Energy Probe

Why are the city’s power outages double those of London?

In Canada, our electricity systems operate like little islands, isolated from the world around them, oblivious to innovation and insulated from the real economy by regulators that administer prices..

Tom Adams of Energy Probe said cutting salaries would not save enough money to lower industrial rates and would almost definitely lead to higher bills for homeowners.

"If you add up all the executive salaries across the entire power system, it adds up to a very, very tiny amount on your overall power bill. Executive salaries are way less than 1 per cent," Adams said.

'If we don't go nuclear, what type of energy will meet our future energy needs," I'm often asked. "Do you think fringe fuels such as solar energy can take the place of nuclear? Or windmills? Bio fuels? Small dams? Tidal power? Burning garbage?"

Letter to the Editor

The results of this study were discussed in "Distribution adds the shock to electricity bills in Ontario" by Eric Reguly, published by the Globe and Mail on April 5, 2005. Mr. Reguly's write-up led to an exchange of correspondence between a representative of the Ontario Energy Board and Energy Probe. The correspondence is reproduced below.

Reading an electricity bill requires the skill of an accountant. In Ontario, there are two commodity charges. There are also regulatory, debt retirement and delivery charges. Sometimes you wonder how small electricity price hikes – Ontario last month approved an increase of about 4.4 per cent – seem to translate into huge bill increases. But it's confusing and you just pay the damn thing because Desperate Housewives is on.

Report on the deteriorating state of Ontario's power distribution and transmission infrastructure. The report was originally released in 2005. 

Click here for a PDF. 

Ontario householders will pay less to heat their homes in winter but more to cool them in summer under a pricing proposal from the Ontario Energy Board.

In a draft pricing manual, the board says consumers should pay a relatively low price for a set quantity of power each month, and a higher price if they use more than that.

But the set quantity should change with the seasons, the board says, to ease the price shock for low-income users, who are the ones most likely to have electric heating.

Ontario householders can expect to pay an additional $3 to $4 a month for electricity to cover the cost of installing and running new "smart meters" throughout the province, the Ontario Energy Board says.

The OEB has released a $1 billion implementation plan to meet Energy Minister Dwight Duncan's promise to install a smart meter in every home and business in the province by 2010.

The meters will enable utilities to charge even more for electricity used during peak periods, when the power grid is under stress.

Consumer electricity prices will vary from season to season according to the amount of power a household uses, says the Ontario Energy Board.

The board also says that consumers with "smart meters" that measure hour-by-hour power consumption will pay three different rates for power, depending on the time of day it is used.

But consumers will have to wait a little longer to find out exactly what prices they'll be paying when the new price regime kicks in this spring.

To counter the high energy prices that consumers now face, governments in Canada and the U.S. have been subsidizing domestic energy production. This dirty government business lowers the bill a little for consumers but raises it a lot for taxpayers, making us worse off in the exchange.

Ontario's new electricity pricing system for consumers and small businesses broke even, or a little better, in its first month of operation.

That's the good news. The bad new is it will cost most householders $5 to $9 a month more.

Review of Electric LDC Efficiency Issues

Energy Probe’s Recommendations on

Efficiency Priorities

for Electricity Distributors

Tom Adams

Executive Director

Submissions from Energy Probe Research Foundation
(Energy Probe)

INTRODUCTION

In Energy Probe's view, the starting point for consideration of the OEB's priorities is the mandate of the Board as expressed in the purposes section of the OEB Act. Energy Probe strongly supports the purposes set out in the Act. Balance and fairness are necessities in addressing the public's interests in regulated energy services.

Energy Probe warns against regulatory hubris

Are Ontario consumers ready to pay more for power?

If the August blackout taught Ontarians anything, it's that the province's electricity system isn't as secure as they'd thought.

While a consumer revolt over rising electricity prices stampeded the former Tory government into freezing the energy component of the hydro bill, the blackout showed that having a secure supply is also vital.

