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

Mark Winfield’s take

Q: Who are the Greens targeting in their platform and why?

They are playing to their core constituencies, although there are things here as well that are broader.

The Greens’ base is relatively young, in terms of their demographic relative to the other parties. They share the same basic, post-materialist positioning as the Liberals, the Bloc and the NDP supporters
Conservatives supporters are what political scientists tend to refer to as materialists – a very bread and butter, crime, law and order — exactly the sort of stuff the Conservatives are pitching on.

Green voters are more post-materialist and the environment is part of that – so is a higher concern for social issues. You see some of that reflected here as well. It is a relatively broad platform that is more than just environment, although environmental issues are very central to it. It is very clearly positioning the party in the post-materialist, centre-progressive part of the Canadian political universe.

Q: The Green party is best known for its focus on the environment. Does the platform do enough to address other policy areas?

For about 50 per cent of Green voters the environment is the vote-determining issue. They do have to have a strong component there, but I think it is noteworthy that they are presenting a fairly comprehensive platform. Environment is quite central to it, but it is not just an environmental platform. I think that was notable in the previous election as well. It is a fairly comprehensive platform that covers off all of the major points in terms of foreign policy, governance, social issues. All of the major components are there. It’s not that different from what you are seeing from the other parties in that sense. Clearly there is an emphasis on the environment and an emphasis on the relationship between environment and economic development, but that’s not terribly surprising.

Q: What’s in there for the environment? Are these policies sound?

What they are proposing on the environment front reflects pretty mainstream thinking about where we need go in terms of environmental policy. They are making some very strong connections between economic strategy, environmental protection, greening the economy, and not seeing environmental protection and economic development as being at odds with each other.

If you look at the Conservatives and some of their statements and they have really kind of gone with the language of balance and competition between economic development and environmental protection. They see it as being a zero-sum game, where one can’t win without the other losing. The Greens, consistent with present thinking about these things, are envisioning some degree of integration between environmental policy and economic policy.

That makes sense and a number of observers have argued that one way or another in the long-term there will be movement on the climate change issue on the global level and that we want to be positioning ourselves to supply the goods and services that support that kind of economy.

They talk about a carbon pricing architecture and 33 billion dollars of revenue coming from that. Clearly that is pretty central. They’ve actually got both a cap-and-trade and a carbon tax. Exactly how the two would interact is not clear.

Clearly they are moving in the direction of carbon pricing, but that again is entirely consistent with what anybody who studies climate change policy will tell you. Indeed, even the National Roundtable on Environment and Economy, which is now dominated by Conservative appointees, said exactly the same thing a few months ago. So this is pretty mainstream stuff. A lot of this wouldn’t look terribly out of place in a Liberal or NDP platform.

Q:Did anything from the Green platform surprise you?

Not really, given that they have kind of signalled some of this stuff before. It’s largely consistent with fairly mainstream thinking in environmental policy in Canada these days. It’s not a terribly radical platform from that perspective.

There’s obviously a pitch around moving towards some form of proportional representation, but given the nature of how the Greens performed in the last election, that’s hardly surprising. They got nearly a million votes and elected zero MPs, whereas the Bloc Quebecois got not that many more votes and elected 55 MPs. It’s not a radical notion that the current electoral system is rewarding parties that have a strong geographic concentration of their vote and penalizing parties that have a relatively even geographic distribution of their votes, which is very much the case with the Green party. It’s geographic distribution is remarkably even and the electoral system doesn’t reward that, which is a problem from a national unity perspective as well because it produce parties that play to a particular region – the Bloc Quebecois being the poster-child of this – instead of to the country.

Q: What do you think about the cost of this platform and how the Green is proposing to pay for it?

Clearly there’s not a lot of detail other than the budget detail page. The centerpiece is to adopt some kind of carbon pricing and to have offsetting reductions is EI and CPP contributions – what they are calling a carbon tax holiday. In effect there is a tax shifting onto carbon, which in theory is activities we want to discourage, and we want to reduce taxes on employment, which is effectively what the EI and CPP contributions are. In theory that again is consistent with what most people who have looked at these things have suggested in terms of the political strategy you would need to pursue to introduce carbon pricing.

