This blog was originally published in Professor Mark Winfield's blog.

Tim Hudak’s Progressive Conservatives have enjoyed a long-standing lead in the polls in the run up to the October 6th Ontario provincial election, but the race has tightened considerably over the past two months. With the PCs, Liberals, NDP and Greens moving into full election mode, the outcome now looks like anyone’s guess. What we do know is that the issues of electricity and energy are likely to be central to the campaign.

The electricity sector in Ontario has been in turmoil for the better part of the last two decades, following the Harris government’s experiments with a competitive market model for the system. Dalton McGuinty’s Liberal government was seen to make a decisive move in the direction of ‘greening’ the system through its 2009 Green Energy and Green Economy Act, establishing a feed-in-tariff system for renewable energy projects. But the government’s behaviour on the file became increasingly contradictory following the departure of the legislation’s architect, Energy and Infrastructure Minister George Smitherman in the fall of 2009. The government abruptly went, for example, from providing incentives for off-shore wind development to imposing ban on such projects this past spring.

The Liberals have now clearly decided make ‘green’ energy a wedge issue against Hudak’s Tories, who have promised to repeal the 2009 legislation. The green energy focus offers the government some potentially significant electoral advantages, particularly among younger voters for whose loyalty the Liberals are competing with the NDP and Greens. The complication for the Liberals is that you can’t claim to be all that green when, regardless of the Green Energy Act, your are irrevocably committed (as the government seems to be) to keeping the province’s electricity system 50% nuclear in a post-Fukishima world.

PC Leader Tim Hudak is a politician who has lived by the catchy sound bite, epitomized by his party’s powerpointish ‘changebook’ platform. But now the Conservative leader finds himself in deepening waters as questions from the media, municipalities and the public, aware of where the same sort of content thin platform has lead Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, grow about what Hudak would actually do on complex files like electricity.
The Tories have already been vilified in the press for their suggestion that they can make the billions in debt, largely left over from the old Ontario Hydro’s nuclear projects, that underlie the debt retirement charge appearing on Ontarians’ electricity bills, magically disappear. Otherwise, beyond repeal of the Green Energy Act, the PCs have been decidedly vague on what their actual plans for the electricity system are. Recent work by the Pembina Institute has made clear that abandonment of the commitment to green energy would actually do very little to reduce electricity rates. At the same time it would increase the risks of higher costs and environmental impacts as a result of the need to rely more heavily on natural-gas fired power plants instead of wind and other renewables.

The number of new solar and other renewable energy installations apparent to anyone travelling the Ontario countryside this summer raises another question – whether the Tories have miscalculated the appeal of the Act’s feed–in-tariff system in their own rural heartland.

Andrea Horwath’s NDP has presented a platform that is strong on energy efficiency and in its opposition to both new nuclear faculties and further refurbishments of existing ones. But its commitments on energy efficiency are undermined in part by the party’s promise to remove the HST from energy bills, and thereby reduce the incentives to consumers to conserve. A better strategy would be to target support specifically at the impact of the HST on low-income Ontarians.

The NDP platform contains another, even bigger contradiction, proposing to put Ontario Power Generation in charge of the large scale development of renewable energy in the province. Presumably the product of an effort at reconciliation with the Power Workers’ Union, the proposition would put the future of renewable energy in Ontario in the hands of an institution whose focus and expertise is on ‘hard path’ energy technologies like nuclear and coal.

Mike Schreiner’s Greens, for their part, share a certain amount of energy policy space with the NDP, with a strong focus on energy efficiency and conservation and opposition to new nuclear facilities. But while the NDP proposes to put Ontario Power Generation at the helm of renewable energy development the Greens emphasize locally-owned, community-based combined heat and power and renewable energy projects and the possibility of imports of hydroelectricity from Quebec and Manitoba. But the Greens’ platform also plays to local opponents of renewable energy projects, making references to “restoring” local decision-making over energy projects, an idea shared by Progressive Conservatives.

So far, none of the parties has put together a compelling picture of how they intend to stabilize the province’s electricity system and put it on a path to environmental and economic sustainability. They all deserve to face tough questions about their electricity plans as the campaign unfolds.

This blog was originally published in Professor Mark Winfield's blog.

Going into this fall’s provincial election the leaders of the Liberal, Progressive Conservative and New Democratic Parties rejected a call from Ontario’s Environmental Commissioner to introduce a price on carbon, either through a carbon tax or a cap and trade system. All three parties argued that other jurisdictions in Canada and the US are backing away carbon pricing, and that therefore Ontario should to the same to make sure that our industries are not put at a competitive disadvantage. Only the Green Party, currently running at less than 5 per cent in opinion polls, has endorsed the idea of introducing a carbon tax in Ontario. But Pricing carbon is essential to fulfilling Ontario’s existing commitments to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. It will help prevent what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has termed “dangerous climate change.” And it is in our economic interest as well.

The reality of climate change means that widespread introduction of carbon pricing is almost certain to happen in the next five to ten years. Introducing carbon pricing now will signal to Ontario’s industries that they need to invest in energy efficiency, low carbon technologies, and renewable energy sources that will enable them complete in the carbon constrained world to come. Industries in jurisdictions that put off introducing carbon pricing will be at a disadvantage when that reality hits.

Ontario is already committed to participating in the Western Climate Initiative (WCI) cap and trade system. This gives Ontario a seat at the table in designing the rules for cap and trade that is likely to strongly influence whatever system for controlling GHG emissions emerges in North America. This ensures Ontario industries are not unfairly impacted by whatever system is established.

Finally, while debate on a GHG emission cap and trade system is on hold in the U.S. for now, we know, based on past Congressional bills, that any national legislation the U.S. adopts will include provisions for trade penalties against any jurisdiction with less stringent GHG emission reduction systems than its own. Participating with BC, Quebec, Manitoba and the leading US States on the climate change issue in the WCI cap and trade system is one of our best guarantees of maintaining access to the US market no matter what the US Congress does.

Analyses by the National Round Table on the Environment and Economy and others suggest that only a few sectors in Ontario – cement, steel, and parts of the pulp and paper and chemical manufacturing industries – would be vulnerable to competitiveness impacts as a result of the introduction of carbon pricing. The situation of these types of energy-intensive and trade-exposed industries can be addressed in the design of a carbon tax or cap and trade system, and through other forms of transitional assistance.

While it seems most of Ontario’s political leaders would like the climate change issue to just go away, that just isn’t going to happen. Rather, Ontario’s best route to safeguarding its environmental and economic interests is to move forward with a carbon pricing system now, before its too late.