A low price is useless if there's no power in the system.

Brechin: Premier Ernie Eves said yesterday that plans to eliminate Ontario Power Generation's monopoly in the province's electricity generating market are on hold until further notice.

The premier said the provincially owned power generating company won't be forced to sell off more of its power plants until the province is "in a position where we can have a real retail market and we're not there.

With engineers still struggling today to restore full power to industries and households in Ontario, a spirited debate has erupted over the wisdom of recent energy policies in the province, Canada's most populous.

The province's premier, Ernie Eves, said today that the state of emergency that had been in effect since the blackout would be lifted this evening and that he expected power supplies to be back to normal by Monday. Since the blackout, the government has urged all power users to cut consumption by 50 percent or face temporary blackouts.

While businesses and residents answered the Ontario government's pleas this week to conserve power as the provinces generators are brought back on line, only an increase in the cost of electricity will force consumers to become more energy efficient in the long run, experts suggested.

"Moral suasion is an effective way of getting people to respond in a crisis environment because officials have the public's attention," said Tom Adams, executive director of industry watchdog Energy Probe.

The $20.1 billion public debt that is the legacy of Ontario Hydro appears likely to grow again this year, while the agency responsible for the debt has missed its legal reporting deadline.

The Ontario Electricity Financial Corp. is required by law to submit its annual report by June 30, but Scott Brownrigg, an official in Finance Minister Janet Ecker's office, said this year's report still hasn't been filed.

It's expected to arrive soon, Brownrigg said yesterday, but probably won't be released publicly until late summer.

On May 1, 2002, Ontario's retail and wholesale electricity markets were opened to competition. Electricity charges were unbundled into separate components (i.e., transmission charge, energy charge, distribution charge, etc.). Consumers in the wholesale market were permitted to directly enter into bilateral physical or financial contracts with wholesale sellers and generators. Consumers in the retail market were free to enter into fixed-price contracts with retail intermediaries. Almost one million consumers entered into fixed-price contracts with retail intermediaries.

The Ontario government has extended the price freeze for electricity to 7,000 mid-sized businesses, which will now pay a fixed price of 4.3 cents a kilowatt hour.

Businesses will also get rebates every three months – instead of only once a year – from a fund set up by Ontario Power Generation Inc. to offset OPG's dominant market position, said Energy Minister John Baird.

Critics dismissed Baird's announcement as nothing more than a pre-election handout.

TORONTO (Reuters): The Ontario's government broadened the scope of its price cap on electricity use to include some bigger consumers on Friday, but it stopped short of an across-the-board subsidy.

The extension came after months of lobbying by mid-sized and large firms. They did not benefit from a rate freeze of 4.3 Canadian cents a kilowatt hour introduced late last year after Ontario's messy experiment with deregulating Canada's biggest power market led to soaring power prices as a provincial election neared.

February appears to have racked up the highest electricity prices for any month since Ontario's electricity market opened last May – prices that could trigger more subsidies to householders and small businesses.

As the high prices go on the books, the provincial government is faced with a decision: whether to give big businesses the benefit of the subsidized price freeze householders and small businesses enjoy.

The Eves government's decision to freeze electricity prices for consumers and small businesses has now cost close to $900 million, and the bill just keeps climbing.

Soaring demand during February's frigid weather pushed prices in the wholesale power market to highs not seen since late summer. That forced the government to dig deeply into its pocketbook to keep its promise to hold rates at 4.3 cents a kilowatt hour.

The province of Ontario plunged perilously close to a power shortage yesterday after record cold temperatures collided with artificially cheap electricity, forcing the agency overseeing the hydro industry to urge immediate conservation.

As the mercury dropped to -35C in Southern Ontario, the Independent Electricity Market Operator (IMO), which regulates wholesale electricity, was forced to issue a rare "power warning" to prevent service interruptions, such as brownouts.

