Short Circuited

Assessing the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party's Energy Policy
June 4, 2014
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Part of the Ontario Conservative Party's "one million jobs" promise is based on cancelling renewable energy policies.

In this brief review, we highlight the flawed and unrealistic assumptions behind this element of the election platform. The econometric model and database used to project GDP and employment effects from eliminating renewable energy programs have major errors, which make the results meaningless. Also, the projections do not pass the test of policy realism. The party platform suggests electricity rates can be reduced to the national average without presenting any evidence of how this can actually occur given Ontario's energy context.

Far from creating jobs, scrapping renewable energy projects is more likely to kill jobs in relatively labour intensive green energy industries. 

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