The scale of it in terms of moving to relatively quickly to a $33-billion carbon tax within the next fiscal year is ambitious to put it mildly. This would be a fairly massive shift in the federal government’s revenue base, so from that perspective, it is interesting. It is daring. How much acceptance of that shift would actually be, I don’t know, but it is a very clear signal in terms of moving in a direction. In principle it is very consistent with what the basic policy discussions around this have suggested need to happen.

Q: Will this platform help or hurt the Green party?

It’s an interesting question. It’s helpful in the sense that it puts more substantial policy content into the conversation, which has been missing so far from the campaign. And it adds an environmental policy dimension.

It’s an interesting question as to whether it helps them or not. Their support has shrunk back a bit relative to where it has been in pre-election polling. It’s not clear where they are bleeding that support given that no other parties have, at this stage, presented a particularly bold or interesting environmental platform. It will certainly appeal to their base of environmentally-concerned voters and the younger cohort of voters within that. Whether it helps them pull voters back from the Liberals, the Bloc and the NDP, it’s hard to say.

There is the question of strategic voting tied up in all of this as well. If those four parties are all competing for the same chunk of the vote and that constitutes somewhere in the range of 65 per cent of the electorate, I suspect a lot of people are thinking about strategic voting.

Q: Why launch the party platform as one big document and what do you think of the timing?

The timing is as good as any. The Liberals already have a platform out on the environment and the Greens have to get something out there too, particularly given that in the last couple of elections the biggest source of Green voters has been ex-Liberals. They need to draw them into the Green party and that means they have to come up with something that is more ambitious and more interesting than what the Liberals are offering, which is pretty vague at this stage of the game.

Q: It’s clear that May’s strategy has been to work her riding so far during this campaign. She’s released the platform in Toronto, should she be out selling it on the campaign trail?

That’s a complex question that goes to whether the Green’s interest is winning a seat in parliament for their leader or in maximizing the Green vote overall. There are interests both ways. Clearly the issue of the debate has reinforced that they need parliamentary representation of some sort. On the other hand, their numbers are going down quite dramatically from where they were in pre-election polling and where they are relative to their electoral performance last time. That suggests that if they want to maximize the vote, she has to get out of her own riding and generate some interest and activity.
It’s a bit of dilemma. You can see the argument both ways. Maximizing their overall vote in some ways increases the leverage and influence of environmental concerns in the other parties’ platforms because it demonstrates that a chunk of voters out there are prepared to vote on the issue of the environment. Maximizing the vote also increases their financial return because we finance parties now on a per-vote basis.

Q: Does the debate hurt Elizabeth May’s ability to sell her platform?

There’s no question that it does.

Q: What do you think is a more important factor for people in deciding who they vote for – party platform or the personality of the leader?

Both is the short answer. The platform is in theory what you are actually giving the government a mandate to do. A platform is an expression of what the leader and the party stand for and it’s what they would be held to. The platform articulates the choice for voters; in that sense it needs to be quite central. Part of what you are judging about the leader is their ability to follow through on the platform.

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

The unfolding nuclear catastrophe in Japan has reopened the debate about the role of nuclear power around the world, including here in Ontario. The provincial government’s December 2010 “Long-Term Energy Plan” proposes to maintain a commitment to an electricity system that relies on nuclear power for 50 per cent of its output. Nuclear’s contribution would come through a combination of building new plants, and refurbishing existing facilities as they reach their normal end-of-life.

The viability of the government’s plans on the nuclear front were already subject to serious doubts even before the disaster in Japan. Ontario has a long history of major cost-overruns and delays on nuclear construction and refurbishment projects. The province’s bidding process for two build reactors at Darlington produced proposals whose costs, at between $23 and $26 billion, were between three and four times higher than the Ontario Power Authority’s original estimates. The outcome prompted the province to terminate its procurement process in June 2009. These experiences have led many to suggest that the $33 billion nuclear cost estimate to replace or refurbish the province’s entire fleet of reactors in the government’s Long-Term Energy Plan is wildly optimistic.

Moreover, there are very serious questions about the ability of either of the proponents who filed bids under the 2009 process to deliver viable new proposals in the foreseeable future. Areva of France has suffered a number of difficulties, particularly with respect to its reactor construction project in Finland. Atomic Energy of Canada, for its part, has been put up for sale by the federal government. It is not clear that the company will even exist in any recognizable form a year from now.