The Ontario government's decision to freeze hydro rates at artificially low levels has cost the province about $640-million since May 1, according to figures released yesterday by the Independent Electricity Market Operator (IMO), the provincial agency that monitors prices.

With interval hydro meters, consumers can buy power when the price is right

Ontario's new electricity marketplace has been spitting out power prices that vary from hour to hour - sometimes wildly - since May 1.

But frustrated householders who want to take advantage of the low-priced periods and avoid the high-priced ones have mostly been shut out.

Ontario consumers would pay different power prices across the province in a zoned rate system being considered for the new electricity market.

The proposal - being pushed by the big private energy companies now operating in Ontario — would see a new pricing system that charges consumers according to where they live.

The suggestion that Ontarians in the north or rural areas might pay different rates than consumers in cities and suburbs led to a barrage of protests by public power advocates yesterday.

TORONTO -- Ontario's electricity market opens for trading tomorrow morning, but the drama begins today for Dave Goulding, who heads the Independent Electricity Marketing Organization (IMO).

At 7 a.m. EDT, in a control room in Mississauga, the IMO will begin accepting bids and offers to sell and purchase electricity in Ontario's newly deregulated marketplace.

By tomorrow morning, the data gathered today will provide the basis to conduct the first trades under Ontario's controversial new power marketing and sales system.

Hamilton electricity customers will pay what amounts to a hidden hydro tax for years to come to give city council $137 million to play with now. Councillors have been debating what to do with the "windfall" coming from municipally-owned Hamilton Hydro, and earlier this week came up with a plan to invest and spend.

It's the culmination of a campaign promise by Mayor Bob Wade to create a community investment fund using Hydro cash. But what hasn't been talked about much is where the money is really coming from.

What's a billion? Toronto City Council doesn't seem to care. Just before they launched into an acrimonious budget debate earlier this month, Toronto city councillors had close to $1 billion dumped in their laps. With one exception, they ignored it.

Encouraging low-income earners to take their chances with the fluctuating prices of Ontario's soon-to-be opened electricity market is "frankly irresponsible," says the province's biggest salesman of fixed price energy contracts.

But energy watchdog Tom Adams warned yesterday that retailers have built escape hatches into their fixed price contracts that may leave customers vulnerable to soaring prices in some circumstances.

Please also see  Energy Probe urges ammendments to Ontario Energy Board :http://energy.probeinternational.org/utility-reform/reforming-ontarios-local-electrical-distribution-sector/energy-probe-urges-ammendment

Summary and Conclusions

Mr. Paul Pudge, Board Secretary
Ontario Energy Board
2300 Yonge St., Suite 2600
M4P 1E4

re. Draft Rules of Practice and Procedure

Dear Mr. Pudge:

Ontario Premier Mike Harris told a Toronto press conference in December that he is "100 per cent convinced" that electricity deregulation will bring lower prices for Ontarians.

Perhaps one day, but it's not going to happen soon. And Mr. Harris surely knows it.

The reason is not so much that open market competition will drive prices higher; electricity rates in spot markets have been falling because of the economic slowdown and the reduced demand from manufacturers.

Greater Toronto residents can expect to pay an extra $6 to $7 a month for electricity starting March 1, according to rate applications filed yesterday by local hydro utilities.

The higher rates are the result of the Ontario government's restructuring of the electricity market.

And more turbulence in hydro pricing is on the way, as the province plans to open a competitive electricity market May 1, which could make prices extremely volatile.

Stopping Ontario's progress toward an open market for electricity as advocated by Mr. Hampton, Leader of the NDP, would be a foolhardy and dangerous step, Arthur Dickinson, president of the Association of Major Power Consumers in Ontario (AMPCO) said today. Dickinson cited years of mismanagement by the former Ontario Hydro, the provincially owned monopoly, that resulted in skyrocketing electricity rates, $39 billion in debt and a badly crippled nuclear fleet. "Going back to that system would be an abdication of responsibility for our future.

