods (using today's TOU hours). Up until 2008, the off-peak rates were set, essentially, at the expected market rate, and excess costs due to contracts, or party hats for the Ontario Power Authority (OPA), were recovered through higher mid, and on-peak, rates. But since the acceleration in the smart meter program, and the lure of 'savings' through shifting usage patterns, the price has been disproportionately raised in the off-peak periods. There are twin reasons for this, both of which a strong and effective regulator would oppose.  The one reason was feigning a break for customers by extending off-peak hours (to a rather silly 7 pm start), and the other is getting money where it is easiest to get – which is from residential consumers during the hours they are most likely at home. 

The rates, HOEP and RPP TOU, diverge in 2008 as enormous exports appear due to a supply glut coinciding with a demand downturn. That's notable today, because the OEB's release on their latest price hike states that the, “...main factors are increased nuclear and renewable generation coming online during the forecast period.”

No kiddin' ... the nuclear is at half the price of the wind, but forgetting that ... 

All new supply is contracted, so the regulator would be a good place to shut down further procurement of further oversupply.

The last time the OEB announced a rate hike, I wrote on the supply glut and noted the Ontario Clean Energy Benefit (OCEB) is not a break for families, but an additional tax burden that can only serve to break families.

Today the OEB said the rate hikes weren't rate hikes at all, because the OCEB was lowering your electricity bill (the release didn't note the OCEB portion goes on the tax bill instead).

The OEB release includes:

The Ontario Energy Board regulates the province’s electricity and natural gas sectors in the public interest. It envisions a viable and efficient energy sector with informed consumers served by responsive regulatory processes that are effective, fair and transparent.

Efficient energy sector?

Informed Consumers?

Responsive Regulatory Processes?

Effective, Fair ....?

Acquiescent

Docile

Unimpressive

Wind Production Records In Ontario Accomplish Nothing

Saturday October 15th saw record electricity production from Ontario's wind turbines.   No coal-fired generation was replaced, and emissions for electricity generation in Ontario were not reduced.


The initial IESO data shows 31,328MWh of generation during the 15th, which is a record.
Hour 16 has 1416MW recorded, which broke the old record of 1345MW (from February), as did production in the following 3 hours.  Unfortunately, the autumn return of big wind output occurred following, as expected, the high-demand summer season that saw wind production capacity factors drop to 13.6% in July.
The market price managed to stay positive until 10 pm, but dropped to negative $128.10/MWh by 2 a.m. on the morning of the 16th.  At that time exporters were being paid about $200,000 to take our excess power, and we were paying Bruce Power to perform steam bypasses, to avoid power production, at units 7 and 8 (curtailing close to 600MW of production - likely at a cost of about $35,000 an hour).  Hydro production was also reduced, to only 1624 MW, which is near annual lows.  Hydro production thus far in October is very low (averaging approximately 2800MW, compared to previous, low production, years averaging 3500MW).

I've been finding the reduction in hydro output curious, so I decided to compare production from Saturday October 15th, 2011, to the production from Saturday, October 16th, 2010.  The findings from that comparison meet the expectations from my recent work in forecasting the impact of increased wind generation capacity in Ontario.  Specifically, wind can't replace coal, or gas, during the many points in time where there is no coal or gas generation to replace.  Wind frequently replaces nuclear and hydro.

                     Nuclear       Hydro        Wind Gas     Coal    Other

2010             237,192       77,744       6,915 32,462 1,507 3,042

2011             222,867       69,488 31,238 30,174 2,798 2,800
Variance      -14,325 -8,256 24,323 -2,288 1,291 -242

The comparison of this years high-wind output Saturday to the comparable Saturday last year, not only shows wind didn't replace coal, the two dates actually have about the same GHG emissions (treating coal as having twice the emissions intensity of natural gas).

NOTE 10/11/2011:  There is now a discrepancy between this report and the the IESO historical text file, which currently has dropped the generation totals for the Comber and Greenwich IWT installations, lowering the wind totals below record levels. All 3 of these generators are yet to have 'operational dates', which is the time I start to measure their presence in calculating system-wide capacity factors, but all are feeding the grid according to the hourly data, and presumably being paid to do so.  

