Ontario to throw money to the wind

In a signing ceremony Thursday for a $7-billion deal with Samsung to build wind and solar facilities, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty said: “This means Ontario is officially the place to be for green energy manufacturing in North America.” Quite right. Texas lost that title last week when billionaire T. Boone Pickens abandoned his plan to build 4000 MW of wind capacity in Texas — twice as much as the Samsung wind plan — when no financier could see how building the things made any financial sense. Other jurisdictions have also seen plans for wind vanish, along with plans for solar and other forms of renewable energy. Stock prices of most players in the wind industry, such as Broadwind Energy, GE’s supplier, are heading south. But Ontario is different. Just as it built nuclear reactors into the 1990s after everyone else in North America bailed out to stop the bleeding — Ontario’s Darlington Nuclear complex was the last to be completed — Ontario has positioned itself to be the last gung-ho jurisdiction for so-called green technologies. Full article here

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