  Presentation for the St. Lawrence Forum
St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts
Tuesday, February 26, 2002

Energy Probe is an independent environmental and consumer watchdog, active for over 30 years, and reliant on charitable donations from the public. You can find more information on us (including financial statements) or make a donation at www.energyprobe.org.

Origin of Ontario's electricity reforms

Re Clear away barriers for smart electricity meters, Letter, July 8.

Tom Adams of Energy Probe wrote that "some utilities are making great strides upgrading to smart meters." I am sorry to say that Toronto Hydro is not one of them.

Electricity costs could soar by 20 per cent as hydro companies focus on profits

Consumers in Toronto are being warned to expect a shock in their electricity bills this year.

Residents will pay as much as 20 per cent more for their power when new bills start arriving this spring, the environmental think tank Energy Probe warned yesterday.

There's a knock at the door. Someone with a clipboard.

To your surprise, it's not someone looking for a charity donation, promising a lower rate on long-distance phone service, or hoping to sign you to a long-term natural gas contract.

This time, they're selling electricity. You're going to see a lot more of them now.

'100% convinced': Premier puts faith in benefit of market deregulation.

Ontario will officially open its $10-billion electricity market to competition on May 1 and Mike Harris, the Premier, says he is "100% convinced" it will result in cheaper power for consumers.

The opening of Ontario's hydro market to competition on May 1 will not plunge consumers into the darkness of price spikes, bankrupt utilities and rolling blackouts, Ontario Premier Mike Harris said today.

The woes seen in Alberta and California, where deregulation caused an initial doubling and even tripling of prices, will not apply in Ontario next spring, Harris said after announcing the province's long-awaited opening of its $10 billion energy industry.

The Ontario government is embarking on the biggest privatization in Canada's history, the sale of the monopoly responsible for the province's electricity transmission and distribution.

Mike Harris, the Premier, announced yesterday that Hydro One Inc. will go on sale "as soon as possible" in an initial public share offering expected to bring $5.5-billion.

That figure would easily surpass the province's $3.1-billion sale of Highway 407 and the federal privatization of Canadian National Railway, which brought $2.26-billion.

In what promises to be the largest privatization in Canadian history, Ontario will sell its monolithic electricity transmitter and open its $10-billion electricity market to competition.

After months of intense speculation by political and industry insiders, Premier Mike Harris announced today his government will take the controversial plunge "as soon as possible" to sell Hydro One - a public remnant of the old Ontario Hydro utility - in an initial public offering.

In what promises to be the largest privatization in Canadian history, Ontario will sell its monolithic electricity transmitter and open its $10-billion electricity market to competition.

After months of intense speculation by political and industry insiders, Premier Mike Harris announced today his government will take the controversial plunge "as soon as possible" to sell Hydro One - a public remnant of the old Ontario Hydro utility - in an initial public offering.

In what promises to be the largest privatization in Canadian history, Ontario will sell its monolithic electricity transmitter and open its $10-billion electricity market to competition.

After months of intense speculation by political and industry insiders, Premier Mike Harris announced today his government will take the controversial plunge "as soon as possible" to sell Hydro One - a public remnant of the old Ontario Hydro utility - in an initial public offering.

The Ontario government's moment of clarity on electricity deregulation was certainly brief. This week, Ontario taxpayers and ratepayers learned that Premier Mike Harris is in a panic about deregulation. How else to explain the surprising development -- kept secret for months by the Tories -- that Hydro One could very well be turned into a not-for-profit entity, with no shareholders, no ability to compete with commercial rivals and a board a directors stuffed with the province's top industrial power users?

Environmentalists disagree over whether the province should abandon deregulation of Ontario's energy sector.

"It [ending deregulation] is a terrible idea, and it suggests the government's thinking is really slipping," said Tom Adams of Energy Probe, which has lobbied for more than a decade for Ontario's energy to be privatized.

But Gord Perks of the Toronto Environmental Alliance said the idea "is an enormous relief. A free energy market would be a huge disaster."

