Ontario's Power Generation Scenario Ontario Power Generation has an electricity generating capacity of 22,733 megawatts from 77 facilities. When Ontario’s peak demand reaches 25,000 MW, electricity sources look like this: Even if Ontario conserves 9% of current peak demand (which is being reached more and more often), we will only be eliminating the need to import power. We will not be addressing the promise of shutting down the coal-fired generating plants Premier McGuinty campaigned on. Nuclear and hydro-electric sources provide baseline generation capacity. Fossil-fuel and imported power is intended to provide the flexibility for daily demand changes. As day-to-day demands have increased, the fossil fuel plants are becoming more and more part of the baseline supply, adding more and more harmful emissions to our environment, on a consistent basis. What Can We Do? With Ontario’s increasing demand for electricity, where will more supply come from if we do not reduce our consumption? Fossil-fuels? According to McGuinty, fossil-fuel generating plants are to be decommissioned, due to their harmful emissions, associated health hazards and cost to the health system. So probably not fossil-fuel. Hydro-electric? All large-scale hydro generation sites in Ontario have been tapped out. Probably not large scale hydro-electric. Nuclear? This is turning out to be a very expensive technology with many current maintenance problems associated with it. Probably not nuclear. Imported Power? Importing electricity is expensive in more ways than one. We import it from our neighbours when we have high demand in Ontario. They are also experiencing high demand in their own areas – and the law of supply and demand suggests the buyer pays a higher price for electricity. This imported electricity is more often than not generated by burning fossil-fuels. If we buy from Michigan, Ohio, New York, Illinois or Indiana, we also experience the increased emissions - we are down wind! We also know what happens when there is stress on the grid (witness last August’s Blackout). But more importing may be necessary. This leaves us with two alternatives: 1) Reducing consumption (the demand); and 2) Replacing some of the electricity supply generated by coal, natural gas and nuclear (the so-called dirty power) with clean electricity from renewable, ‘green’ sources, such as wind, solar, geothermal and micro-hydro. The COOL Caledon taskforce is addressing solutions to reduce consumption and is also providing the citizens and taxpayers of Caledon research and information about renewable sources of cleaner energy and electricity.