Questions about the future role of nuclear in the system have not been limited to the usual ‘green’ suspects. The province’s Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO)has been commenting for some time on the presence of ‘surplus baseload generation’ (read nuclear) in the system, particularly in the context of declining and less stable demand.

Nuclear supporters argue that Ontario has no viable option but to remain dependent on nuclear power, apparently regardless of whatever challenges of cost, safety, reliability, security and waste management exist or may emerge. In reality, considerable effort has gone into exploring electricity options for Ontario that involve significant reductions or even phase-outs of nuclear power as the existing fleet of plants reaches its normal end of life over the next two decades. The most detailed work began with the 2004 Power for the Future study by the Pembina Institute (http://www.pembina.org/pub/166) and has been followed up with the Renewable is Doable initiative (http://www.renewableisdoable.com/). In both cases the nuclear and coal-phase out options, relying on increased efforts on electricity conservation and demand management, and larger roles for low-impact renewable energy sources like wind and solar, and combined heat and power (cogeneration) facilities, emerged as viable, and economically and environmentally superior to the nuclear based plans proposed by the province. These findings were based on what we now know were very conservative (i.e. low) assumptions about nuclear costs, based on the OPA’s estimates before the outcomes of the new build bidding process and the recent refurbishment projects were known. Similarly, the modeling accepted the Ontario Power Authority’s assumptions regarding the growth of future demand. In practice, electricity demand in Ontario has turned out to be in decline, and is not projected by the IESO to increase significantly anytime before the end of the decade.

The federal environmental assessment process for a Darlington new build reactor project, for which public hearings are scheduled to begin next week, is especially poorly configured to explore the questions that need to be answered before Ontario commits to further nuclear construction or refurbishment projects. The key issues about the role and need for nuclear energy in the province’s electricity system have been ‘scoped’ out of the hearing. Any exploration of safety issues is hampered by the consideration that, given that the proponent and nature of the reactor design that will be employed are still unknown, the assessment is ‘generic’ rather than focused on any specific type of reactor.

So far the province has hidden behind the federal process rather than permitting a meaningful environmental review of its own plans. That needs to change in light of the developments of the past few days. Other jurisdictions are reconsidering their nuclear plans in light of the Japanese disaster. Ontario needs to do the same, and initiate a serious public exploration of the options for the future of the province’s electricity system.

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

March 19, 2011

The Editors
The Globe and Mail
444 Front St.
Toronto, Ontario

Dear Sir/Madam

Re: “Keep building nuclear plants” (March 19, 2011)

A team of researchers from York University and the University of Waterloo recently undertook a sustainability assessment of the major electricity supply options available to Ontario, including nuclear, coal, natural gas (conventional and unconventional), a range of renewables, and energy conservation and demand management. The study employed criteria related to social, economic and biophysical impacts, the distribution of risks and impacts in the present and future, resiliance and adaptive capacity, and democratic governance. The major conclusions, published in the leading international journal Energy Policy last August, were that nuclear and coal preformed equally poorly, although for different reasons. Greenhouse Gas emissions, air pollution and permanent upstream landscape distrubance emerged as key considerations for coal, while accident, cost, security and weapons proliferation risks, along with extemely hazardous and long-lived up and downstream waste streams were the critical challenges for nuclear. In the result, neither offers an attractive option for environmentally and economically sustainable global energy supplies in the long-term.

In contrast, energy consevation and demand management performed extremely well on all criteria. Renewables also performed well, with some variation depending on the specific technologies. This is good news, as it highlights the potential to avoid the no-win nuclear vs. coal trade-off, particularly given the very high energy intensity of emerging economies like those of India and China and consequent potential for major efficiency gains. Moreover, last year more power capacity was added in the United States and Europe from renewable energy sources than coal, nuclear, oil and natural gas combined. Rapid growth in renewables is occuring developing economies as well, where serious questions exist about whether large centralized electricity systems represent the best way to meet the energy needs of their citizens.

The Japanese nuclear disaster has renewed the debate of the best path to global energy sustainability. Unfortunately the kind of emotional, ‘we have no choice but nuclear’ nihilism suggested by Doug Saunders’ article does little to contribute to the debate.