Hydro One, the provincial government corporation that owns Ontario's main electricity transmission grid, could be turned into a non-profit operation.

Current policy calls for Hydro One to become a "commercial electricity company" that would likely be privatized.

But a behind-the-scenes battle at Queen's Park and on Bay Street is now being waged over its future.

An Alberta-based utilities company is poised to move into Ontario's natural gas and electricity market. Epcor Utilities Inc. yesterday announced an agreement with Westcoast Energy Inc. to purchase its subsidiaries, Union Energy and Westcoast Capital, for $176.7 million.

Union Energy is a spinoff company from natural gas retailer Union Gas. Union Energy rents water heaters and provides heating, ventilation and air conditioning. Westcoast Capital is a financing company that provides products that are rented out by Union Energy.

Who owns Toronto Hydro?

The obvious answer would seem to be the people who paid to create the utility. That would be local ratepayers who financed Toronto Hydro from its inception.

But as part of its plan to restructure Ontario's electricity market, Queen's Park decided that the utility belonged to the city, even though the city hadn't ever put up a cent.

Put your ear close to an electric plug at home or work, and you may hear a sucking sound.

It is the noise made by municipalities vacuuming cash - hundreds of millions of dollars - out of Ontario's electricity system.

The municipalities' ability to draw cash from local utilities stems from the province's reorganization of the electricity system.

Utilities were formerly owned, in effect, by their ratepayers, much like a co-operative. But in 1998, the province gave direct ownership of the utilities to municipalities.

  One senses a new harshness in the deregulated world after a Hamilton Spectator story this week about a lawyer representing Union Energy firing off a letter to a customer abruptly demanding $1.53.

The letter said: "My instructions are to file a lien against your home ... garnish (sic) your wages ... seize your banks accounts." And it turns out the the owed money was a mistake. It had already been paid.

Consumers who haven't signed a fixed-price contract are likely to pay about 4.3 cents a kilowatt hour for electricity under Ontario's new market system, says a study conducted for the Ontario Energy Board.

The study says prices in Ontario will closely track prices in Michigan and New York state when the competitive market opens. The market is due to open by May next year.

Many local utilities are months behind schedule preparing for Ontario's new competitive electricity market, according to the Ontario Energy Board.

In a letter to utilities sent yesterday, the energy board (OEB) said it is extending a key deadline by four months because so few utilities are on schedule.

Even with the four-month delay, the board said the market should still be able to open by the May, 2002 target date set by the provincial government.

Ontario consumers may be unwittingly signing away a valuable rebate on their electricity prices to private utility companies, says the head of an energy watchdog group.

Private electricity marketing companies have been asking homeowners to sign on for a fixed electricity rate when Ontario's electricity market is opened to competition, some time next spring.

Electricity deregulation may be haunting words to political officials and consumers, but industry insiders see the process as a necessary fact of life that will soon encompass all of North America and the world - and much of the Ontario energy sector wants to join in on it.

Toronto – Ontario is heading toward the kind of blackout calamity that's hobbled California if the province doesn't fix its flawed plan to deregulate electricity, a prominent analyst warned yesterday.

Government decisions have discouraged the kind of investment in new generation plants that's needed to meet future demand from a booming economy, said Tom Adams of the consumer group Energy Probe.

Mindy Spatt's message to Ontario is clear: ``Don't do anything we did.'' Spatt, a consumer advocate, is speaking from her office in San Francisco. She's talking about electricity, something everyone uses and takes for granted - until it isn't there. And increasingly in California, it isn't there. And when it is, it's at a shockingly high price.

``We made a huge mistake,'' she says.

The group she works for, the Utility Reform Network, blames deregulation of the state's energy system.

The Ontario government has granted some of the largest industrial electricity consumers in the province secret cut-rate prices for four years after the market opens for competition later this year, according to documents obtained by The Globe and Mail.

