At breakfast this morning we were discussung this story in the Star.
It seems that the Ontario Liberals believe that their overall energy plan (the Supply Mix Report recommended by the Ontario Power Authority in December) does not require an evironmental assessment, and they have passed a regulation to confirm this.
But all is well, they assure us, since each plant and project will have to undergo an assessment of its own own.
That leaves us to question whether this is good enough, and what would be gained and lost by completing an EA on the overall plan?
Let’s come back to that.
First, fast forward for just a moment to the EA’s that the government agrees will be conducted on the individual plants. What will these accomplish? There are many objections to the various traditional sources of energy, so one could expect that these objections would be raised and addressed within the EA for any particular proposal so that the steps necessary to mitigate that impact can be addressed.
In the end though, mitigation efforts are usually done to reach Ontario guidelines for things like emissions, or planting trees for trees that need cutting down, etc, but there will be no show stoppers. All that is needed is to show that there is nothing unusual about the project. In other words, this nuclear plant has pretty much the same or less impact than an industry standard nuclear plant, meets federal and provincial guidelines, etc.
But nowhere in that assessment will the question ever be asked about whether the nuclear plant is needed in the first place, and that leads us the the original question.
The government does not want an environmental assessment of it’s energy strategy since that would require certain inevitable questions to be asked, and if questions are asked in an EA, answers must also be provided.
The EA would have to question:
- the underlying assumptions such as projected population growth and electricity load growth, and future fuel pricing of all kinds;
- the net impact of the decision to close the coal fired plants (not that I’m criticizing this, but it was a political decision made before having technical solutions);
- the projected potential for conservation, demand management, smart meters, public education, and manipulation of the tax system to decrease demand;
- the projected potential for the Standard Offer Program to generate large amounts of power; and,
- the real cost of alternatives, as opposed to the popular myths.
To my original question, what would be gained is an answer to these questions and what would be lost is time.
I suspect that few of the answers to these questions could stand up to much scrutiny, and the real answers would not support large scale construction projects, so not asking the questions is better politics.
Better politics? I guess that depends on which political party you are with.
