The answer to Ontario’s surging energy demands is blowing in the wind

With an increased demand for energy rapidly mounting, Ontario Premier Doug Ford and his government have made it clear they intend to expand some of the costliest, slowest and dirtiest forms of power procurement. 

To that end, the province has announced new nuclear and natural gas procurement, despite the availability of a faster and cheaper alternative available in abundance: offshore wind.

This is in keeping with the Ford government’s track record. In 2021, three years after Ford was first elected, Ontario was a leader in emissions-free energy; hydro, solar and wind powered nearly 95 per cent of the province. That figure fell to 87 per cent by 2024, largely on the back of natural gas expansion. 

As soon as he became premier, Ford almost immediately scrapped plans to expand green energy procurement with a short-sighted claim that the additional energy wasn’t needed at that time — a decision that has cost the province more than $200 million and has proven demonstrably false: Energy demand in the province is expected to increase by 75 per cent by 2050, according to the province’s Independent Electricity Systems Operator (IESO).

Those projections have left the Ford government scrambling, and in that scramble, it is turning to costly and dirty energy generation — with a heavy emphasis on natural gas and nuclear. Alongside plans to develop “one of the largest nuclear energy plants in the world” in Port Hope, the province has also made clear its intention to continue to champion natural gas procurement, even though emissions from natural gas are projected to quadruple compared to 2017 levels by 2030, and nearly double that again by 2050.

The Ontario government claims those emissions increases will be offset by increased electrification in the province, particularly in the auto sector. But that claim is dubious at best and flies in the face of advice given to the Ford government in an independent report it commissioned and then never publicly released.

There is a better way to meet the province’s growing energy demand, and a big part of that equation lies in piggybacking off of a global surge in wind and solar power procurement that is rapidly driving the price of those technologies down. In 2021, onshore wind costs fell by nearly 70 per cent, while offshore declined by nearly 60 per cent.

Not only does that make the cost of wind power cheaper than natural gas (with nuclear being at least four times as costly), it is also far quicker to build, which will help the province meet that growing demand.  

The push toward green energy — particularly wind — isn’t new for Ontario. The province was aggressively pursuing offshore wind power before politicization of the energy source drove the McGuinty government to impose a moratorium on it in 2011. That moratorium led to a flurry of lawsuits that cost the province millions in one settlement, while the then-Liberal government deliberately destroyed evidence in another of the cases. 

Despite that fraught history, there remains tremendous offshore wind potential in Ontario’s Great Lakes region. In fact, according to advocates, offshore wind alone could provide enough power to meet the province’s current demands and more. In 2008, a report prepared for the Ontario Power Authority (a forerunner to the IESO) identified as much as 35,000 megawatts (MW) of potential wind power generation in the Great Lakes region — enough to power millions of homes and easily exceed the province’s current demand for just under 24,000 MW. This estimate was also made before the surge in global demand drove improvements in wind generation and storage technologies.

A new regulatory framework, outlined in federal Bill C-49, could set guidelines for the expansion and help the province offset any concerns from offshore energy critics, even though there is “no scientific basis” for the ongoing moratorium, according to Bryan Purcell, vice-president of policy and programs with The Atmospheric Fund.

Amid the Ford government’s push for more natural gas and nuclear, the IESO has seen the wisdom in pursuing green energy; it announced intentions to procure 5,000 MW of renewable power in December 2023. 

That’s a good start, but Ontario could be doing much more to get back into the game by embracing offshore wind in the Great Lakes — especially since several U.S. states are already doing so on their side of the border, with bipartisan support.

Ontario has made its energy ambitions clear, setting out a plan to not only meet the 75 per cent surge in demand, but to exceed that and export the surplus. Renewable energy — and wind power in particular — can deliver what’s needed almost entirely on its own, re-establishing Ontario as a green energy powerhouse in the process. 

 It’s past time for the province to formally lift its moratorium on wind power and to get those turbines spinning.