The cost of granting lower rates to large users will be shifted to ordinary homeowners and other consumers, who will pay higher electricity bills to make up for the industrial subsidies.

Hydro rates are going up.

The Ontario Energy Board (OEB) has approved a 2.6 per cent increase in hydro rates for Enersource Hydro Mississauga customers to take place immediately.

This means a residential consumer using the average of 1,000 kilowatt-hours of power will see the bill rise by $2.06 from its current $78.15 to $80.21.

Deregulation, debt loads, market forces will see users digging deeper, experts say.

The Ontario electricity market, the biggest in the country, is about to be jolted by higher and more volatile power rates, according to industry experts.

The expected rise, which is difficult to quantify, is a result of the government's twin program of deregulating the industry and integrating it more closely with the U.S. power market, where rates are under upward pressure due to higher natural gas prices.

Engineer can't get answer about unbundled bills.

ELECTRICITY BILLS are changing with the advent of a competitive market. But customers may not understand the new ``unbundled'' bills or how the charges are calculated. Paul Kozma, a retired engineer, has gone to great lengths to figure out his Toronto Hydro bill. He's spent a year trying to get answers from the utility, the Ontario Energy Board and the Ontario Ministry of Energy.

"Nobody knows what the new price of electricity will be," said Peter Dyne, who is in charge of the energy committee for the Consumers' Association of Canada. "So people should wait until the market opens."

The new electricity market -- slated to open sometime in 2001 -- has led the way for a number of hydro retailers to sell electricity to a wider market.

The Ontario Energy Board has ruled that electricity rate increases must be phased-in over a three-year period.

The regulatory agency said Friday electrical utilities would only be allowed higher increases in special circumstances.

Tom Adams, the executive director of Energy Probe, an environmental and consumer watchdog group, said the three-year plan will allow for "massive rate increases that are snuck into the rates so the consumer won't see it," reported The Canadian Press.

Looming electricity rate increases sought by local utilities must be phased in over a three-year period, the Ontario Energy Board has ruled.

That means the utilities will have less money to pay returns to their municipal owners - including the City of Toronto, which has budgeted to receive tens of millions of dollars in payments from Toronto Hydro this year.

Ontario will have a new privately owned, gas- fired electricity generating plant up and running near Sarnia two years from now.

TransAlta Corp. announced yesterday it is going ahead with the $400 million project, which will serve three big local industries but will also feed into the provincial power grid.

The news was welcomed by those who are looking forward to a competitive electricity market in Ontario.

Mr. John Brooks
President, Toronto Hydro

Dear Mr. Brooks,

In comments before the OEB at RP 2000-0069 on August 10, you made the following comment:

Utilities, activists square off over electricity costs.

Starting today, a procession of lawyers, lobbyists and electric utility managers will troop in and out of a Spartan hearing room in an office tower at Yonge St. and Eglinton Ave.

Their arguments - stretching through next week - will have a direct impact on what Ontario consumers and businesses pay for electricity.

Introduction

Well, something is going to happen to change the way Ontario residents and businesses buy their electricity.

Only a few nagging issues remain to be resolved - such as how much residents and businesses will pay for electricity, and whether they'll be better or worse off.

The past month hasn't made it any easier to figure out.

In short order:

One of the little mysteries of the Canadian Alliance leadership race is the belief that the Harris Tories in Ontario offer a blueprint for national policy and good government. Preston Manning, Tom Long and Stockwell Day genuflect at the mention of Mike Harris and his Common Sense Revolution.

Ontario's plans to freeze electricity distribution rates could lead to regulatory chaos -- nothing new to the province's electric market reform. But it is not too late for the government to fix the situation.

Instead of depoliticizing Ontario's electricity sector and protecting the authority and independence of its regulator, the province is going in the opposite direction. The result? The government has disgraced the Ontario Energy Board -- once a superb regulator -- and replaced it with arbitrary cabinet dictates, creating chaos in the marketplace.