Value, LUEC Limitations, And FiT Failure

The comparative value of  of each generation source in Ontario’s electricity system is measurable.  I’ve written on this before, and recently read a couple of encouraging articles noting the shortcomings of the LUEC (levelized unit energy cost), or LCOE (levelized Cost Of Electricity) tools in evaluating electricity generating technologies.[i]  Presenting some of the data I’ve collected, in a slightly different way, will emphasize the need for a value analysis that also considers the supply mix, and demand characteristics..  The analysis indicates Ontario’s recent electricity planning foibles will not provide a low-emissions, sustainable, electricity supply.

The Hourly Ontario Energy Price (HOEP) is not a real market price – because over 90% of our supply is contracted in advance, which heavily distorts the market.  However, it mimics a market price, in moving based on the supply/demand metric.   The graph above, demonstrating wind is consistently the least valuable production, and coal the most valuable, looks a little different for Ontario than it would in most of the world, because Ontario is phasing out coal, and currently utilizes it primarily as an intermediate source of generation (not, as most do, as baseload).[i]   The expectation is that intermittent supply will be the least valuable, and peaking supply (in many jurisdictions natural gas) would receive the highest price as it would be disproportionately used during higher demand periods.  Aside from flipping coal and natural gas, the relationships between generation-type characteristics, and demand, is as expected.   Sources which can be managed to match output are worth more.

Adopting the form of some of the graphing I did for my Cost of Wind series, with actual daily production totals from October 2010 through September 2011, it is apparent why coal is the most valuable, in Ontario, as it is used primarily during periods of high demand (hot, or cold, days).

This chart implies:

• the utilization of coal units was only necessary to meet peak summer demand in Ontario;
• during the spring freshet demand was met entirely with hydro and nuclear sources most of the time;
• Ontario is an exporter, as indicated by supply exceeding demand all but 1 of the 365 days shown.  December 2010, May 2011, and January 2011 are the top 3 net export months recorded in IESO data.

In order to get a truer picture of the complexity of the supply, I’ve produced graphs of generation, by source, for the hour of lowest demand each day, and another, on the same scale, at the highest demand level of each day.

From the production at the minimum demand periods, the long-standing policy of providing baseload (minimum demand) from low GHG-emitting sources is apparent.  Although Ontario's mix commits to about 1000MW of other, primarily natural gas, supply at all times, the bulk here is nuclear and hydro - and that mix frequently exceeds the daily minimum demand.  Periods where nuclear plus hydro plus 1000MW exceed demand are periods of Surplus Baseload Generation (SBG).  May 2011 is a great example of excess supply, and it ended up as the second highest net export month since IESO records start.

The other necessity of an electricity system is meeting peak demand, and here the supply did match demand, very well, after the huge exports of last December and January were curtailed (those months are #1 and #3 in the top net export month list).  The important piece of information is that, at the annual peak, demand matched supply, and supply included coal.

The exports of the winter, largely fueled by natural gas and coal generation, aren't as relevant as they appear, in terms of curtailing GHG emissions.  That's because the exports go either to Quebec - where the power eventually ends up replacing carbon-based sources in New England, or directly to the US where it would displace carbon-based sources.  Whether Lambton runs or the Michigan coal-fired plant almost directly across the St. Clair river from Lambton does isn't of interest globally.  It's relevant only for grandstanding locally. 

Comparing the daily minimum and maximums, along with generation mix during each scenario,   emphasizes why the Germans found that increasing renewables impacted their market as it did - erratic, and negative pricing, increased exports (overproduction), and finally the perceived need to eliminate an actual source of reliable supply, in their nuclear units (I wrote on this here). Wind will frequently displace nuclear or hydro in the existing Ontario mix, and it will frequently fail to contribute to meeting peak periods.  This is one reason the LUEC is not particularly relevant.

