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While in opposition, Ontario Liberal leader Dalton McGuinty castigated the Progressive Conservative government for not shutting down the province’s coal-fired power plants. He said he’d close ‘em down by 2007 “come hell or high water”.
He reiterated that promise after being elected premier in October 2003. Since then, however, the Liberals’ tune has gradually changed. In June 2005, the shut-down date was moved back to 2009; the following year, it was pushed back some more—to 2014. Now, there’s no firm date at all; it’s just “as soon as possible”. In the meantime, it doesn’t seem sensible to spend over a billion dollars to install scrubbers.
Thus, the Liberal policy on coal plants has morphed into: Keep on pollutin’.
Energy Minister Dwight Duncan yesterday seized on a report from the Ontario Power Authority that said installing air-pollution technology on the province's four remaining coal plants would cost up to $1.6-billion. He said it doesn't make sense to spend that much because the government hopes to phase out the plants by 2014.
"We will not be distracted by half measures, however well-intentioned they might seem," he said in the legislature.
Mr. Duncan also noted that nothing on the market now does anything to reduce carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas and "we're not going to spend $1.6-billion on technology that doesn't help climate change."
The focus on greenhouse gases represents another turn-around in the Ontario Liberals’ thinking on coal plants. Before taking over the government, they blamed the plants’ sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions for almost 2000 deaths and $11 billion in unnecessary health care spending annually.
But now they’re all worried about greenhouse gas emissions, even though GHGs don’t actually kill anybody.
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