Doug Ford's flip flop on wind turbines won't undo all the damage he caused

Immediately upon winning power in 2018, Doug Ford’s Tories unplugged wind and solar power. Now, five years after ripping up so many signed contracts, there’s a reckoning over renewable energy. Back in power after two election cycles, he once dreamed of uprooting from Ontario. New year, new policy.

Another about face from Ontario’s seat of the pants premier. Fresh from reversing direction on the , Ford is reversing polarity on green energy. Energy Minister Todd Smith, who like the premier came to power huffing and puffing against wind turbines, is now boasting about bringing them back to the towns that ran them out of town.

All that said, Smith says the Tories will right the wrongs of the last Liberal government. He promises renewables will be restored to Ontario at roughly half of the old rates, and at a far lower political price. That’s because the cost of wind and solar has dropped steadily, thanks to innovation and competition.

Smith notes that the Liberals made the mistake of overriding community objections, while the Tories are giving the final word to local governments before any wind turbines take root. There’s more. , after quietly letting their bilateral deal lapse in late 2022. Smith had walked away from a signed agreement for hydroelectricity, negotiated by the Liberals in 2015, but recently signed a new 10 year deal with Quebec.

If all this good news sounds too good to be quite true, there’s some truth to that. While it’s a relief that Ford and Smith are finally seeing the error of their ways, on this as on other issues, that doesn’t diminish the folly and futility of their first approach. Where once electricity demand was seen as stalling, in line with a faltering economy, the latest projections suggest Ontario is falling behind its future needs for clean power.

In short, after wasting the last five years as a bystander while the world passed them by, the Tories had to get back in the energy game to take account of long term trends. Even a stopped clock is accurate twice a day. But that’s small consolation the rest of the time. To be sure, the Liberals paid a price for being too far ahead of the curve with wind turbines.

They tried to preposition the province for a new era of green jobs, overpaying for renewables contracts as a way of kick starting the industry, handing the province a competitive advantage over its rivals. The backlash came quickly. The idea soon took root that these generous incentive payments were responsible for the perceived rise in electricity rates — a political myth propounded by the Tories when they were in opposition.

In fact, renewables always made up such a small proportion of the total energy supply — a fraction of the increase in monthly utility bills. But those concerns were hyped into a pre election issue in 2018 that magically vanished, postelection, from the political sphere. By aborting the experiment in renewable power when they came to power in 2018, however, the Tories introduced hidden costs into the system: First, the “opportunity cost” (as economists call it) of absenting Ontario from the latest currents in renewable energy over the past five years, while the world of electric vehicles (EVs) and battery manufacturing moved by leaps and bounds adds up a foregone opportunity to keep the province up to speed.

Second, there is the real damage to Ontario’s reputation as a reliable place to do business after Ford so recklessly ordered the cancellation of 750 contracts. That he did so while simultaneously declaring, fatuously and hypocritically, that “Ontario is open for business,” further eroded his credibility with private investors.

Yes, foreign investors are still coming to Ontario to make the most of EV demand, but at the expense of massive incentives from the federal and provincial governments. If Ontario’s reputation for reliability on renewables were less chequered, the need for generous tax incentives might have been lessened for investors seeking a clean energy sanctuary with certainty.

Either way, the province will have to pay a premium to compensate investors for the immeasurable risk of being sandbagged should Ford change his mind yet again. Third, Ontario is falling farther behind its obligation to meet Ottawa’s draft Clean Electricity Regulations that speak of a net zero grid by 2030.

We won’t know for a while if willing hosts will be found for wind and solar to enable the Ford government to meet its new targets of 2,000 megawatts starting this year, plus an additional 3,000 megawatts in future years, let alone the more ambitious goals required for net zero. If the Liberals overdid the overriding of local sentiments, the Tories may find that an entirely hands off approach won’t get them where they need to go.

But that, in the end, may be part of the plan — the subtext behind the minister’s latest soothing statements. By going through the motions of renewing renewables, Smith is artfully distracting critics from a more difficult debate about Ontario’s excessive reliance on gas fired power plants that will continue to emit undesirable levels of carbon.

But that is increasingly in the nature of power politics in this province — an inability to level with ratepayers and taxpayers about the true cost levels, demand curves and supply lines. Just ask the populist premier who talked of removing all of those renewables all those years ago..