OPINION:
The government’s newfound relationship with trade unions could be the wild card that keeps Pickering online
Written by John Michael McGrath
Premier Doug Ford announcing the extension of Pickering's operating
Written by John Michael McGrath
Premier Doug Ford announcing the extension of Pickering's operating
license shortly after his election in 2018. (CP/Nathan Denette)
Chris Keefer has spent years arguing that Ontario is careening towards an avoidable mistake: shutting down the Pickering nuclear generating station in the eastern GTA, he argues, will cause electricity shortages and increased greenhouse gas emissions — the natural and inevitable consequence of taking the plant’s 3,100 megawatts of power out of the provincial grid. The plant, which began operating in 1971, is currently scheduled to close in 2025. This combined with other nuclear reactors at Darlington and Bruce going offline as they’re refurbished to add decades to their lifespans has the province scrambling to find replacement sources of electricity.
Keefer is the president of Canadians For Nuclear Energy, which this week released a report fleshing out their most comprehensive case for keeping Pickering open and refurbishing it — similar to Bruce and Darlington. In a phone conversation with TVO.org this week, he acknowledged that there’s little appetite for that option right now. Not at Ontario Power Generation (which owns and operates the plant), nor in the boardrooms of OPG’s sole shareholder: the government of Ontario.
“We’re very aware that this is an uphill battle, an underdog battle,” Keefer says. “It’s kind of funny — people say that we can become vegans or stop driving to protect the climate, and those are valid choices, but for an individual we’re talking about saving one or two tonnes of carbon dioxide a year.”
“We’re talking about offsetting millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide every year if we keep a nuclear plant operating.”
At the moment, there’s no sign of a change in policy at Queen’s Park: The Tories (like the Liberals before them) haven’t shown much interest in keeping Pickering operating, with the exception of a short extension of its operating license announced early in the Ford government’s tenure. Sure enough, contacted by TVO.org, the government reiterated that it is sticking with its plan to find a 2025 replacement for Pickering in the province’s electricity supply.
“As previously announced in 2020, our government is supporting Ontario Power Generation’s plan to safely extend the life of the Pickering Nuclear Generating Station through the end of 2025,” said Palmer Lockridge, spokesperson for energy minister Todd Smith. “Going forward, we are ensuring a reliable, affordable, and clean electricity system for decades to come. That’s why we put a plan in place that ensures we are prepared for the emerging energy needs following the closure of Pickering.”
Even if OPG changes its mind (or the province tells it to), keeping Pickering running is not a trivial matter: nuclear power plants are federally regulated, and OPG would need to ask the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission for permission to extend the operating license beyond the current date. Opponents of the idea would have substantial opportunity to make their case against it — either because they oppose nuclear power in principle, or for more mundane reasons: the people of Durham region might want to get back the substantial waterfront acreage that Pickering sits on. Mississauga is transforming the former site of the Lakeview generating station into a mixed-use community.
The report from Keefer’s group also acknowledges that refurbishing Pickering will not be as simple or economical as the work currently underway at the other Ontario-based nuclear plants. But it argues that relative to all of the real-world alternatives, it’s the least costly option Ontario has, despite its estimate that it would cost $10 billion (or $8.8 billion and a contingency in case of overruns.)
“There’s an economic case, there’s a climate case for doing something extraordinary here, and there’s even a ‘just transition’ case here,” Keefer says, arguing that Ontario should prioritize saving nuclear sector jobs.
The primary environmental concern has been that Ontario will fill the Pickering-sized hole in its grid with new natural gas plants, which will increase the province’s greenhouse gas emissions from electricity — a reversal of the last several decades’ worth of effort to shut down coal-fired power plants. Aside from the environmental harms, there’s also serious economic risks to the province: as the U.S builds more natural gas export terminals in part to meet European demand, natural gas is becoming a more globalized commodity, which makes it more vulnerable to serious price spikes depending on the vagaries of geopolitics.
There are cleaner alternatives, including new hydroelectric dams in northern Ontario (the Ontario Waterpower Association estimates there’s 4,000-5,000 megawatts of practical potential for expansion), but whether the province could realistically manage construction in the kind of timeframe required (navigating the politics of affected Indigenous communities is daunting enough) is an open question. Many environmentalists, including Green party leader Mike Schreiner, have advocated for importing electricity from Quebec, but the same policymakers who are skeptical about keeping Pickering running are also skeptical about locking Ontario into a relationship with Hydro Quebec to keep the lights on.
It's worth remembering that in any scenario, it’s not just Pickering’s loss we need to make up: electrifying large parts of the economy currently powered by fossil fuels will require huge amounts of new electrical capacity, one way or the other.
