[PluggyRug]

http://nationalpost.com/g00/news/canada ... .referrer=

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Siemens closes wind turbine plant in Tillsonburg — 340 green energy jobs gone

Postmedia News
July 18, 2017
12:16 PM EDT
By London Free Press staff


The closing raises new questions about the fallout from Ontario’s controversial green-energy policy

TILLSONBURG — Siemens Canada is closing its wind-turbine plant here, slashing more than 340 jobs and shuttering one of the town’s largest employers.

The closing, announced by the company Tuesday, comes after weeks of nervous speculation and one day of public debate over the factory, which was locked to employees Sunday night.

Its 340 employees were called to a meeting with the company Tuesday.

“This was a very difficult decision that was taken only after assessing all the options,” said David Hickey, head of Siemens Gamesa Business in Canada. “We have a great team of employees at the plant who have produced quality work for the last six years, and we sincerely appreciate their efforts.”

The closing raises new questions about the fallout from Ontario’s controversial green-energy policy. Siemens was one of four green-energy plants lured to Ontario under a controversial multibillion-dollar provincial deal with Korean industrial giant Samsung.

Outside the factory Tuesday, one employee talked about the frustration felt by he and his colleagues.

“There was quite a bit of anger in there because they shut the place down the other night and never really told anybody about it,” said Rick, who asked his last name not be published. “It was bang, everything was locked down.”

A four-year Siemens employee said workers who called the plant’s sick line during the weekend were told there was no production Monday and were to attend a morning meeting Tuesday at the town’s community centre.

“It was the joke around there that they were just going to lock the doors, but we didn’t think it was going to happen,” said the man, who did not want to give his name.

Ontario – where electricity prices have basically doubled over the last decade, and where the energy file has become hugely political heading into next year’s election – had started the process to contract for an additional 600 megawatts of wind energy, requiring construction of about a dozen new wind farms.

But amid rising criticism and reports indicated that Ontario will have enough generation capacity for at least a decade, the Liberal government suspended plans for new projects in September.

Projects already in development weren’t affected.

“Clearly, the Liberal government should be working to build and promote our manufacturing sector — not set up situations where we’re losing these jobs,” said MPP Peter Tabuns, the NDP energy critic at Queen’s Park.

“There seems to be a growing disinterest on the part of the Liberals to actually invest in green energy. I think that may well lock us out of where the rest of the world is going in terms of energy technology,” said the Toronto MPP.

Conservative energy critic Todd Smith, the MPP for Prince Edward Hastings, couldn’t be reached for comment.

The Canadian Wind Energy Association, an industry umbrella group, says the market remains healthy in Ontario, regardless of the news from Siemens.

Despite the province’s decision last fall to suspend new projects, there are orders to fill in Ontario and bids for projects in Alberta and Saskatchewan, said Brandy Giannetta, CanWea’s Ontario regional director.

“The outlook is positive,” Giannetta said, declining to comment on the Siemens situation specifically.

In 2010, four plants to make parts for wind and energy farms were set up under the Samsung deal between the company and the province to generate power for Ontario and create manufacturing jobs in green energy.

The four plants were to create about 900 jobs.

In exchange, Ontario agreed to buy heavily subsidized power from Samsung wind and solar projects and guarantee the company space on the province’s crowded electricity transmission grid.

The Liberal government, sharply criticized over the cost of the agreement, later renegotiated it after the company missed some deadlines, slashing by more than one-third the nearly $10 billion in power it had agreed to buy and reducing to $5 billion from $7 billion Samsung’s investment commitment.

While wind energy has its supporters, fierce opposition in rural communities – especially in Southwestern Ontario, home to the largest number of wind turbines in Ontario and the largest wind farms – remains and helped defeat two prominent Liberal cabinet ministers in the region in the 2011 election.

Much of the opposition has focused on the loss of local control, taken away by the province, over where the mega-projects can be built.

[DrCaleb]

The Ontario government really dropped the ball didn't they? Everywhere else, renewable energy prices are getting cheaper. Just not Ontario.

[housewife]

That's cause Ontario is paying producers of green more than market. A friend has solar he hasn't tied in cause he gets way more per kwh than he is charged from hydro one. Ontario government has made one bad decision after another after another it will only get worse

[PluggyRug]

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

The Ontario government really dropped the ball didn't they? Everywhere else, renewable energy prices are getting cheaper. Just not Ontario.

Yes, I'm in favour of green energy, it is the way forward. Ontario seems to have made the transition on the back of extremely bad decisions.

