Failing to clear the air

Ontario's Energy Minister is laying the groundwork to back out of the province's commitment to move away from coal power within the next three years:

At least two coal-fired power plants long slated for closure by the Ontario government over pollution concerns may need to stay open a while longer to prevent electricity shortages, the province’s energy minister said Friday...

Ontario’s Liberal government promised in its 2003 election campaign to close all of the province’s coal facilities by 2007, claiming their emissions are a health hazard.

That plan was altered last June when the province said the Nanticoke plant by Lake Erie won’t be closed until 2009.

The government's backtracking is bad enough to begin with. But what's worse, the opposition parties are criticizing the government for making the promise in the first place rather than for failing to stick to it:

But critics insist the government needs to direct OPG to enter into more long-term contracts for coal now to avoid paying substantially higher costs down the road on the more expensive spot market — extra costs that ultimately might have to be covered by ratepayers.

“You can’t just go to Loblaws and buy a boatload of coal,” said Conservative energy critic John Yakabuski...

New Democrat Leader Howard Hampton said the government’s refusal to budge from its coal-closure promise will prove costly and put Ontario’s electricity supply at great risk.

“Anybody who has looked at this has said you need to keep the coal plants there because you don’t have a plan to replace the power,” he said.

Now, it's certainly fair to criticize the government for failing to plan sufficiently to allow the coal plants to shut down. But that's a problem of execution, not reason to see the plan to reduce coal dependency as bad in principle.

It's a particular disappointment that Hampton has taken such a short-sighted position on the value of greener energy. While last year's smog-covered summer may be a fairly distant memory by now, surely Ontarians and their leaders haven't forgotten the recent results of past environmental neglect. And matters won't get any better if the province's current planning energy is dedicated to lengthening the life-spans of coal plants, rather than building the foundation to move toward cleaner energy sources.