I've not often addressed solar, because of a lack of real data in Ontario.  Germany's Bavaria provided some expected information recently, as it was reported the grid was being maxed out during peak solar production, while solar generation was producing 8% of their annual production.  This makes sense.  If solar has a capacity factor of 15%, and minimum demand was 8000MW, 8000 MW of solar would provide all demand at some point but only 8% of an average demand of 15000MW.   These figures will vary from jurisdiction, but the message doesn't.  The ability of solar to contribute above a very minor level requires frequent over-production.  The more solar, the less relevant the LUEC is.  Peak demand in much of Europe is on winter evenings - and peak demand in Ontario's January is also in the evening.  A system requires solar be matched by full backup - in Ontario's case there may be an exception for a smaller amount of solar to match summer peak, but only if natural gas is used for heat in the winter (energy use will be higher during winter evenings, but currently less of that energy is electrical).  The claim has been made that the value of solar is therefore simply the cost of the fuel, from the requisite natural gas, or coal, production it displaces when available.  The same claim is applied to wind generation.   7500MW of nuclear capacity would provide 50% of the power to a jurisdiction that average 15000MW, while 7500MW of solar capacity would provide 5%, and reduce the economic viability of the nuclear supply while doing so.  The LUEC models don't account for system factors.

The solar industry has been working on a technology to address that issue.  The promise of concentrated solar power (CSP) is a far better ability to meet demand, and therefore much increased value over the more ubiquitous, and cheaper, photovoltaics (PV).   However, when jurisdictions are either run by feed-in tariffs (FiTs), or even the more consumer-friendly Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS), we are starting to see the replacement of more valuable supply, meaning capable of meeting a demand need, with cheap intermittent sources  - most apparent as PV replacing CSP projects (see here and here).   Ontario's FiT program is predominantly a program for solar PV, and Industrial Wind Turbine (IWT), projects.  Neither of which provides valuable output.

FITs essentially lock-in to chosen, existing, technologies.  In Ontario's case those are probably poor technologies to choose, but, more importantly, the act of choosing preferred technologies discourages innovation towards real clean energy solutions.  The Clean Energy Patent Growth Index tracks innovation, via US patent applications.  In the most recent quarter Canada had 9, while New York state had 52, and the long term trend line for Canada is not indicative of an innovative society.  Year-end reports for 2009, and 2010, show Canada as an innovation laggard, one that is not improving nearly as quickly as many, and far less than the USA.  

This is entirely expected too, as the RPS tool is far better at encouraging improved efficiency than a FiT program.  James Hansen's recent 'Baby Lauren and the Kool-Aid' article illustrated the difference, as he chronicled a collapse of 75% in the pricing of Pennsylvania's  Alternative Energy Credits (a type of RPS), between his commitment to a PV home installation, and the time he sold back a single watt to the grid.  

Ontario's FiT program puts the entire risk on the consumer - which is something that wouldn't be allowed by an effective regulator (ie.  something like the Ontario Energy Board, but more effective regulatorish).  With our emphasis on paying outrageous amounts for old technology, lacking in prospects of reducing our GHG emissions, there should be no expectation either the abandonment of the consumer, nor the inability to improve on an already comparatively clean generation mix, will change.  

Look for the failure of the strategy to be covered up in Ontario, as in Germany, by a redoubled effort to discontinue nuclear's actual low-emissions generation.

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[i] Intermediate meaning to meet peak periods, but not as a peaking source ... once a coal unit is started it is desirable to keep it hot.  Speaking in broad generalities, in the daily production chart it therefore usually runs for a period of time over days (although it can be reduced to 20% of capacity overnight) – gas would run for a couple of hours (but must run at 60% capacity, for the newest CCGT units, or not all).

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[i] Coal Dependence and the Renewables Paradox on BNC, and Solar Power Cost: Don’t Forget Intermittency (energy economics 101)

Lessons From Ontario's Record Low Election Turnout

One of Ontario’s 3 main political parties had a lower percentage of eligible voters opt for their party than had been the case since 1943.

That party won.

Reported preliminary figures show Dalton McGuinty's Liberals won 53 of Ontario's 107 seats by collecting 37.62% of the 49.2% of possible electors that bothered to vote.  That's the lowest share of electors who chose the Liberal party since WW II. The first lesson for the Progressive Conservatives is that the Liberals weren't relevant in their loss.



