Tilting at windmills is very very costly ….
windmillfire(H/t Small Dead Animals)
A  good friend of mine runs a business in the County. He has done so for 40 years. He showed me his electricity bill last week. In December, he spent $770 on electricity. It was one of the least expensive lines on his bill. The global adjustment charge was $4,267.32. There was also a delivery charge, a debt retirement charge and an array of taxes.
In total, he spent nearly $10,000 in December—for $770 of electricity. He doesn’t know where this money is going. He is not sure he can keep up. He isn’t alone.

The Liberal Government of Ontario, in a feverish bit of “do-goodism” social justice advocacy, made the decision to significantly idle their fully paid for, clean, effective hydro-electric generating stations to pivot to a “diversified” “green” energy policy that relied upon solar and wind.  to replace older, coal-powered generating stations that were being phased out as part of the “anti-coal” ideology so in vogue with the far Left.  This is the same energy policy that is currently being pursued by the Germans, and, combined with “cap and trade” swaps, is the holy grail of energy policy for the Obama Administration.  Obama did warn Americans that after his energy policies were fully implemented, “electricity prices would necessarily skyrocket” ….


The costs of transitioning to “alternative” energy were enormous, not to mention the havoc it played with the existing power grid.  Reliable, steady hydro-electric power would be shut down to make room in the power generation band for the transmission of wind and solar into the grid, but then hydro-electric and coal generated power would have to be brought up again after sun-down, when wind and solar generation was non-existent.  Wind power can not supply “base-load” generation on demand, and must be “backed up” by stand-by natural gas turbines – at additional cost, of course.  The Liberal government budgeted $585 million for two gas-fired generation plants that were never built, as one of the many fool-hardy and fiscally irresponsible choices deemed necessary to push “green energy policy” forward.
BirdwindmillkillPower plant operators were directed to allow water to “spill” over the dams circumventing the hydro-electric generation turbines to favor the more expensive, ineffective “green” generation streams.  Not only was it costly and ineffective – as if that was all! –  the feel-good, drum-circle policy knowingly created second and third order corrosive economic effects downstream which are now crippling even well established businesses:
“…The global adjustment is a catch-all fee that covers the provincial government’s intervention in electricity generating market. It pays for solar generators, industrial wind turbine plants and subsidized exports to Michigan and Quebec. It covers the subsidized rates some chosen industries pay. It pays for the lawyers who battle residents and groups—including the Prince Edward County Field Naturalists—at tribunals and courtrooms across the province.
In essence, my friend is paying an amount nearly six times the value of the electricity he used to line the pockets of industrial wind developers, solar companies, lawyers, foreign owned smelters, as well as enriching Michigan’s coffers to take this power off our grid.”
Read the whole tragic tale here.
Progressive Policy Making at its finest.
Forward backwords

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