Green Is The Old White

News last week that The European Parliament cancelled their delegation to the UN's Rio+20 summit on sustainable development.  The reason being that the brutish Brazilians didn't know how to host a conference properly:

“The Brazilian government should have taken action to avoid hotels abusing their position. That's also part of the responsibility of hosting such a large conference,” said Dutch Liberal MEP Gerben-Jan Gerbrandy, who was to lead the delegation.

The first Earth Summit, hosted in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 - with Maurice Strong as Conference Secretary General, is remembered for creating a couple of notable things, including; the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Convention on Biological Diversity, and the fabled Agenda 21.
It is not remembered for the cost of hotels.

A Pale Blue Imitation of Ernie Eves

Tuesday, May 15th, 2012 saw 3 related events:

• former Premier Ernie Eves has his portrait hangedat Queen's Park
• the current government released the first accounting of the residual stranded debt since prior to Eves' Premiership
• the current PC party released a white paper, Paths to Prosperity: Affordable Energy, outlining directions for electricity policies in Ontario.

"Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it."

-Edmund Burke

Ernie Eves became Premier April 15, 2002, after winning the leadership of the PC Party of Ontario; some weeks later he'd win a by-election to gain a seat in the legislature.  The PC leadership campaign was quite divisive - with Eves running against Jim Flaherty (now Finance Minister federally); Flaherty referred to Eves as "a pale pink imitation of Dalton McGuinty," during that campaign.  The only general election contested with Eves leading the party was lost to current Premier McGuinty's Liberals.  Federally Ontario's PC Party would soon disappear, with it's membership primarily moving to the right with the new Conservative Party of Canada.

Not the News: The Toronto Star's Electricity Sector Coverage

On the day Ontario's official opposition party, Tim Hudak's Progressive Conservative Party, released a white paper on energy policy, the Toronto Star published, as front page news, a story that seemed to be about the expensive nuclear generation in Ontario – although it didn't actually provide a price figure. The Star report is structured as if it was built around the Power Advisory report cited in the article; a report created for the Ontario Energy Board. That report is dated April 20th, 2012 – and contains no information created after 2010.

The report provides figures for nuclear units operated by OPG for 2008-2010, and those figures show declining performance. The report does note that OPG's reporting had attributed the reduced performance factors in 2009 and 2010 to Vacuum Buildign Outages (VBO – 2009 at Darlington and 2010 at Pickering). The Power Advisory report didn't note that any idiot could confirm that ... nor did it confirm it.

Monthly Ontario Electricity Export Figures

Every month Ontario's Ministry of Energy puts out an offensively dishonest misinterpretation of our electricity export profit/loss ledger.
It is here for April now:

Electricity Exports Continue to Generate Revenue:

"Ontario's electricity market generated over $20 million in April by exporting electricity to other states and provinces, bringing total net export revenues to over $75 million this year.
This revenue helps Ontario:

• Keep costs down for families
• Build and maintain a clean, reliable and modern electricity system"

Here's a shorthand way to calculate how this absolutely does not "keep costs down for families."

Surplus Baseload Generation, and Supply Curtailment

Ontario's electricity supply challenges include curtailing supply when it is too abundant, and Ontario's Independent Electricity Supply Operator (IESO) has been working towards better management of the supply through better information.  This short post is a question for the IESO; readers of this blog may feel compelled to request similar information.

Dead for Left: Greenpeace has a new lie

"Nuclear Main Source of Increased Electricity Prices In Ontario" was posted to the Greenpeace Canada site yesterday, by Shawn-Patrick Stensil.  The piece was timed to defuse the news around price hikes effective May 1st, and coordinated with remarks by the formerly socialist NDP party's marginal leader Andrea Horwath.   Green Party leader Mike Schreiner was parroting the message, "OEB report reveals nuclear causing electricity rates" on Twitter, and Energy Probe's Norm Rubin was on one site bleating he was "impressed with SP Stensil's recent analysis of OEB reports showing OEB's nukes are responsible for way more of our rate increase than the FIT renewables."  It's a lot of support for an idiotic spin either done deliberately to deceive, or simply out of ignorance and a fear of big numbers.

The premise of Greenpeace's position is that the Global Adjustment (GA) is the increase in electricity bills - with a figure from the OEB's Market Surveillance Panel's latest report.  On page 59 the MSP report states 45% of the GA is attributable to nuclear units, and on the next page states 6 percent is attributable to 'renewable assets.'  Stensil stupidly opens with "Nuclear has been responsible for 45% of recent increases on your electricity bill. Meanwhile, the impact of renewables on your electricity bill has been minor – about 6%."  

