Originally Posted By: IndyIan
Originally Posted By: OVERKILL
The stacks are still up I see. The Ontario government was SUPER keen to get the ones at Nanticoke down so that subsequent governments couldn't bring it back online.
I am super glad though, the late 90's were the worst for air pollution with lots of smog days. 20+ per summer, and after it closed its a down to a few per year.
It made no sense to have Canada's largest pollution emitter upwind of Canada's largest city...
Nanticoke has only been offline since 2013
Realistically, it could have (I'm not saying it SHOULD have) been fitted with scrubbers. It represented 4,000MW of very cheap generation, but its existence didn't make sense if it could be replaced with something cleaner, which it ultimately was. 75% of its capacity was replaced by the reactivation and refurbishment of Bruce "A". Higher prices, driving down demand in the province made the remaining 25% insignificant.
Think about this though:
OPG laid up Bruce A after units 1 and 2 needed work. That slack was taken up with coal. Pickering is also down two units, likely also replaced with coal. There was a period where any increase in rates was seen as a kiss of death for reelection, and so no government was willing to take that on. So rather than repair the existing "green" generation we had, they simply replaced it with existing coal capacity, something we had a significant quantity of.
Then, we discovered that rates really weren't something that were guaranteed to take a party down. McGuinty was proof of that with the GEA, which went the complete opposite direction and still achieved bugger-all on the pollution front, as the vast majority of that credit goes to Bruce Power. Here we are with now 63% of our power from Nuclear; 87% from Nuclear and Hydro, all of which were existing assets that had just been neglected and the former was vowed to be stamped out, comically enough! We went on this wild magic detour only to end up spending obscene amounts of money on contracts for gear that at the end of the day contribute very little to the grid, but significantly to our cost as ratepayers.
Was it OPG; Ontario Hydro at the time, that allowed the existing assets to degrade, or do you think its hands were forced by the folks in power, similar to how we've been forced to bear the brunt of this lunatic policy for the last 14 years?
Also food for thought: Why could Nanticoke not be converted to gas? Would have saved building all the new gas plants and it, being an OPG asset, wouldn't be subject to the obscene subsidized rates paid to private generators.