In legislative committee hearings that were part of the fallout from Ontario’s 2010 gas plant scandal, one of the more charged — some might say naïve — observations was offered by an expert witness who, when asked for his opinion on remedying Ontario’s continuing electricity woes, recommended that politicians “swear a blood oath to not meddle in electricity policy.”
In its December 19, 2019 decision in Toronto Hydro’s “Custom IR” rate application, the Ontario Energy Board (“OEB”) ruled that utilities wishing to include behind-the-meter storage in their regulated operations should seek policy changes in the OEB’s ongoing Distributed Energy Resources (DER) consultation.
With the coming into force on August 28, 2019 of Bill C-69 enacting the Canadian Energy Regulator Act (“CER Act”) and the Impact Assessment Act (“IA Act”), the federal assessment process for energy infrastructure projects was fundamentally restructured.
Canada may soon receive the worldwide prize for being the most difficult jurisdiction to build energy projects in. This is particularly the case with pipelines. In the last five years, investors have walked from four major projects. In total they accounted for over $50 billion in investment.
The last time the Editors of the ERQ published an Editors Introduction was a year ago when we published a study prepared by two law firms, one in Canada and one in the United States that examined the regulatory challenges that were preventing the timely introduction of electricity storage technology into the electricity grid.