Councillor says AG report on generating station lacks long-term vision

Iain Angus says Ontario’s auditor general did a disservice to Thunder Bay and Atikokan in a damning annual report that criticizes the cost to produce electricity at biomass generating stations in the two northern communities.

The province’s minister of natural resources agreed.

Angus, co-chairman of Common Voice Northwest’s energy task force, said the report was essentially a snapshot of a particular point in time.

“She didn’t drill down to see why they did this and what are the long-term implications,” Angus said on Friday.

“Once the Thunder Bay generating station and the Atikokan generating station are operating at full capacity, the price they charge to the system is the same that natural gas charges. So it’s no boondoggle. It’s just a wise investment on the future of the Northwest.”

In her report, Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk was highly critical of both plants, in particular the Thunder Bay facility, which she said creates power at $1,600 a megawatt hour, 25 times the price it costs to generate biomass-fueled electricity elsewhere in the province.
The overall cost to run the facility, which she estimates will only be needed five days a year going forward, is $40 million, employing 64 full-time positions.

Atikokan, another peaking plant, is expected to run for 29 days a year, producing power at eight times the biomass average.
Minister of Natural Resources and Forestry Bill Mauro said he’s at a loss to explain where Lysyk got her figures.

He also said the conversion to biomass, instead of natural gas, was the fiscally prudent thing to do.

“It only cost $5 million to convert the plant, as opposed to a gas conversion that may have cost $300 or $400 million. Of course those are things the auditor general’s report would not have contemplated.”

Is it good bang for the energy buck? Mauro says yes.

“I don’t know where she came up with this $1,600 a megawatt hour number. I have no idea where she’s come up with that number,” he said.

Angus said the two sides also differ on just how often the plants will run.

Going forward, the energy task force predicts a number of new mines coming on stream. Factor in the temporary unavailability of nuclear power for export from southern Ontario and the Northwest could be facing an electricity shortage in short order.

“We’re much more optimistic about what’s going to happen. They’re much more pessimistic,” Angus said. “But when we look at the data, and even when we analyze their projections, we see that over the next five years we’re going to need, certainly Atikokan full time and Thunder Bay part time to meet their load projections.”