Invest in Conservation, Save Energy. Watch Your Bills Go Up.
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 03.28.07
Toronto calls itself a green city, and its wholly owned power distribution subsidiary Toronto Hydro has been handing out the CFL's and advertising conservation like mad. It has been so successful that the electricity loads in the city fell by 178.5 million kilowatt hours — enough to power 178,000 homes for a month — between spring 2005 and the end of 2006. Oops, that means a $10.4 million drop in revenue, leading to a 6.3% increase in hydro rates to cover it, eating up almost every penny of the savings. This is such an incentive to turn out the lights, telling everyone to spend money to conserve and then penalizing them for doing it. Only in Green Toronto. ::CBC
No, wait, there is the green province of Ontario, encouraging people to invest in green technology. Max Woschnigg did, building a big 80Kw turbine and saving $ 3,600 a year in power, while selling excess back to the grid. He just had his property reassessed for tax purposes and guess what, it is worth more with the turbine and his taxes just went up about $ 3,600. Another great incentive from the Green Government of Ontario. ::Tyler Hamilton inthe Star
And we wonder why people aren't being serious about conservation.
"Max Woschnigg did, building a big 80Kw turbine and saving $ 3,600 a year in power, while selling excess back to the grid. He just had his property reassessed for tax purposes and guess what, it is worth more with the turbine and his taxes just went up about $ 3,600. "
-It's called "capture". The same thing happened when Clinton started giving tax credits to students. Tuition rates went up by the exact same amount.
If Quebec Hydros' revenue goes down, they would have to raise their rates only under SOME conditions. One assumes they do burn SOME oil, and if they have to burn less, than that's a savings. They have to service the debt on their infrastructure, and that cost may be inflexible. But in the long run they don't have to develop new infrastructure as quickly, because they have more headroom. That's a savings.They may be able to cut a deal on some of their debt, if their new projections of future capitalization indicate they won't need more capital as soon as they expected. Their credit rating might then get a bump.
The idea that "we cut use and it hurts us" is too facile, to not be greeted with some scepticism.
They may be able to mothball some operations for the time being, which means fewer new hires, maybe some attrition. (Always popular in a political-patronage business.)
I guess that is when the people get together and tell their government representatives "You're close but no cigar."
Where I live if we make energy saving improvements to our home, the increase in value to the home related to the energy saving improvements cannot be added to the taxable value of the home for several years.
No system is perfect, but if we keep after our representatives, then we should at least keep moving in the right direction.
People aren't serious exactly BECAUSE it's all a political shell game - personified by the very leader of the cause ... Al Gore himself who believes we're buying his story about carbon offsets he pays to himself as a way of justifiying his polluting the planet with his 3 homes and tons and tons of carbon released as he jets back and forth to Cannes to pick up his latest Palm D'or.
I am a FANATIC reader of Treehugger and totally into a non-destructive lifestyle of conservatism ... but we have chosen poor representatives for this lifestyle by hitching our wagon to politicians who will abandon us at the first sign of trouble.
Don't trust them.
The wind turbine case is absolutely ridiculous. I live near where it happened and, thankfully, the case was all over the local media.
The Toronto Hydro case actually seems pretty good to me. Energy is definitely undervalued in our society, and higher rates could only serve to encourage more conservation. Those that participated in the initial round of savings will break even; those that haven't kept pace will pay for it. Besides; I don't know about Toronto Hydro but I know Hydro One and OPG are in buckets of debt; helping them to pay it down now is an investment in our grandchildren's power bills.
Here in Limey-land our latest budget promises zero property tax on 'zero-Carbon' homes. Of which, at present, there are about 2 dozen in the whole country.
What, I wonder, will HM Revenue and Customs do when the majority of houses are zero-Carbon, as they must inevitably be, sometime in the future (all new-build is to be z-C by 2016)? Will they gracefully go without the money and, gasp, economise??
Meanwhile, our (all privatised) electricity companies are supposed to be helping us save energy, giving out free cool lightbulbs and the like, though I haven't seen much evidence of that recently, perhaps this explains why?
Will Wind Power People Be Able to Access the Bruce Nuclear Twining Transmission Line or Will They have to Pay for a NEW Line ? We asked Ontario Hydro aka Hydro One for an Answer.
http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/March2007/29/c8113.html
http://www.hydroonenetworks.com/en/community/projects/transmission/bruce_to_milton/
Here's What MPAC had to Say to Local Property Owners...
http://www.independentfreepress.com/news/article/20189
http://www.independentfreepress.com/news/article/20192
http://www.thestar.com/article/204253
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Duncan opposes green-power tax penalties
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Ontarians who put solar panels, wind turbines or other renewable power generation equipment on their properties to sell electricity into the grid shouldn't be penalized with higher taxes, says Energy Minister Dwight Duncan.
"We intend to eliminate any impediment to the development of renewable power in Ontario," Duncan told reporters yesterday.
The government is looking at the issue after the provincial agency responsible for assessing properties told a Guelph-area farmer a wind turbine he installed in December boosted his property's assessed value by $59,000.
The farmer, Max Woschnigg, said the resulting higher taxes would likely offset most of the $3,600 he saves by using the turbine to generate twice the amount of electricity he needs and sell the rest to the provincial grid.
With the province facing an electricity crunch coupled with too many smoggy summer days, Duncan has been pushing for more non-polluting and renewable sources of electricity.
Accordingly, he said, the ministry and the Municipal Property Assessment Corp. are looking at "a wide range of options" to address the problem.
"We don't, obviously, want one piece of government policy to undermine another piece of government policy, so we're having a good, hard look at that," he said outside the Legislature. "It's something we'd like to see fixed sooner rather than later."
MPAC official Rose McLean said last month the corporation was seeking guidance from the ministry on the issue, noting that Woschnigg's assessment, made under regulations passed in 2004, is on hold until a decision is made.
The farmer's turbine, which generates 80 kilowatts and cost $160,000, drew an assessor's attention because it is 40 metres high. McLean said smaller wind turbines and residential solar panels haven't yet been considered.
As they stand, regulations don't specify at what size or generating capacity reassessments should be carried out, she said.
"We're going to try to take into account all the permutations and combinations," Duncan said.
Under the government's standard offer program encouraging people and local institutions to install renewable energy sources, the government pays 11 cents per kilowatt hour for electricity from wind and biomass projects under 10 megawatts and 42 cents per kilowatt hour for solar projects.