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

March 10, 2011

The Ontario government’s surprise decision to place a moratorium on offshore wind power development has again put the spotlight on the province’s Green Energy Act and the McGuinty government’s overall approach to electricity issues. While the 2009 legislation is not without its flaws, the debate about the role of renewable energy in the province’s future seems to have lost track of three essential points.

First, any discussion of the alleged health and environmental effects of wind turbines must consider the impacts of the energy sources that would need to be built or retained if we do not pursue the large-scale development of wind energy. Recent analyses attribute over 300 premature deaths per year in Ontario to air pollution from coal-fired electricity (down from 660 per year when coal use was at its height a few years ago). The upstream impacts and risks of coal mining, ranging from the occupational risks of underground mining to the destruction and consumption of entire landscapes via open-pit or mountaintop removal mining, must be considered as well.

Nuclear power carries with it enormous cost, security and weapons proliferation risks. It is also associated with extremely hazardous up and downstream wastes streams that will require management and care over hundreds of thousands of years. The extensive contamination of biota and surface and groundwater around uranium mine-mill operations with radioactive, toxic and conventional pollutants results, among other things, in significantly elevated cancer risks for consumers of ‘country’ food near such facilities.

By comparison, the biophysical impacts of wind turbines, for which the evidence in the formal literature is decidedly thin despite two decades of large-scale deployments in the densely populated landscapes of Western Europe, look rather less serious. Leaving aside the utterly ridiculous notion that wind turbines located far offshore could constitute some sort of threat to the province’s drinking water, Ontario’s Chief Medical Officer of Health has noted that “the scientific evidence available to date does not demonstrate a causal link between wind turbine noise and averse health effects.” If we are to build more sustainable energy systems, then low impact renewable energy sources like wind will have to play a major role in the process

Secondly, with respect to costs, it is important to remember that the current market electricity price bears no relationship to the actual costs of providing the new sources of electricity needed to replace the province’s aging nuclear and coal plants. Compared to the current market price of 3.13 cents per kilowatt-hour, 13.5 cents for wind power under the Green Energy Act Feed in Tariff Program sounds excessive. But compared with the likely costs of new build nuclear facilities that emerged from the province’s efforts to procure new reactors of somewhere in the range of at least 20 cents per kilowatt hour, it starts to look very reasonable. The reality is that all of the available sources of new supply, with the exception of conservation, will cost more. The government does deserve some credit for attempting to be honest about that reality.

That said, those who are concerned about future costs should be far more upset about the government’s unwavering commitment to 50 per cent of the province’s future electricity supply coming from nuclear power. Based on what we have learned from the province’s procurement efforts and the rebuilding projects at Bruce and Pickering, the government’s estimated $33 billion cost for the nuclear component of its “Long-Term Energy Plan’ can only be regarded as wildly optimistic. Moreover, there are increasingly serious questions about the capacity of the province’s would-be nuclear suppliers Areva of France and Atomic Energy of Canada, to present viable new bids in the foreseeable future.

Third, it is important to consider that the goals of the Green Energy Act extended well beyond providing new supplies of electricity. The act was very much a product of a decision by the province to embrace the concept of building a ‘green’ technology sector, particularly the manufacturing of renewable energy technologies like wind turbines and solar panels, as part of its response the climate change issue, public concern over environmental issues and the 2008 economic downturn.

Unfortunately, other jurisdictions who found themselves in the same situation, including many of Ontario’s neighbours on the US side of the Great Lakes had exactly the same idea at the same time. If the province’s strategy was going to succeed, Ontario needed to get a competitive ‘jump’ on these jurisdictions, creating a critical mass of activity and investment around renewable energy before they did. The Green Energy Act’s Feed-in Tariff mechanism provided the means to do that, prompting investment commitments in the range of $8 billion in renewable energy. The uncertainty promoted by the government’s reversals on renewable energy now threatens to undermine that advantage.

GEA is neither the cause nor the solution to all of the problems facing the Ontario’s electricity system. The province still needs to have a serious conversation about the system’s future direction in the face of rapidly changing circumstances, something which none of the province’s party leaders have offered Ontario residents so far in this election year.