Voter turnout has been declining for some time.  Federally, 2011's election saw a bump up, as did 2006's.  The first saw the end of 4 consecutive Liberal governments, and the second saw a Conservative majority.  Looking at a chart of election turnout in Canada, the two greatest increases in turnout, over the past century, are 1957, and 1984.  The first is Diefenbaker's Tories end of Liberal rule, the second is the first of Mulroney's two massive majorities.  Two of the 3 greatest declines are the preceding elections of 1953, and 1980.  Put another way, both of the largest increases came by voters returning after skipping elections.

The Liberal party has been frequently described as Canada's natural ruling party.  That might say more about Canadians' penchant for being ruled than it does about the Liberal party.  The big decline of the past 2 decades occurred under Chretien's 3 consecutive majorities, from 1993-2000, which saw voter turnout decline 5.7%, 2.6%, and another 5.75%.  Chretien's only legacy is his 3 consecutive majorities.

Ontario's graph shows similar declines in turnout - but the years are offset from the federal chart.  Well ... optimistically the years are offset - the trend now is simply down.  Historically we see a couple of trends, including the big jump in turnout for the 1934 election, of Liberal Mitchell Hepburn, being preceded by a drop in turnout in the 1929 election (which had re-elected Conservatives).  Then we see the steep turnout drop in 1943 as the Liberals are bumped from their 2 majority terms, in the election they last collected a lower share of eligible votes than in 2011.  The following election saw a big upswing in turnout for what would be the first of 7 consecutive Progressive Conservative majorities. 

The 1971 uptick is the first election under PC Leader Bill Davis.  The common narrative is that Davis re-united factions of the party in building the 'big blue machine' that would run 4 undefeated election campaigns.  In my analysis of percentage of eligible voters, Bill Davis is the precedent for Dalton McGuinty.  In the second election he ran, voter turnout was 5.7% down (dropped to a minority), then another 2.2% drop (another minority), and then a 7.6% drop in voter turnout would lead to his second majority.  Between 1971's majority and 1981's majority, the Davis PC's had dropped from winning 32.7% of all possible votes, to only 25.7%.  The drop in turnout in 1981, while providing a majority, also proved to foretell the end of PC rule in 1985.
Since the McGuiinty led Liberals were fist elected, to now, the drop in percentage of available votes dropped from 26.3% to 18.5% - a very similar drop to the Davis PC's.

People don't need to vote against anything.  The minority Liberal government is at long-term lows in support.
People don't need to vote at all. Many don't, when not provided a reason to do so.
People would like something to vote for.  When a viable alternative presents itself, they will.

Ontario’s Liberals Less Popular in 2011 Election Win than in 1995 loss to the Harris PCs

Ontario’s election saw the Liberals returned to power, but reduced in stature to minority status.  They won 53 seats, and a majority required 54.  I wrote a blog entry, prior to the official start of the campaign, that noted; “Events of the past 2 weeks have made it much more likely that the new government could be the same as the old one.”   I didn’t have the courage to predict that – in fact I said a PC minority was the most likely scenario.  But I did, in hindsight, provide the roadmap for a train-wreck; a map that the Hudak campaign followed. 

Early reporting provides a record low voter turnout of 49.2%.  Of those votes, the Liberals won 37.6%, the PC’s 35.6%, the NDP 22.7%, and the Greens, 2.9%.  I’ve used the registered voter count, for Ontario, from May’s federal election – an election where the Conservative Party acquired about 2.45 million votes, and a large majority of Ontario seats (73).   I noted in the earlier blog entry that; “for the PC’s to win a majority they need over half a million, and perhaps closer to a million, Ontarians to chose to vote for them instead of choosing not to vote at all.  Apathy is as great, or greater, an opponent as the Liberals or the NDP.“

I was right.  While Tim Hudak may draw solace from the historical fact first time leaders don’t do well, I don’t think the PC's should expect to win a 3^rd term in the elections of 2027, with a lower share of eligible voters than he got yesterday – but that would be exactly the precedent from the Liberal loss in 1995, to their 3-peat win yesterday.

Compared to the previous election, in 2007, both Hudak’s PC, and Andrea Horwath’s NDP, parties could take some encouragement that their parties were more popular, amongst all eligible voters, than in 2007.  

