TransCanada signs deal to build, operate 900-megawatt Ontario power plant
By The Canadian Press - Monday, December 17, 2012 - 0 Comments
TORONTO – The Ontario Power Authority announced Monday it had signed a contract with…
TORONTO – The Ontario Power Authority announced Monday it had signed a contract with TransCanada Corp. (TSX:TRP) to own and operate a gas-fired generating station near Kingston that was originally planned for the Greater Toronto Area.
The 900-megawatt facility will be located near Ontario Power Generation’s Lennox Generating Station property in Napanee instead of Oakville, a move the Liberal government said would cost taxpayers $40 million.
However, the Progressive Conservatives and New Democrats accuse the government of hiding the true cost of cancelling the Oakville power plant and another one in nearby Mississauga.
“It’s an ongoing story of Liberal waste and Liberal self-interest and a reminder to people that there’s a good reason to have the legislature open: we need to be able to dig into this,” said NDP energy critic Peter Tabuns.
“And we certainly shouldn’t be accepting of a the Liberals’ $40-million figure.”
The opposition parties estimate the combined figure for the two cancelled power plants in Liberal ridings is around $1 billion, not the $230 million the Liberals admit.
The Tories and NDP say they would have found out the real cost if Premier Dalton McGuinty had not prorogued the legislature just hours before public hearings into the failed projects were to begin.
“Independent estimates suggest the cost to cancel and relocate this gas plant ranges anywhere from $800 million to $1.3 billion, the bulk of which will be passed on to Ontario ratepayers,” said PC energy critic Vic Fedeli.
“When I was sitting at committee, I witnessed the Liberals fight tooth and nail to keep the auditor general from looking into the Oakville cancellation. Now we know why.”
The Tories also wanted to know why Ontario was building a new power plant just two kilometres from the “under-utilized” Lennox generating station owned by OPG.
“That 2,000-megawatt facility runs at just five per cent of its capacity,” said Fedeli.
“How does this help address the power needs in the southwest GTA where the power was deemed to be needed in the first place?”
The cancellation of the two gas plants — which the opposition parties called a “Liberal seat saver program” — led to a rare contempt of Parliament motion against Energy Minister Chris Bentley over the government’s initial refusal to release documents on the projects, which it was eventually forced to do by the Speaker.
However, despite more than 56,000 documents being released, the Tories and NDP still insist they hadn’t been given all the information they were entitled to have.
A legislative committee dominated by the opposition parties was about to start public hearings into the costs of the gas plants, and the contempt motion, when McGuinty surprised everyone Oct. 15 by proroguing the legislature and announcing his resignation.
“Dalton McGuinty knew he was in deep trouble, that the more that came out about what was really going on here the worse things would look for him because in fact they behaved improperly,” said Tabuns.
The Mississauga gas plant, construction of which was well underway when the Liberals cancelled it two weeks before the Oct. 6, 2011 election, will be relocated to the Sarnia area.
Construction had not started on the Oakville gas plant when the Liberals decided to cancel it after well-funded local opponents brought in famed environmental activist Erin Brokovich to speak against the project.
TransCanada said Monday that the new Napanee plant will create about 600 construction jobs as well as long-term employment for about 25 people with $4 million in annual salaries and benefits. The plant will operate under a 20-year power purchase arrangement with the OPA.
“There needs to be alignment of all stakeholders before you kind of move forward, and I think we found that in Napanee,” TransCanada CEO Russ Girling said Monday.
“We have a location that is far more acceptable to all stakeholders than Oakville,” Girling said.
TransCanada currently operates the 683-MW Halton Hills Generating Station, has a 50 per cent ownership in the 550-MW Portlands Energy Centre in Toronto and has agreed to purchase nine Ontario solar plants that would produce 86 MW of clean energy. It also owns a large portion of the Bruce Power nuclear facility — 49 per cent of Bruce A and 32 per cent of Bruce B.
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Michael Snow plays his Trump card
By John Geddes - Wednesday, November 7, 2012 at 1:03 PM - 0 Comments
At 83, the innovative Canadian art icon is fine-tuning his latest project: a 65-storey light show
Snow's LED light installation on the Trump Tower in Toronto (Photograph by Jennifer Roberts)
Michael Snow is standing on the edge of In the Way, his new video installation at the National Gallery of Canada, looking down at it and chuckling with pleasure. A projector on the ceiling beams a 23-minute video onto the floor. The ground rushes by at close range—mud and puddles for a while, then grass studded with flowers, then pebbles. Snow created the video by driving over cottage roads with a camera mounted on the back of a truck, aimed down. Both the speed and the direction of the movement change every so often. As if afraid they’ll fall in, gallery visitors passing by skirt the action on the floor carefully, a reaction Snow seems to relish. He also likes the sheer look of it. “These rocks,” he exclaims at a point when the terrain switches from grass to rough ground. “I really like these rocks.”
Snow, 83, was in Ottawa last week for the opening of Builders, a new show of about 100 works by contemporary Canadian artists the gallery has bought during the past two years that is intended to draw attention to artists who have helped establish the art scene. “I can’t think of a bigger builder than Michael Snow,” says curator Jonathan Shaughnessy. “He’s a model for Canadian artists, constantly innovating.” Indeed, Snow has painted and sculpted, photographed, filmed and videotaped and played experimental music for about six decades. Venerable as he is, he’s never been more relevant than he is now: sometime within the next few weeks, Snow’s most inescapable public piece will debut on the downtown Toronto skyline.
This latest audacity is a narrow strip of LED lights, programmed to do his bidding, that runs up 65 storeys of the new Trump Tower. He worked for two years with computer programmers from Edinburgh to create the permanent installation, an array of white-light effects that will play every night. “There are some that use rhythms,” he says. “A very simple one that’s very effective is a waltz. It’s like 40 storeys go boomp, and then the 20 storeys above it go boomp-boomp. So the building waltzes. And there are many things more complicated than that, like snow and rain effects.” Snow expects it to be activated in the next few weeks, after some technical kinks are ironed out. He and his collaborators have already tested it while watching from a nearby 30th-floor hotel room. “It’s not oppressive,” he promises. “But you will not be able to miss it.”
In his hometown of Toronto at least, Snow has long been hard to miss. His monumental sculptures of fans greet real crowds at the entrances to the Rogers Centre. His iconic flock of life-size Canada geese still cause shoppers visiting the Eaton Centre to crane their necks for a better look. But his popular impact hasn’t come at the expense of his reputation among art-world insiders. Last year he had shows in Paris, New York and Istanbul. A retrospective of his abstract sculpture at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto wraps up next month. A survey of his photography is slated for next year at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Asked how he finds the time to work on new pieces, he laughs and says, “I make art hardly at all. What I do is email and travel.”
