Facts on green energy - By Debbie Lynch, My Kawartha

Facts on green energy
 09/17/2011

By Debbie Lynch, My Kawartha  re: ‘Now for some facts on clean energy,’ Sept. 9 Peterborough This Week

Based on what Tim Wohlgemut and Tim Weis wrote, one can only presume that they did indeed drink the purple Kool-Aid – rather than the coffee – for what other excuse could be made for the factual errors in their opinion piece?  Let’s examine one of the deceitful statements they made in their opening paragraph about “costing the average household approximately a coffee and a muffin each month.”

The Ministry of Energy, in its November 2010 “Ontario’s Long-Term Energy Plan: Building Our Clean Energy Future,” states on page 59 that, “Over the next five years, however, residential electricity prices are expected to rise by about 7.9 per cent annually (or 46 per cent over five years). This increase will help pay for critical improvements to the electricity capacity in nuclear and gas, transmission and distribution (accounting for about 44 per cent of the price increase) and investment in new, clean renewable energy generation (56 per cent of the increase).”

In other words, of the projected annual 46 per cent increase in residential electricity prices, 56 per cent is being allocated for “investment in new, clean renewable energy generation,” that is, 25.76 per cent of the projected increase and 44 per cent is being allocated for “critical improvements to the electricity capacity in nuclear and gas, transmission and distribution,” that is, 20.24 per cent of the annual projected increase.

Safe to say that the annual projected increase of 46% is considerably more than the cost of “a coffee and a muffin each month.” It’s somewhere more along the lines of a coffee and a muffin every day of the month.

I would caution Wohlgemut and Weis that if they cannot provide the correct information from an Ontario government ministry document, they should not concoct numbers from elsewhere and present them as “facts.”

Debbie Lynch, Norwood