[BartSimpson]

I totally support Canada spending billions on subsidizing expensive 'green energy' and then requiring Canadians to buy it because that takes Canada out of the global oil and natural gas market and that means my energy costs go down.

Also, if green energy is so amazing and miraculous then why can't it survive without vast infusions of cash from the public treasury?

[DrCaleb]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

Also, if green energy is so amazing and miraculous then why can't it survive without vast infusions of cash from the public treasury?

You mean like the $3B Canada gives to the Petroleum industry? Or that Green Energy subsidies have been falling since 2015? Or the fact that renewable energy employs more people than the Oilsands now?

[BartSimpson]

Cut off the subsidies to everyone then. You know I oppose all such wastes of taxpayer money.

[DrCaleb]

So do I. But calling out one while they aren't the only recipient of subsidies isn't good form.

[N_Fiddledog]

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

Also, if green energy is so amazing and miraculous then why can't it survive without vast infusions of cash from the public treasury?

You mean like the $3B Canada gives to the Petroleum industry?[/url]

The Guardian has lassoed little info bits from a paper put out by what they call "environmental groups." They neglect to remind us that in the past what they are calling subsidies are often just tax breaks available to all. Big oil can afford to use them is all. Research and development (R&D) does receive conventional subsidies, but that is generally contracted out to smaller independent companies. Big oil itself does not receive the funding.

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Or that Green Energy subsidies have been falling since 2015?

Not exactly. They're actually talking about increases in start-up projects worldwide, and what Doc is calling a decline in subsidies is particular to Canada. Because this:

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Meanwhile, spending in Canada actually declined by about half, even though the country remains ranked eighth in the world in terms of absolute dollars.

The reason, said Smith, is the lack of new government targets and regulations for the use of renewable energy.

Most of the investment that resulted from Ontario's decision to purchase more renewable energy has already happened, she said. Provinces such as British Columbia haven't made such promises yet and those that have, such as Alberta and Saskatchewan, have yet to come up with the details

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Or the fact that renewable energy employs more people than the Oilsands now?

G and M appeared to be doing a little sneaky omission there so I tracked down the report from what they called the "clean energy think tank."

http://cleanenergycanada.org/trackingth ... da2015.pdf

OK so from Doc's little intro sentence I bet you were thinking the wondrous miracle of solar and wind, right?

Not exactly. The report from the "Clean Energy Think Tank" beefed up its stats with hydro and when they say "biofuels" my experience tells me they're either talking woodchips (which are no improvement over coal - if you want to insist on the misnomer of "clean energy") or they're talking subsidized research.

[Coach85]

Ontario has nobody to blame but themselves. We've kept this government in office and allowed them to do all of this damage with an overwhelming mandate.

Clean energy is great, but let the market dictate the demand. When governments get involved like this, it rarely ends well.

[N_Fiddledog]

This one just popped up as I was checking the news:

Report: Up To 100 Solar Power Companies Are On Verge Of Bankruptcy

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Up to 100 Japanese solar companies are on the verge of bankruptcy this year due to reductions in subsidies, according to Tuesday report by the corporate credit research company Teikoku Databank.

The report concludes that roughly 50 Japanese solar companies already went out of business during the first six months of 2017. This is more than double the number of companies that went under during the same period in 2016.

The number is a significant increase in solar bankruptcies, as only 251 companies have gone under since January 2006.

Many of the bankruptcies are due to cuts in a major solar subsidy. Japan launched a feed-in tariff to financially benefit solar power in 2012, but has progressively cut spending on it. The government has announced that it intends to entirely remove the feed-in tariff in the early 2020s.

Solar power companies in the U.S. are heavily supported by financial invectives from the government. Most subsidies go to residential installations payments, called net metering, or a 30 percent federal tax credit. Previously, solar subsidies were so lucrative that solar-leasing companies installed rooftop systems, which run at minimum $10,000, at no upfront cost to the consumer. This naturally favors relatively wealthy consumers.

Solar power and wind power get 326 and 69 times more in subsidies than coal, oil, and natural gas, according to 2013 Department of Energy data collected by Forbes. Green energy in the U.S. received $13 billion in subsidies during 2013, compared to $3.4 billion in subsidies for conventional sources of energy and $1.7 billion in subsidies for nuclear, according to data from the Energy Information Administration.

Researchers found that expanding net metering or maintaining it for long periods of time will drive up power prices. Without government support, solar energy is non-viable, according to a 2015 study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

http://dailycaller.com/2017/07/19/repor ... ankruptcy/

[DrCaleb]

Tillsonburg jobs losses 'sad,' 'predictable,' says prof