TORONTO, July 31 (UPI) -- Closing Canadian coal plants would lead to higher electricity prices, suggests a recent report from CIBC World Markets.
The promise made during the 2003 elections to close coal plants would hurt reliability, according to the Power Workers' Union and the Independent Electricity System Operator.
"Successive IESO (Independent Electricity System Operator) and OPA (Ontario Power Authority) documents and recent speeches show these risks have not gone away but are actually worse," said Don MacKinnon, president of the PWU.
With no certain forecasts of demand growth or natural gas prices and new transmission, backup power from reliable coal plants is a necessity, the PWU said.
"Yet the government continues to ignore this critical information and tells the OPA to make it work in spite of these risks. They put the OPA in an ideological straight-jacket," said MacKinnon. "There's a low probability replacement generation will be on time. Consumers will also pay a high premium price given the rush to have it operating at a time when Ontario must replace thousands of megawatts of aging generation and major transmission infrastructure."
Ontario is not alone in questioning the feasibility of shutting down coal plants to cut emissions. Several studies released in the United States point to similar conclusions.
"While the IESO is studying the potential impact of coal plant closures, the Government is blindly moving forward with a regulation that closes these plants by 2014," continued MacKinnon. "Our neighbor, New York gets it -- they've identified increased reliance on natural gas generation as one of the biggest problems facing their electricity system."
