{"id":64632,"date":"2024-08-16T10:32:08","date_gmt":"2024-08-16T17:32:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/energi.media\/?p=64632"},"modified":"2024-08-16T10:32:08","modified_gmt":"2024-08-16T17:32:08","slug":"ontarios-clean-energy-superpower-plan-puts-nuclear-ahead-of-least-cost-options-analysts-warn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/energi.media\/news\/ontarios-clean-energy-superpower-plan-puts-nuclear-ahead-of-least-cost-options-analysts-warn\/","title":{"rendered":"Ontario\u2019s \u2018clean energy superpower\u2019 plan puts nuclear ahead of least-cost options, analysts warn"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article was published by The Energy Mix<\/a> on Aug. 16, 2024.<\/em><\/p>\n

By Mitchell Beer<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Ontario\u2019s newly-minted energy minister Stephen Lecce is coming under fire for recent musings about turning the province into a \u201cclean energy superpower\u201d, with analysts scorching his decision to include nuclear generation in the mix and calling for some coherent system planning before making that decision.<\/p>\n

In an interview with the Globe and Mail\u2019s Adam Radwanski not long after he took over his new portfolio June 6, Lecce \u201ctouted initiatives he inherited, including the country\u2019s\u00a0largest investment to date<\/a>\u00a0in grid-scale battery storage, and a\u00a0coming procurement<\/a>\u00a0of wind and solar power,\u201d Radwanski\u00a0wrote<\/a>\u00a0late last month. Those words \u201cmight come as a relief to people who worried his appointment to the job last month might signal a return to the\u00a0anti-decarbonization positioning<\/a>\u00a0of Premier Doug Ford\u2019s\u00a0early days in office<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Lecce also \u201csignalled an\u00a0enhanced focus on nuclear power<\/a>,\u201d Radwanski added. \u201cThat means not just refurbishments and construction of a small modular reactor (SMR), which are under way, but also building new large-scale reactors\u2014all of which he framed as essential to domestic needs and export opportunities.\u201d<\/p>\n

At a Canada-U.S. nuclear meeting on the sidelines of last month\u2019s NATO summit, \u201cenergy security was at the core\u2014an issue that overwhelmingly unites Democrats and Republicans in the U.S.,\u201d Lecce told Radwanski. \u201cThere is an acute awareness that, now more than ever, we must decouple our dependence on despotic regimes abroad.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said that meant an \u201copportunity to emphasize that, among nations who share democratic values, Ontario has the technological expertise and capability to build, refurbish, and expand nuclear, on time and on budget.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt really underscores both Canada and the U.S.\u2019s national and economic interests\u2014that we work together to harness this capability to produce clean energy,\u201d Lecce\u00a0told<\/a>\u00a0The Canadian Press, adding that Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine had cast a light on Canada as a reliable supplier of uranium.<\/p>\n

Lecce\u2019s \u201csuperpower\u201d language wasn\u2019t very different from the\u00a0line of argument<\/a>\u00a0he would have used in a former job, after then-prime minister Stephen Harper\u00a0hired him out straight of university<\/a>\u00a0to serve as his deputy director of communications, then his director of media relations.<\/p>\n

Here We Go Again<\/h2>\n

While the refurbishment project now under way at the Darlington nuclear station east of Toronto has been\u00a0making headlines<\/a>\u00a0by apparently running on time and on budget, that\u2019s precisely because it\u2019s so unusual for nuclear plants of any kind to avoid\u00a0serious delays and cost overruns<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Last year, Corporate Knights Research Director Ralph Torrie\u00a0recalled<\/a>\u00a0the more than C$10 billion in written-off costs for the original Darlington construction project that essentially bankrupted Ontario Hydro, then the second-largest power utility in North America\u2014based on projections of future electricity demand that never materialized in the real world.<\/p>\n

\u201cHistory continues to outrun electricity planning in Ontario, as it has been doing for decades now, and we all pay for the overshoots and malinvestment that result,\u201d Torrie wrote at the time. \u201cWe cannot afford another round of ill-conceived commitments to multi-billion-dollar megaprojects that will be left half-built and stranded just as technology, market forces, and common sense converge on a smarter, less expensive, more distributed and renewables-based energy system.\u201d<\/p>\n

Energy system analysts Mark Winfield of York University and David Schlissel of the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis said they see no prospect that an expanded nuclear program in Ontario will stay within budget, compete with more affordable renewable energy and energy efficiency options, or deliver in time to meet a rapid decarbonization deadline.\u00a0(Mark Winfield and Evan Pivnick, quoted below, are both members of the community sounding board for\u00a0<\/em>The Energy Mix\u2019s\u00a0<\/em>Heat & Power\u00a0edition.)<\/em><\/p>\n

Experience with recent conventional nuclear projects in North America and Western Europe \u201cpoints to a continuing pattern of massive cost overruns and delays on the time scales of decades,\u201d Winfield told\u00a0The Energy Mix<\/em>\u00a0in an email. \u201cOne of the core problems with nuclear is that it does not see a significant learning curve\u2014costs just keep going up, unlike renewables and storage, where you see performance improve and costs fall as experience is gained, and supply chains and project management and construction become more efficient.\u201d<\/p>\n

A \u2018Rational Approach\u2019<\/h2>\n

Given serious uncertainties around Ontario\u2019s path to decarbonization and how much electricity the province will eventually need, Winfield said a more \u201crational approach\u201d would deploy \u201clower-risk, lower-impact, and more flexible and scalable options\u201d like demand-side management, energy efficiency,\u00a0distributed energy resources<\/a>\u00a0(DERs), and\u00a0renewable energy with energy storage<\/a>, \u201cand only consider higher-risk, higher-impact, high lock-in resources after that.\u201d<\/p>\n

