“Powering Ontario’s Growth” - Ford’s Energy Disaster

The Ford government has released "Powering Ontario's Growth". a plan for massive growth in fossil gas and nuclear power - and nothing for renewables and conservation!. On September 20 a webinar was hosted by Seniors For Climate Action Now! (SCAN!) and Ontario Climate Emergency Campaign (OCEC), with support from ClimateFast, to fight back against Ford's disastrous energy plan. It featured Ralph Torrie, Senior Researcher for Corporate Knights, who explained why the Ontario government's projections of energy demand are inaccurate and provided information about alternative low cost and climate-friendly plans for Ontario’s energy future.

The full video of the September 20 webinar can be watched on the OCEC's YouTube channel. 

Below are some clips from the webinar that you may include in your communications:
Introduction
Companies Performance in Sustainability Technologies
Emergency Response
Four Household Example
Good News & Opportunities
International Context
Key Considerations
Local Agency
Local Government Clip
Low Carbon Energy Future – What Must be Done
Ontario Demand is Not Growing
Small Nuclear Reactors
The Problem with Forecasts
Wicked Complications 

A total of 230 people registered for the webinar from a broad geographic range, both from locations within Ontario, such as Toronto, Ottawa, Kingston, Sault Ste Marie, Haliburton, Owen Sound, Sudbury, and Thunder Bay, to name a few, and outside Ontario, such as Saskatchewan, Manitoba, British Columbia, Quebec, and Los Angeles. Several organizations were well-represented, including Climate Action for Lifelong Learners (CALL), Citizen’s Climate Lobby, ClimateFast, Environment Haliburton!, Ontario Climate Emergency Campaign (OCED). Seniors for Climate Action Now (SCAN!), Toronto East End Climate Collective and York University.

Of the 127 attendees, about half completed the feedback form. Several expressed thanks to the organizers for the webinar, and all but one stated that they had learned something new. Many provided suggestions of topics for future webinars, such as:

• Affordability of electric vehicles and deep energy retrofits 
• More information about estimates of electricity demand in the future 
• Strategies for building municipal power to promote clean energy.
• Nuclear power generation-pros and cons, including costs and risks of; more information on small modular reactors (SMRs) 
• Sustainable energy and private investment
• Case studies on organizing renewable energy projects and conservation initiatives around the province 
• Details new building and transportation regulations that could drive change; green building standards in our municipalities. 
• Specifics on political strategies; holding developer and the City accountable to higher standards; Ho can we get rid of Doug Ford in Ontario and bring common sense to future energy here? 
• How OCEC built its large coalition of environmental organizations and an assessment of what this synergy has produced in terms of local results and campaigns.
• Inter provincial grid connections and grid enhancing technologies
• Indigenous mining rights and engagement. 
• How to accelerate citizen investment (not talk) in the climate change challenge. 
• How do we best help to mobilize individual communities and promote local action?

One of the purposes of the webinar was to encourage actions to oppose Ford’s energy plan for Ontario to promote investment in renewable energy. Many suggestions for actions were made by attendees, including: 

Public Education

• More public education with succinct information about energy projections, the benefits of efficiency and renewable energy sources and distributed community energy projects, and the harms/disadvantages of nuclear and the benefits of green energy
• make links to the reports re: green initiatives at the municipal level available
• A public education campaign based on the efficiencies and economic returns of sustainable energy and a petition to the federal government to develop a sovereign investment fund for its implementation.
• The public needs to be better informed of the public health implications of increased extraction of and use of gas; hold town halls in every riding in Ont.
• drill the metrics of $/kWh, $/CO2e, CO2e/kWh, kWh/pp/d, kWh/km/pp for comparing all energy sources and for major energy expenditures:  transportation, space HVAC, hot water

Investment

• More information on how people can invest their money to support sustainability.
• energy cooperatives and companies, call their elected representatives, and talk with their investment advisors.

Media

• Organize efforts to get the media to do much more real and necessary reporting to the mass public. 
• Encourage people to invest in their own grid connected, solar generation, invest in renewable 
• Specific community education and consultation initiatives incorporating what we learned this evening.
• Contact the alternate e-news like The Tyee and The Narwhal to ferret out information under govt wraps on energy upgrades progress. Why it’s leaning toward Enbridge which is a private company?

Campaigns

• A major campaign which describes the costs and timelines of new nuclear and how it will take longer than we can wait and cost more. Show graphics of how quickly and cheaply wind/solar can be in place
• massive mailouts to all Ontario households with facts about the problems with the government's electricity plan.
• Ongoing letter campaigns, meetings with MPs, MPPs, and local government with specific asks.
• Mass mobilization - ongoing supporting for all the pop-up events in support of the Greenbelt and building on them to make the links to his climate "plans". 
• Advocate for higher "polluter pays" fees on oil & gas sector to flow into clean energy adoption rebates, incentives for startups & green employment opportunities
• Pressure the gov't to spend the projected costs of their reckless energy plans on alternatives such as, building retrofits and urgently updating building energy use standards.

Demonstrations and Protests

• Ongoing demonstrations at Queens Park and local MPP offices
• Protest outside the constituency offices of Conservative MPPs who support nuclear proliferation by Ontario Power Generation (OPG)

Mass Mobilization

• Local organizations mobilizing together in a mass movement. 
• Mobilizing local communities by exposing  government and nuclear/gas industries' propaganda that exaggerates the need for ever growing demand for energy
• How about a mass action … people could bang pots together outside their homes demanding a greener, more democratic, less corrupt government!
• We need a single clearing house where all Ontario climate action groups can share information. A web site where resources could be posted would help, but it would probably need some management
• more civil society attention to rural organizing, which is completely different from urban organizing
• set up a working group with reps from different communities on municipal initiatives