CONFUSED BY the door-to-door salespeople trying to sign you up to natural gas contracts? Just wait until the electricity peddlers hit the streets.

Starting in November, you will be able to buy your electricity from independent suppliers, just the way you can buy your gas from an independent supplier instead of Enbridge Inc., the former Consumers Gas.

LAST FEBRUARY, the Ontario Energy Board gave municipal utilities the go-ahead to raise distribution prices as part of the province's restructuring of the electricity market.

So, it's no surprise that utilities are now applying for price increases.

Last week, Toronto Hydro-Electric System Ltd. released details of its plan to increase the average residential customer's bill by 13 per cent.

To lessen the impact, the municipal utility wants to phase in the increase over two years, starting with an 8.7 per cent increase on July 1.

Energy board told phase-in hides effects of hikes.

Regulators shouldn't cushion consumers from electricity rate increases triggered by Ontario's new market-driven electricity system, says Energy Probe.

Tom Adams, executive director of the non-profit environment advocate, told the Ontario Energy Board yesterday that his group opposes phasing in new, higher electricity rates proposed by local utilities.

Urban homeowners can expect an average hike of about 6 per cent in electricity costs this fall.

The Ontario Energy Board has given the go-ahead to Ontario's 255 municipal utilities to boost rates for industrial and residential customers Nov. 1.

The increases come despite repeated promises by Energy Minister Jim Wilson that deregulation of the electricity industry - both at the generation and delivery ends - would result in lower costs to consumers.

Wilson wasn't available for comment yesterday.

Ontario's electricity restructuring, which could and should be delivering a cheaper, more accountable electricity system, is morphing into a nightmare attack on small ratepayers and taxpayers.

Canada has lessons for countries whose electricity sectors have long been dominated by government-owned monopolies. Its experience illustrates both the limitations and the opportunities created by deregulation and opening up the market.

Ontario's municipal electric utilities - Toronto Hydro, Ottawa Hydro and other local distribution companies that deliver power to city consumers - will be allowed to raise their rates to the average customer by about one-third next year under a proposed Ontario Energy Board staff plan. This massive increase would let municipalities, who under Ontario's new energy legislation now own Ontario's 250 municipal utilities, pocket a stream of profits in excess of $5-billion.

Municipal utilities are expected to take the Ontario Energy Board to court over a decision they say cuts them out of the best parts of deregulation in the electricity market.

``We got into this, supposedly, to push competition in the whole market,'' said Robert Kanduth, director of the Municipal Electric Association, a lobby group for the utilities.

``This cuts the utilities out of the market.''

Homeowners will keep paying a flat rate for electricity under an Ontario Energy Board decision yesterday, but could face once-a-year price shocks as utilities adjust their bills to reflect changes in electricity prices.

In the decision, which is a compromise and a partial reversal of the regulator's original stand on the issue, the board agreed with municipal utilities that customers don't want to be exposed to the volatile electricity market.

Instead of planning cutbacks and struggling to avoid tax increases to deal with new costs imposed on them by the unpopular Harris government downloading, Ontario municipalities could be planning to use the funds from a perpetual, income generating endowment and preparing to issue a special dividend payment to taxpayers. This happy reversal of fortune can be realized by converting an asset that today generates no revenue for its municipal owners-its electric distribution utility-into cash.

Executive Director, Energy Probe Senior Consultant, Borealis Energy Research Association For the Canadian Urban Institute Conference "Restructuring Ontario's Electricity Industry: What Muncipal Decision Makes Need to Know"

April 2, 1998

When Ontario Hydro's reactor woes made headlines last week, no one was in more demand than a small Toronto anti-nuclear group called Energy Probe.

In the Star, Energy Probe's nuclear research director, Norm Rubin, slammed federal regulators. In the Globe and Mail, Energy Probe Foundation's research co-ordinator, Larry Solomon, penned a piece calling for Hydro to be dismantled.

National Post March 29/2003