In light of Monday’s article published by the Globe and Mail we’d like to take a look at the position of our Ontario Government and their flip flopping relationship with Natural gas.

Globe Article published May 16, 2016:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/ontario-to-spend-7-billion-in-sweeping-climate-change-plan/article30029081/

There are many reasons for concern when reading this leak and many things that just don’t make any sense. For instance, removing natural gas a primary heat source for Ontario homes and business’? How can a Government drastically change their point of view when just two years ago they promised to “help Ontarians share in affordable supplies of natural gas”[i]? If we look at a mandate letter from our same Premier we see that this Government had envisioned Natural gas playing an integral role in powering our Province? They had even taken it a step further and proposed funding from the Government in the amount of $230 Million!![ii]

Read the mandate letter for yourself here:

September 25, 2014: Premier Wynne Energy Mandate Letter: https://www.ontario.ca/page/2014-mandate-letter-energy

The biggest concern that our clients and our province should be worried about is the soaring electricity costs. The government has proposed geo-thermal based heat pump systems as the alternative to natural gas heating. The problem with a geo-thermal based heat pump system is that it is 100% electrical heat during the winter loading cycle. What that means for many consumers, and those highlighted in the Chatham-Kent area, would be an increase to a typical house hold utility bill of “$3,000 more per year”[iii].

The Government has severely lost sight of what was important to Ontarians just two years ago. Ontarians demanded a reduction in electricity pricing and part of the mandate letter was to “mitigate” those costs. Their current plan puts more onuses of electricity costs on the general populace and removes any chance of seeing our local business’ more competitive with even our neighboring provinces. [iv] The Government will also have to account for a huge supply of power generation in the province. Currently natural gas accounts for 6.6% of our electricity supply capabilities.[v] With so much electricity generated by natural gas it will be difficult to imagine the Government finding ways to build new power generation plants without incurring huge costs to our rate payers (population).

The good news is there is currently billions of dollars invested in bringing new sources of low cost natural gas resources to our business’ in Ontario. We are seeing projects by Union Gas, Enbridge and the TransCanada Pipeline (TCPL) to bring new pipelines to southern Ontario and we are expecting these projects to be completed this year. With so much invested in our infrastructure for natural gas it’s hard to imagine any Government completely removing Natural Gas as a heating source.

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