Both, however, did much poorer than their federal counterparts did, in Ontario, during May’s federal election.  Early indicators are that 37% of the people who voted for the NDP in May did not do so in yesterday’s provincial election.  For Hudak’s Progressive Conservative party, the drop was actually lower, at 32% fewer votes than Prime Minister Harper’s Conservative party - but that 32% represents over 800,000 votes.   

Premier McGuinty’s Liberals did better than Michael Ignatieff’s federal Liberals, who won only 11 seats, did.  But only 12% better.  I’d have to look at individual seat data, but my suspicion is that 12% is probably a fair figure for the number of votes that are bought with the benefits of incumbency.  The Liberal vote was rather compact, and the outlying Liberal victories (those not in the Greater Toronto Area)  came largely in the secondary urban areas with incumbent cabinet ministers.

Mr. Hudak remained on a script based on warring with Mr. McGuinty.  I don’t think he’s permanently damaged by the loss.  All new Ontario leaders are expected to lead their parties to a loss in their first campaign.  But he should take a cue on 24X7 campaigning from the federal Conservatives.  Hour 1 of day 1 should be replacing his party’s strategists.

That might make for a difficult home life, but a good adviser might let him know potential voters really don’t want to hear about the either.  

Mussolini was a teacher

“The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it comes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism - ownership of government by an individual, by a group,”                                                                  

Franklin D. Roosevelt 

I saw that quote, a long time ago, on sites opposing the imposition of Industrial Wind Turbines on unwelcoming communities; an action seen as deliberately facilitated by Ontario’s Green Energy and Green Economy Act (GEGEA).  I explored the quote, and FDR, and soon realized the quote not only wasn’t a great definition of fascism, but FDR was considered a fascist, an opponent of fascists, a facilitator of fascist …   Opinions of FDR appear to communicate more about the opiner than FDR.  Strangely, or not, the speech the quote kicks off deals with corporatism, and the distribution of income – both might be more relevant (and almost totally ignored) issues today, and both are only tangentially connected to the European Fascism generally associated with the term.   

Fascism is not very well defined.  Recently I read an essay titled, “The Five Stages of Fascism,” by Robert O. Paxton of Columbia University.  I’m going to build this blog entry around my understanding of Paxton’s essay. I’m going to attribute characteristics of Fascists to many people - vitriol which generally disqualifies people from being heeded where I come from, but a couple of things have pushed me to explore this.   

My favourite texts in university were existential texts – the same ones Fascists tended to have read.  Awkward.

I’ve got a German name – which I didn’t really consider often until being required to read Gunter Grass’ work as he tried to come to terms with the horrifying period of the Nazis.   The Nazis were people from the area my ancestors had left, over a century before - but still, stikes me as very similar genetic material.... Awkward.[i]

I assume seemingly good people did, in the past, become fascists.  People not unlike me.

I noted, in arecent blog post, some Germans who had intervened in Ontario energy policies – despite the overwhelming evidence from their country that their policies do nothing to reduce GHG emissions.   I also implied, in using the term “will to power’ a philosophy that championed will (Nietzsche).  Related to theories of will is Wittgenstein’s Weltanschauung concept, which has been cited almost as widely as the term ‘fascist.’   Our core, first, principles, shaped by our language and our experience, are instrumental in the way we view the world.  I refreshed my memory on the concept of Weltanshauung, and found the Wikipedia entry for ‘world-view’ends with a reference to a Michael Lind, and his organization of American politics into five categories:  Neoliberal Globalism, Social Democratic Liberalism, Populist Nationalism, Libertarian Isolationism (those all sound historical), and Green Malthusianism (that doesn’t).   Perhaps as the world gets smaller, these core principles get more abstract.  The combination of a will that the world should become something different, and the world-view that shapes the perception of all things, and events, to that will, is both inspirational, and worrisome.

Paxton’s essay,  “The Five Stages of Fascism,” presents 7 “mobilizing passions’ that function ‘to recruit followers and ‘weld’ the fascist’ tribe to its leader.  Key elements are “the primacy of the group,” a sense of victimization, “closer integration within a brotherhood (fascio),” drawing self-esteem from the “grandeur of the group,” and the importance of the will when devoted to the “group’s success in a Darwinian struggle.”  

