TORONTO — Evan Pivnick, clean energy program manager for Clean Energy Canada, made the following statement in response to Ontario’s first Integrated Energy Plan.
“The release of Ontario’s first Integrated Energy Plan both builds on areas of provincial leadership and sends mixed signals on critical choices the provincial government needed to reconcile.
“On the one hand, this plan continues to build on Ontario’s leadership in modernizing its electricity system, centering the role of distributed energy resources and energy efficiency while kicking off a much-needed integrated energy planning process.
“The plan’s strategy for distributed energy resources (the integration of technologies like battery storage, rooftop solar, and smart EV charging into the grid) alongside its focus on energy efficiency are commendable. Critically, they offer tangible ways to address cost-of-living challenges across the province. Other jurisdictions in Canada can learn from the scale of reforms that have been advanced in the province.
“However, while the strategy lays out meaningful qualitative objectives—affordability, security, reliability, and clean energy—the lack of specific goals or metrics to assess progress toward them makes it impossible to evaluate the choices the government is making. And the independent modelling released alongside the integrated plan that looked at pathways to achieving net zero calls into question some of the core choices the government has taken, particularly concerning the role of natural gas and its connections to affordability and energy security.
“The Cost Effective Energy Pathways Study for Ontario clearly lays out that a failure to reduce reliance on fossil fuels—in particular, natural gas—represents a significant risk for household energy affordability. The study in no uncertain terms outlines that, under all scenarios, electricity represents the cheapest energy source for households, with significant risks for those that remain on the natural gas system in the long run.
“Rather than confronting this challenge, the province’s integrated energy plan instead seeks to expand the role of natural gas in both the electricity and distribution systems, failing to address the risks to consumers and businesses. This not only undermines the consumer savings that could be secured through a focus on electrification, it may also work at cross purposes with the government’s actions to enable savings through clean household technologies.
“Ontario should be applauded for the release of the integrated energy plan, for its truly nation-leading work on electricity system modernization, and for the initiation of an integrated resource planning process. And yet major questions remain unanswered, and the government’s own independent modelling suggests that without addressing them, the province may be unable to achieve its own objectives on affordability, security, reliability, and clean energy.”