But he said that won\u2019t happen in a province that has \u201cno planning process<\/a>\u00a0within which these options can be assessed in an open and independent manner.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou want to do the cheapest thing first, right?\u201d Schlissel agreed in an interview this week. \u201cAnd you want to have flexibility if the big, future demand that is being projected today is not realized.\u201d<\/p>\n

By contrast, while Ontario is being \u201cvery closed-mouthed\u201d about the small modular nuclear reactor (SMR) under construction at Darlington, costs elsewhere are\u00a0already rising<\/a>, making the technology far more expensive than renewables.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s clear the cost has gone up dramatically, and there\u2019s no reason to expect the future will be any different than the past,\u201d he said. \u201cIs it possible? Yes, it\u2019s possible that some (SMRs) will get online. Is it possible that they\u2019ll be cheap? Yes. But what standard of proof do you have? Yes, it\u2019s possible, but there\u2019s a lot of evidence arguing against that happening.\u201d<\/p>\n

While nuclear proponents have been talking about their technology co-existing with renewables, Schlissel said new nuclear capacity would be more likely to crowd cheaper, cleaner renewables out of the system.<\/p>\n

\u201cNuclear plants are not economical unless you run them flat out,\u201d he explained. Given the high cost of those projects, and the need to protect ratepayers from higher electricity rates to the extent possible, \u201cthere will be none of this about supplementing wind and solar, that when the sun doesn\u2019t shine or the wind doesn\u2019t blow we\u2019ll crank up the nuke.\u201d<\/p>\n

Where the Rubber Hits the Road<\/h2>\n

Evan Pivnick, clean energy program manager at Clean Energy Canada, said Lecce is sending the right overall message. But that\u2019s not the same thing as delivering results.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn general, I think the ambition and the rhetoric around positioning Ontario as a clean energy superpower and highlighting the role of clean electricity for households or industry is actually what we want to see more and more provinces do,\u201d he said. But \u201cwhere the rubber hits the road, Ontario has a little bit more of a mixed record.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Ontario\u2019s Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) commissioned a pathways assessment to map a cost-effective energy future for the province, \u201cit\u2019s unclear how many of those scenarios centred net-zero by 2050,\u201d he said. And since then, \u201cdespite some meaningful and truly credible forward steps on clean electricity, they still haven\u2019t connected the dots between climate targets and energy.\u201d So the same province that launched Canada\u2019s\u00a0biggest-ever energy storage procurement<\/a>\u00a0and committed to\u00a05,000 megawatts of new renewable energy capacity<\/a>\u00a0also\u00a0overturned<\/a>\u00a0an independent regulator\u2019s bid to protect new homeowners from the long-term cost of building new gas infrastructure.<\/p>\n

The 40-year payback on those gas lines \u201ctakes us well past 2050,\u201d Pivnick said. \u201cThis is where we\u2019ve been pushing for quite a while for an energy strategy that features net-zero by 2050 at the very least. Then we know what we\u2019re aiming for and we can hold the decisions we\u2019re making against that. Rather than relying on rhetoric that is quite positive, we get to make sure those actions are actually supported.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pivnick said there\u2019s \u201cno question nuclear will play a role, and possibly an expanding role,\u201d as electricity demand increases. But those decisions begin with what amounts to a least-cost energy strategy.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn other jurisdictions around the world, the approaches that best protect affordability and cost start out with maximizing the role of energy efficiency, distributed energy resources, and renewables,\u201d he said. \u201cWhere those are unable to meet energy or reliability needs, long-term and cost-effectively, we then start to move up the list of other, more costly sources.\u201d<\/p>\n

Through that lens, he said it\u2019s fine to experiment with SMRs that might have a future role to play. But \u201cpredicating our future on making nuclear the first tranche or approach? That has potential risk to it, and we\u2019ve been pretty clear that if this government is going to centre nuclear as they are, they need to have a backup plan.\u201d That would mean developing the ability to \u201cbuild out renewables, focus on energy efficiency, demand-side management, DERs, that will actually bring down the cost for consumers and offer new ways to drive affordability. And then we\u2019ll see\u201d what the system needs.<\/p>\n

The future Ontario should want to avoid, he added, is the one where the need for electricity rises so fast that consumer demand competes against industrial uses for the available electrons.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn that scenario where you have room for real take-off (of demand), there\u2019s going to be room for everything,\u201d and if SMRs can be cost effective \u201cthen, yeah, they may very well play a role,\u201d he said. But that will make it all the more important to sequence the various options, with first call on the ones that cost the least. Last year, analysis by Clean Energy Canada\u00a0concluded<\/a>\u00a0that solar and wind farms with battery backup were already cheaper to build than new gas plants in Ontario and Alberta, much less nuclear projects, with the cost of renewables expected to fall sharply this decade.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This article was published by The Energy Mix on Aug. 16, 2024. By Mitchell Beer Ontario\u2019s newly-minted energy minister Stephen Lecce is coming under fire for recent musings about turning the province into a \u201cclean [Read more]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":64633,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"give_campaign_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[528,41,14,1085,200,2543,2857],"class_list":{"0":"post-64632","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-electrification","9":"tag-energy","10":"tag-featured","11":"tag-nuclear-energy","12":"tag-ontario","13":"tag-smrs","14":"tag-stephen-lecce"},"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nnuclear - Thoughtful Journalism About Energy's Future<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"analysts are scorching Ontario's decision to include large scale nuclear reactors in it's energy generation mix\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/energi.media\/news\/ontarios-clean-energy-superpower-plan-puts-nuclear-ahead-of-least-cost-options-analysts-warn\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"nuclear - 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