Many of these mobilizing passions are apparent in two groups notably behind Premier McGuinty this election.

Working Families is a group that is working Ontario families like pimps are working Ontario women.  It is comprised primarily of our teachers’ unions – the Premier being the spouse of a teacher, or early childhood educator.  The Working Families group utilizes ‘mobilizing passions’ including; the primacy of their group, the recurring theme of victimization under any other than their chosen leader, the enhanced sense of importance in building themselves up by disparaging opponents of their leader, and the raison d'être  of the group is putting their leader into power.

That doesn’t make them fascists.

The other group is the Green Energy Act Alliance.  Names in this group include folks from York, Pembina, CANWea, OSEA and Sierra – essentially, the ENGO’s. Many had independent agendas at one point but have gathered under a ‘green’ energy banner. They draw inspiration directly from Germany’s push into renewables – without noting that Germany’s electricity generation has a far greater emissions intensity than Ontario’s, and a performance in reducing their emission levels well below that of Ontario.

That doesn’t make them fascists, but, like the teachers, it does mean their appeal is in utilizing the same “mobilizing passions’ that fascists did.

Whereas the teachers have identified their ‘indispensible enemy’ – as former Premier Mike Harris and anybody who can be associated with him or his party (the PC’s)- the green alliance has, I think, chosen NIMBY’s as their ‘indispensible enemy,’ a theory the premier picks up and runs with as long as the NIMBY group isn’t in a densely populated urban riding. In this election campaign, the Green Energy Act Alliance has rather comically aligned themselves with the leader, Premier McGuinty, over the greener-than-green Green Party, and an NDP that not only has some plausible environmental policies, but appears to be heavily influenced by a former Greenpeace executive, Peter Tabuns.

This malleability of actionable belief is a characteristic of Fascism.
The creation of a fascist, however, requires a situation that allows for the blossoming of fascism.

Paxton’s essay notes that a ‘first-stage’ facism is a ‘novel mixture of nationalism and syndicalism’ – one that had found little room in the 19th century between Left and Right. Syndicalism sent me to Wikipedia ... and if you are familiar with the systems ‘Working Families’ and the Green Energy Alliance have created, under the pretext of making Ontario a leader (in stamping diplomas/credentials, and creating needless energy at unnecessary times) – it’s another decent fit.

An unsettling aspect of the leader, Premier McGuinty, in this election campaign is he abandoned the use of a ‘team’ (key Ministers, so visible over the past 4 years, seem hidden the past 3 weeks), but is generally pictured with many unknown faces in all publicity shots. It seems an intentional technique. The Premier also appears to have donned, for this campaign, a uniform of sorts – it appears to be a tailored, stylish for his tall frame, athletic jacket. It is a good look. Castro probably wishes he had switched to track suits years earlier. Regardless of fashionability, it does send a signal of some sorts.

Paxton’s second stage of fascism, is ‘rooting’, which is the formation of a political body “capable of acting decisively on the political scene,” establishing a foothold somewhere, and most probably in the nationalistic countryside.  

Ontario is not there, nor is the McGuinty cabal likely to ever be there – because he is not a fascist.

He may, however, be creating the conditions for fascists to appear.

They won’t be the other party personalities people have attached the label to either.

One cannot adopt so many characteristics of Fascists without risking the introduction of the philosophical foundations for fascism into that culture. The advertising campaigns of the teachers’ front is something ‘our’ laws did not intend to condone, and the system of funding ENGO’s that in return will provide both endorsements and advertising for your re-election is also something ‘we’ never intended to program into our government.

The second stage of fascism would require a rump party, neither left, nor right – probably akin to Lind’s Populist Nationalism (perhaps a tea party?). Populism is the expected response, as McGuinty’s policy is to govern via elites – including the groups already noted here. Real wages hadn’t budged much for decades (people forget it took over a decade for real disposable incomes to recover from the period of the GST introduction), and the Green Elites cheer on every increase in energy costs at every opportunity.  As livestock inventories hit new lows, farmland continues to be abandoned, or taken over by official provincial plans (such as Barrie's expansion), and grain prices soar, the conditions for a populist body to appear should grow.

