Officials with an Ontario not-for-profit dedicated to the promotion of renewable energy are voicing their opposition to a proposal by one of the two companies caught up in the $1.2-billion Ontario gas plants scandal of 2011 to build a 600-megawatt hydrogen- ready electricity plant in St. Clair Township.
The Toronto-based Ontario Clean Air Alliance – which successfully lobbied for the closing of the province’s coal-fired power plants – has sent its objections to the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada, the division of Environment and Climate Change Canada that will decide if the project will require a federal impact assessment.
The assessment, according to the Natural Resources Canada website, is a process used to identify, predict and evaluate the potential “environmental, health, social and economic impacts of development proposals” before they’re allowed to proceed.
Eastern Power Ltd. is proposing to build the 600-megawatt hydrogen-ready power plant project next to its Green Electron Power Plant on Oil Springs Line near Courtright. The new plant would be designed to run on either 100 per cent natural gas or a blend of up to 65 per cent hydrogen and natural gas, according to a document the company submitted to the federal agency.
“Building a new gas-fired power plant would be moving Ontario in absolutely the wrong direction,” said Jack Gibbons, chairperson of the alliance. “We need to dramatically reduce our greenhouse gas pollution from our electric power plants.”
Eastern Power officials say the plant the company wants to build “is designed to take advantage of low (greenhouse gas) carbon-emitting hydrogen fuels as these become progressively more available over the life of the project.”
The company’s existing plant, west of Highway 40, went into operation in 2017. It’s one of three natural gas electricity plants in the township.
Eastern Power, a Toronto-based firm, was awarded the contract to build the power plant in St. Clair Township after the then-Liberal government canceled the company’s previous project, a gas-fired generating plant in Mississauga, during the 2011 election campaign.
A later report by the province’s auditor general estimated the cancellations and relocations of the Mississauga plant and a similar project in Oakville – decisions that many viewed as a way to shore up votes amid growing local opposition – ended up costing Ontario taxpayers as much as $1.2 billion
If approved and built, the company’s proposed new facility would be the first hydrogen-powered electricity generating plant in the Sarnia area, which is now promoting itself as a “hydrogen hub.”
The company indicated in a supporting document the project is being developed in response to the Independent Electricity System Operator’s identification of the need for additional generating capacity in Southwestern Ontario, as well as a request from the Ontario’s Energy Ministry to look for ways to integrate low- carbon hydrogen into the province’s electricity grid.
If approved, the plant is expected to take 21 months to build and another three months to commission. It would operate for a minimum of 25 years and employ 25 workers, company officials said in documents to the federal agency.
Gibbons said Ontario wants to ramp up natural gas-fired plants “by more than 600 per cent by 2040 and that’s absolutely the wrong way to go.”
He said Ontario should instead invest in energy-efficiency and renewable sources, “so we can move to a zero-carbon electricity grid by 2030 and lower our electricity bill.”
Gibbons said that 96 per cent of the world’s hydrogen is produced from fossil fuels, which can result in even greater greenhouse gas pollution than from conventional gas-fired power plants.
“The fact that it might eventually be on hydrogen produced from fossil fuels is not an improvement,” he said. “That would actually make the plant dirtier.”
Green hydrogen, produced from 100 per cent renewable energy, is the “only good form of hydrogen,” Gibbons said.
“But Eastern Power has made absolutely no promise they will run their power plant 100 per cent on green hydrogen,” he said
The alliance is calling on the federal government to deny Eastern Power’s request for permission to build the plant, and also to make approval for any new hydrogen-fired plants in Ontario conditional on using 100 per cent green hydrogen.
“The federal government can stop this project, and we hope they will,” Gibbons said.