Ontario replaces Independent: Weakly Electricity Sector Downgrades

I posted the latest weekly reporting figures this afternoon, and the data, fittingly, indicates a new record.  Week 16 is notable as the first week with Ontario demand growth over the previous year (Easter weekend was in 2011's week 16) - but the growth average for Ontario's demand was only 305MW/h, whereas the growth in net exports was 828MW/h.  The increase in net exports, combined with pricing remaining a third lower than in 2011, caused the export subsidies, by my estimation, to surge to record levels - for the third week in a row.

The Canadian Press shared this important bit of news this week:

TORONTO - Energy Minister Chris Bentley hasn't abandoned the idea of having a "real name" for the merger of the Ontario Power Authority and the Independent Electricity System Operator after all.
Bentley complained the energy sector is full of agencies known by acronyms like the OPA and IESO when he announced the planned merger of the two electricity planning agencies.
The minister said at the time he wanted the new agency to have a real name, but in legislation introduced today, it is known as the Ontario Electricity System Operator, or OESO.

In rearranging the Ontario Power Authority and the Independent Electricity System Operator,  Minister Bentley kept on 4 of the words: Ontario Electricity System Operator (OESO) is the working title.

Independent
Power
Authority

These words the Minister extinguished.

Manning Up: A Weak Week for Ontario in the Electricity Sector, et al.

Man Up

strap on a pair, grow some balls, stop being such a complete and utter wuss.

-Urban Dictionary

There was a flurry of activity concerning Ontario’s electricity sector last week.  Following up on the previous week's budget bill's "plans to move forward with a comprehensive review of the electricity sector and its various agencies," the ministry of energy first announced a "Clean Energy Economic Development Strategy," and then an "Ontario Distribution Sector Panel."  The communications indicated some recognition that there are structural problems in Ontario's electricity sector.

Unfortunately, they actually communicated the government has no intention of facing up to the structural problems in Ontario's electricity sector.

Electricity Exports Benefit Generators - not families

As the government loses control of electricity pricing, the Ministry of Energy continues to put out a monthly press release on exports that would make Baghdad Bob blush.

2012: 2nd highest year for volume, lowest revenue in 5 years

April 12, 2012 1:00 PM
Ontario's electricity market generated over $14 million in March by exporting electricity to other states and provinces, bringing total net export revenues to over $55 million this year.
This revenue helps Ontario:
Keep costs down for families
Build and maintain a clean, reliable and modern electricity system

Record Low Hourly Ontario Energy Prices Causing Record Export Subsidies

The past 5 weeks comprise 5 of the 10 lowest weeks for the average Hourly Ontario Energy Price (HOEP) rates since the IESO data starts 10 years ago.  I've noted the decline while updating my weekly shadow reports, and this post will put the trends within the context of broader markets, and longer trends (including those Parker Gallant and I wrote about, in the Financial Post, last July).

The price of electricity on wholesale markets is very low.  While negative prices catch attention, there is only a very slight difference, in the cost to Ontario ratepayers, of -$1 and +$1.  The last time I worked out an estimate, the average price paid to Ontario's suppliers, due to contracts and regulated rates, was $68.23/MWh. With the HOEP averaging around $13.50 over the past 35 days, that means a big revenue shortfall.

Penthouse Fora: Personal thoughts on the IESO's Year

Ontario's Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) released it's 2011 Annual Report just prior to the Easter weekend.    It didn't get much attention, because it didn't say anything.

That should be noteworthy.

Picture from despair.com - honest

Some quick estimates for an alternate 2011 Annual report:
The market the IESO is tasked with operating shrank from 157TWh to 154TWh, with the Ontario demand portion shrinking from 142.2 to 141.5.  The price drop was more severe, with the Hourly Ontario Energy Price (HOEP) dropping to $31.46/MWh from $37.85 in 2010.  Exports shrank less than imports did.  Because Ontario has a Global Adjustment mechanism that recovers the difference between the prices guaranteed to producer and the market rate, these numbers indicate Ontario's ratepayers had over $450 million added to their costs to recover the difference between the average cost power was purchased from generators at ($68 including other systems cost), and what it was dumped at in adjacent markets ($31.46).   Looking at it another way, in 2011 prices for Ontario customers rose by 10% while prices for export customers dropped by about 20%.

GA'd Awful: Duncan Must Go

"Aren't you impressed to see so many people gather to hear you speak?" ... "No – because ten times as many would come to see me hanged."

Dwight Duncan at The empire Club, April 15, 2004

"Nobody wants to create reliability problems, last of all us. I know who hangs on the lamp pole first."

Wall Street Journal Article/Interview with John Rowe, CEO of Exelon, October 22, 2011

If affordability problems are seen as reliability problems, Ontarians should be annoyed by the manner in which NDP Leader Andrea Horwath gives the Liberal government rope.