A greater threat may be the rewarding of neighbor at the expense of other neighbours. In my part of the world, one drives down highway 12 and can see homes on 2-3 acre lots with SUVs stacked in the asphalt driveway and twin solar paneled trackers on concrete pads carefully positioned in the clear cut. If my envelope-math serves me correctly, those folks will get about $900 a month to produce as much electricity as they consume – they’ll only pay $150-$200 bucks to consume it though. In less lucky locales, land owners get revenue from the same Industrial Wind Turbines (IWT’s) that devalue adjacent properties.

Paxton argues that for the ‘rooting’ to take place, conditions that need to be in place involve political deadlock, a Right willing to work with the Fascists, and a government ineffectual at imposing order. Paxton notes that in both Germany and Italy (and elsewhere), Fascism first succeeded, on a small scale, in the countryside, but pivotal moments in Germany included vigilantes breaking up strikes by agricultural workers in east-Elbian Germany, and Mussolini’s squadristi putting down strikes in the Po Valley and Apulia. The situation could come to pass in Ontario where a disenfranchised, patriotic, countryside could cheer on vigilantes who took actions an impotent government was unwilling to undertake.

All of which still remains very unlikely to create unpleasantness in a jurisdiction lacking in a history of mainstream disobedience, but people like me could start talking about what the collective ‘we’ recognizes to be true.
Maybe we could start up a new movement based on that, and not on Left or Right, but on an inspiring destiny-driven world-view reflecting the true basis of what we are.

Wouldn't that be great?

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[i] Luft is German for ‘air’.  I reside in the village of Coldwater ... the moniker ‘Cold Air’ is a play on that.  I guess it might be more accurate to refer to myself, air in cold water, as ‘bubbles’, but ....

Germany's Will to Power

“If someone declares publicly that nuclear power would be needed in the baseload because of fluctuating energy from wind or sun in the grid, he has either not understood how an electricity grid or a nuclear power plant operates, or he consciously lies to the public. Nuclear energy and renewable energies cannot be combined.”—Siegmar Gabriel, then-Federal Environment Minister of Germany

This quote was included in the anti-nuclear “World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2010-2011”, and it introduced two points: the first being that “overcapacity kills efficiency incentives,” and the second being that ‘renewables need flexible complementary capacity.’  The implication here is that because renewables need “flexible” capacity, and too much capacity isn’t desirable, inflexible nuclear baseload is undesirable.    If one buys into this premise, and if the question arises, “which is better,” a nuclear supporter is born.

That question doesn’t seem to come up very often.

Siegmar Gabriel, quoted above, is a German politician currently chairing the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD).   Hermann Scheer’s name was mentioned, in Ontario’s election coverage, as being brought, by David Suzuki, to meet Ontario’s Premier McGuinty;  “The German parliamentarian (also SPD), arrived in Mr. McGuinty’s office in the Ontario Legislature with a blueprint for building a new economy from scratch."  Scheer is noted as “one of the initiators of the German Feed-in tariffs” in 1999. 

Rational people should have a look at Germany  and Ontario since the year 2000.  If the goal is to reduce CO2 emissions, or to reduce the use of fossil fuels in general, there is a clear winner:

The return of 2 nuclear units at Pickering, and 2 at Bruce Power, between 2002 and 2005, boosted Ontario nuclear production by almost exactly the reduced amount of fossil fuel-fired generation.

There is no rationally-based contest in terms of addressing climate change.  Nuclear energy is vastly superior.

Ontario is now experiencing the same events Germany experienced when adding wind capacity.  The previously noted World Nuclear Report noted;

“...in October 2008, wind energy generation was so high that some non-renewable electricity had to be offered for “negative” prices on the power market because utilities could not reduce the output from nuclear and coal plants quickly enough—even though some 8 GW of nuclear capacity was off line for maintenance.Since then, negative electricity prices, legal in Germany since September 2008, have become a more frequent phenomenon: in the six months between September 2009 and February 2010, power prices in Germany dropped into the red on 29 days. Negative prices, a sort of financial penalty for inflexibility,reached stunning levels: on October 4, 2009, one power producer had to pay up to  €1,500 per megawatt-hour (15 cents per kilowatt-hour) to get rid of its electricity.”

