Ah Canada, land of unspoilt forests, beautiful fresh water lakes, moose and beavers, and terrifying monopolies on necessary commodities.
Like hydro, which is what electricity is known as in Canada. To me this sounds quite nice, like all our electricity is coming from natural resources like Niagara Falls, and we don't need to feel too badly about it cause fresh water is going to keep on flowing and Ontario citizens can have guilt free hydro power for millenia to come. However, I just came across a graph of Ontario's electricity sources versus Canada (thank you ecospark.ca). Across Canada, hydro power accounts for 57.6% of total electricity usage, while in Ontario it's a measly 22%. Disappointing and also makes the whole 'hydro' moniker quite misleading.
This is Ontario's power usage: red is nuclear, grey is oil and gas, blue is hydro, black is coal and yellow is wind. I'm not sure where solar is but I'm really hoping solar starts cutting a big strip out of the black and grey.
Anyway, for years and years you could only get your electricity from Ontario hydro. Then in 98 because monopolies on necessary commodities really screws over the people (think Bolivia's hydraulic empire in the 90s where the gov't sold all the rights to water in Bolivia to one company, Aguas del Tunari), Ontario Hydro split up into municipalities to try to put some competition into the marketplace, and the Ontario Energy Board was put in to regulate that.
However, what seems to have happened is that there's essentially still one company in every municipality that people can get their electricity from, for example in Toronto it's Toronto Hydro and in Barrie it's Barrie Hydro, etc and every 6 months the Ontario Energy Board regulates how much each of these companies can raise their tarrifs by - of course always the same amount to keep the competition going. Wait a minute! So everyone raises their rates the same amount to keep the competition going. No that doesn't make sense at all. That, in fact, is still a giant monopoly but just operating under different names. It's almost worse than the old monopoly because now tax payers have to pay for the Ontario Energy Board as well.
I could be very wrong about this (to be honest, my research was pretty minimal and we need electricity for tomorrow, so just called up Toronto Hydro and got the thing started, after happilyyyyyy paying a $30 registration fee for them to switch my name with the landlords name. that sounds like $30 of work to me). So if you know any other companies that are out there keeping competition going (and i don't just mean prices here but types of electricity etc) then please let me know. Oh, I did find Bullfrog Power, but it actually just adds a premium to Toronto Hydro to put money into renewable energy, it's not a competitor in itself.
On this round, England wins. Lots of different energy providers to keep things competitive and keep development of renewables going for long term business growth and not just because it's nice. Win win.
Like hydro, which is what electricity is known as in Canada. To me this sounds quite nice, like all our electricity is coming from natural resources like Niagara Falls, and we don't need to feel too badly about it cause fresh water is going to keep on flowing and Ontario citizens can have guilt free hydro power for millenia to come. However, I just came across a graph of Ontario's electricity sources versus Canada (thank you ecospark.ca). Across Canada, hydro power accounts for 57.6% of total electricity usage, while in Ontario it's a measly 22%. Disappointing and also makes the whole 'hydro' moniker quite misleading.
This is Ontario's power usage: red is nuclear, grey is oil and gas, blue is hydro, black is coal and yellow is wind. I'm not sure where solar is but I'm really hoping solar starts cutting a big strip out of the black and grey.
Anyway, for years and years you could only get your electricity from Ontario hydro. Then in 98 because monopolies on necessary commodities really screws over the people (think Bolivia's hydraulic empire in the 90s where the gov't sold all the rights to water in Bolivia to one company, Aguas del Tunari), Ontario Hydro split up into municipalities to try to put some competition into the marketplace, and the Ontario Energy Board was put in to regulate that.
However, what seems to have happened is that there's essentially still one company in every municipality that people can get their electricity from, for example in Toronto it's Toronto Hydro and in Barrie it's Barrie Hydro, etc and every 6 months the Ontario Energy Board regulates how much each of these companies can raise their tarrifs by - of course always the same amount to keep the competition going. Wait a minute! So everyone raises their rates the same amount to keep the competition going. No that doesn't make sense at all. That, in fact, is still a giant monopoly but just operating under different names. It's almost worse than the old monopoly because now tax payers have to pay for the Ontario Energy Board as well.
I could be very wrong about this (to be honest, my research was pretty minimal and we need electricity for tomorrow, so just called up Toronto Hydro and got the thing started, after happilyyyyyy paying a $30 registration fee for them to switch my name with the landlords name. that sounds like $30 of work to me). So if you know any other companies that are out there keeping competition going (and i don't just mean prices here but types of electricity etc) then please let me know. Oh, I did find Bullfrog Power, but it actually just adds a premium to Toronto Hydro to put money into renewable energy, it's not a competitor in itself.
On this round, England wins. Lots of different energy providers to keep things competitive and keep development of renewables going for long term business growth and not just because it's nice. Win win.
spoke to someone the other night about Bullfrog Power and apparently it is a competitor in it's own right and does use completely renewable energy sources only. i've also heard of a few other small start ups that are similar to Bullfrog, so hooray, the market is starting to open up slightly on this.
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