A recent article in the Globe and Mail offers tantalizing glimpses into the low-carbon future being planned for Ontario and it's a world of massive governmental intrusion (regulatory takeover might not be too strong a term) of Ontario's energy economy.
The article, by Adrian Morrow and Greg Keenan, is based on a confidential draft report of Ontario's Climate Change Action Plan. What's in store for Ontarians under the draft Plan?
Well, for one thing, the new plan would reduce the number of auto commuters to 20 per cent of all commuter trips by 2050. The article specifies that the other 80 per cent of commuters are expected to commute by mass transit, bicycling or walking. Currently, about 80 per cent of commuters in Canada drive (or ride to work) in a passenger vehicle. The article makes no mention of ridesharing a la Uber, or self-driving vehicles. So one assumes that such revolutionary technologies are not part of the plan.
The plan also calls for a massive build out of the electric vehicle fleet, an ongoing boondoggle I've been writing about for 20 years. The plan calls for adding 1.7 million electric and hybrid vehicles to the automobile fleet, while getting seven million gas burning cars off the road by 2030.
Hmmm, let's do the math on that. They add in 1.7 million cars and take out seven million. So, I guess 5.3 million fewer Ontarians will have a car of any sort, and that doesn't explain how the new Ontarians expected from population growth will get around. Perhaps that's where ridesharing services and self-driving cars come in.
The plan, as reported on, also includes energy-efficiency retrofits, building efficiency standards and so forth to reduce energy consumption. But as we recently showed, such "demand-side management" measures simply don't pass even rudimentary benefit/cost analysis.
All of this, of course, joins the dozens (more likely hundreds) of existing regulations that attempt to promote energy efficiency including existing building standards, vehicle standards, appliance standards, etc. They are also on top of (not instead of) Ontario's cap-and-trade program, which was theoretically supposed to solve Ontario's carbon emission goals by putting a price on carbon, demonstrating that chatter about environmentalists being willing to forego damaging regulatory initiatives if only governments will levy carbon taxes are often misguided or insincere.
A recent article by Phillip Cross, formerly Chief Economic Analyst at Statistics Canada, observed that Ontario is the most highly regulated province in Canada, with some 380,000 regulations at present. Cross points out that these regulations are a form of tax, as people have to spend time and money (or forego profitable activities) to comply.
One can only wonder how many thousands, or tens of thousands, of new regulations will be needed as Ontario continues to pursue its green dreams.
By Kenneth P. Green
Source: FraserForum