Lunacy is required to twist that into an argument for wind turbines, but lunacy is worn like a favourite sweater by wind proponents.  Returning again to the data available at entsoe, we also see the frequently noted pattern of wind-driven exports (in Ontario we sell exported power, on average, at less than half what the residents of Ontario pay): 

Solar Output Is far less likely to be exported

We also see that growth in wind production, prior to the nuclear moratorium, had ceased to exist.  With hindsight what surprises me about Ontario's unfolding, expensive, wind experience, is that the inability of wind output to produce reliable supply, the impact of wind’s variability on pricing, and bloating supply (until fossil plants age, or are retired for environmental reasons), was not only known, and not contested, but it was wilfully turned into an argument to carry on with the nuclear withdrawal experiment in Germany.

The German machine has become very good at twisting reality into an argument to will an expansion of their desires – in this case ‘renewable’ energy.    A couple of years ago the press, perhaps at the urging of actual environmentalists, caught onto the fact that carbon trading was actually blocking possible gains in reduction GHG emissions.  A Spiegal online article addressed the issue of the growth in renewable driving down the cost of carbon credits in Europe:

“Germany was able to sell unused certificates across Europe -- to coal companies in countries like Poland or Slovakia, for example. Thanks to Germany's wind turbines, these companies were then able to emit more greenhouse gases than originally planned. Given the often lower efficiency of Eastern European power plants, this is anything but environmentally beneficial.”

Following the decision to spur on the renewable energy experiment by discontinuing nuclear operations, the government has totally flipped this argument.  Tyler Hamilton reported on a discussion he had with Dr. Harry Lehmann, executive director of Germany’ federal environmental protection agency.   Hamilton summed up the argument: 

“Take nuclear out of the equation and the lower supply of emission-free energy will lead to an increase in the price of carbon. German utilities can choose to burn more coal, but it will cost them. For this reason, he says, the market will shift to less carbon-intensive energy sources, such as natural gas — and more renewables. The cap-and-trade system in Europe, in other words, will prevent the shutdown of nuclear plants in Germany from leading to increased reliance on coal.”  

The argument has been turned from increased wind only cheapens the carbon credits (preventing actual reductions in emissions), to reducing generation without emissions will drive up the price of carbon credits (preventing actual increases in emissions).  That is the same reversal tactic we saw with windy periods driving down pricing and driving up exports somehow becoming an argument against nuclear.  

The silliness of what is referred to, in my school of thought, as the 'you are rubber I am glue' argumentative technique emphasizes that the will to increase renewables obviates, in the view of proponents, the arguments against doing so.

September Stats: Preliminary Ontario Electricity Figures

A quick overview of some stats, for September 2011, along with some views of the data not included in the IESO monthly reporting.   I offer these only as my own calculations based on freely available data from the IESO site.

Mistakes in the data may be my own ... but it's unlikely.

The Hourly Ontario Energy Price (HOEP) was low in September, with the difference between on and off ‘peak’ hours only about $5.69/MWh (or under 6/10ths of a cent/kWh).  This lack of differentiation between peak, and off peak, pricing, is a trend.

	For The Month	On-Peak	Mid-Peak	Off-Peak
Average	$31.89	$35.17	$33.59	$29.48
Maximum	$99.75	$87.28	$72.17	$99.75
Minimum	-$42.39	$13.04	$14.88	-$42.39

Ontario Demand averaged 15,476MW/h, with a minimum demand of 11,300 MW and a maximum of 21,552MW.  Total Ontario demand was about 11,142,969MWh.  Supply was up slightly over September 2010, but remained less than 2% up from 2009's recessionary September demand.

Hydro production failed to improve, despite water levels above 2010's depths, in the lower great lakes.

Imports averaged 472MW/h while exports average 1172MW/h – the net export averaging just shy of 700MW.

The 2^ndestimate of the Global Adjustment is  $39.11, which combines with the weighted average HOEP rate of $31.89 to provide a wholesale market commodity charge of $71/MWh.  This compares to the rate of $62.72/MWh in September 2010 – a 13.2% increase.