Every resident — especially those in the business community — should urge Ottawa to stop Ontario’s gas-plant build out and require winding down of fossils on the grid, writes Gideon Forman.

This article was written by Gideon Forman and was published in the Toronto Star on October 21, 2023.

This is an extraordinary moment for renewable electricity.

Solar and wind power have never been cheaper, they’re enjoying technological breakthroughs that greatly boost their efficiency and their worldwide growth is astounding. Smart money in Ontario and around the globe is abandoning fossil fuels not just because of the climate crisis but because renewables make so much business sense.

The Pembina Institute says that, in many places in Canada, clean energy (including wind, solar, demand-side management, energy efficiency and storage) is now less expensive than gas-fired. In Alberta, for example, the cost of power at a combined-cycle gas plant is $57 per MWh, while the cost for clean energy is just $48.

These findings are consistent with data from other experts. The think tank Clean Energy Canada found that, “In Alberta and Ontario, wind can now produce electricity at lower costs than natural-gas-fired power …” In a statement released in May, The Atmospheric Fund said that in Ontario wind and solar are “the cheapest sources of new supply.”

Not surprisingly, solar cells are becoming more efficient. A recent article in the Guardian says scientists working in the field have just made an important breakthrough. Stefaan De Wolf of Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah University of Science and Technology calls 2023 a “revolutionary year.”

The Guardian explains the advance in solar efficiency this way: “The breakthrough is adding a layer of perovskite, another semiconductor, on top of the silicon layer. This captures blue light from the visible spectrum, while the silicon captures red light, boosting the total light captured overall. With more energy absorbed per cell, the cost of solar electricity is even cheaper, and deployment can proceed faster…”

In a report tracking progress in 2022, the International Energy Agency found renewables just keep breaking growth records: “Renewable electricity capacity additions rose to 340 gigawatts (GW), their largest ever deployment … Investment in clean energy reached a record USD 1.6 trillion in 2022…”

And the IEA’s “Electricity Market Report,” released in July, proclaimed that, “depending on weather conditions, 2024 could well become the first year in which more electricity is generated worldwide from renewables than from coal.” What an extraordinary milestone that would be!