The efficiency advantage

• Weak first efforts
• The opportunity
• Renewable power a big part of the answer
• Getting our act together

The efficiency advantage

Ontario residents are some of the biggest power users on the planet. We use more electricity per person than any country in Western Europe and more than many Americans. And it's not because our country is colder or darker (try giving the very efficient Norwegians that excuse).

Here's an example of how far Ontario lags behind just some of our peers:

That's us in the orange. The ones who use one-and-a-half times the electricity per person as their neighbours in New York State.

This kind of "all you can eat" electricity consumption may have been ok when we didn't understand the environmental and climate impacts of electricity generation, but it doesn't cut it today.

And it is not good for our economy either. Wasteful energy use equals higher costs and lower productivity, a good recipe for economic stagnation. In fact, Ontario's level of "electricity productivity" — the amount of electricity we use to produce a single dollar's worth of goods — is at the bottom of our North American peer group (16 largest States and Provinces.)

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Increasing energy efficiency is costing Ontario six times less than new generating sources

In 1990, the average Ontario
household used 12.5 MW.h of electricity. By 2005, that figure had dropped to 9.8 MW.h, a
decrease of 22%.

Sign the petition for a Nuclear Cost Responsibility Act for Ontario

Every nuclear construction project in Ontario's history has gone massively over budget. And we are all on the hook for these runaway costs, paying a nuclear debt surcharge on every kilowatt of electricity we use. Renewable and natural gas generating projects are strictly prohibited from passing on cost overruns to consumers or taxpayers. It’s time to level the playing field and end nuclear’s free ride.

Read our recipe for Ontario's Green Future