For better or worse, the window to keep Pickering operating is almost certainly closing soon, if it hasn’t already. The one remaining wild card in this debate might end up being some of the major building trade unions in the province’s energy sector. Premier Doug Ford and the Progressive Conservatives were just re-elected with an increased majority in part due to substantial outreach to building trades unions; similar unions exist both at Pickering itself and within the suppliers for the nuclear industry. The prospect of saving roughly 4,000 jobs at Pickering (and more throughout the supply chain) could be a tempting argument for a government looking for concrete ways to show that its election season words are matched with governing deeds.
“We’re at this fork in the road,” Keefer says. “The easy thing to do is to run our gas plants, and even build more gas plants… in my mind, it’s a perfect moment for organized labour to flex its muscles.”
(Disclosure: A family member of the author is employed by the IESO, which has been directed to address Ontario’s electricity needs with the closure of Pickering.)
John Michael McGrath is a staff writer at TVO.org covering provincial politics and policy.
Chris Keefer has spent years arguing that Ontario is careening towards an avoidable mistake: shutting down the Pickering nuclear generating station in the eastern GTA, he argues, will cause electricity shortages and increased greenhouse gas emissions — the natural and inevitable consequence of taking the plant’s 3,100 megawatts of power out of the provincial grid. The plant, which began operating in 1971, is currently scheduled to close in 2025. This combined with other nuclear reactors at Darlington and Bruce going offline as they’re refurbished to add decades to their lifespans has the province scrambling to find replacement sources of electricity.
Keefer is the president of Canadians For Nuclear Energy, which this week released a report fleshing out their most comprehensive case for keeping Pickering open and refurbishing it — similar to Bruce and Darlington. In a phone conversation with TVO.org this week, he acknowledged that there’s little appetite for that option right now. Not at Ontario Power Generation (which owns and operates the plant), nor in the boardrooms of OPG’s sole shareholder: the government of Ontario.
“We’re very aware that this is an uphill battle, an underdog battle,” Keefer says. “It’s kind of funny — people say that we can become vegans or stop driving to protect the climate, and those are valid choices, but for an individual we’re talking about saving one or two tonnes of carbon dioxide a year.”
“We’re talking about offsetting millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide every year if we keep a nuclear plant operating.”
At the moment, there’s no sign of a change in policy at Queen’s Park: The Tories (like the Liberals before them) haven’t shown much interest in keeping Pickering operating, with the exception of a short extension of its operating license announced early in the Ford government’s tenure. Sure enough, contacted by TVO.org, the government reiterated that it is sticking with its plan to find a 2025 replacement for Pickering in the province’s electricity supply.
“As previously announced in 2020, our government is supporting Ontario Power Generation’s plan to safely extend the life of the Pickering Nuclear Generating Station through the end of 2025,” said Palmer Lockridge, spokesperson for energy minister Todd Smith. “Going forward, we are ensuring a reliable, affordable, and clean electricity system for decades to come. That’s why we put a plan in place that ensures we are prepared for the emerging energy needs following the closure of Pickering.”
Even if OPG changes its mind (or the province tells it to), keeping Pickering running is not a trivial matter: nuclear power plants are federally regulated, and OPG would need to ask the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission for permission to extend the operating license beyond the current date. Opponents of the idea would have substantial opportunity to make their case against it — either because they oppose nuclear power in principle, or for more mundane reasons: the people of Durham region might want to get back the substantial waterfront acreage that Pickering sits on. Mississauga is transforming the former site of the Lakeview generating station into a mixed-use community.
The report from Keefer’s group also acknowledges that refurbishing Pickering will not be as simple or economical as the work currently underway at the other Ontario-based nuclear plants. But it argues that relative to all of the real-world alternatives, it’s the least costly option Ontario has, despite its estimate that it would cost $10 billion (or $8.8 billion and a contingency in case of overruns.)
“There’s an economic case, there’s a climate case for doing something extraordinary here, and there’s even a ‘just transition’ case here,” Keefer says, arguing that Ontario should prioritize saving nuclear sector jobs.
The primary environmental concern has been that Ontario will fill the Pickering-sized hole in its grid with new natural gas plants, which will increase the province’s greenhouse gas emissions from electricity — a reversal of the last several decades’ worth of effort to shut down coal-fired power plants. Aside from the environmental harms, there’s also serious economic risks to the province: as the U.S builds more natural gas export terminals in part to meet European demand, natural gas is becoming a more globalized commodity, which makes it more vulnerable to serious price spikes depending on the vagaries of geopolitics.
There are cleaner alternatives, including new hydroelectric dams in northern Ontario (the Ontario Waterpower Association estimates there’s 4,000-5,000 megawatts of practical potential for expansion), but whether the province could realistically manage construction in the kind of timeframe required (navigating the politics of affected Indigenous communities is daunting enough) is an open question. Many environmentalists, including Green party leader Mike Schreiner, have advocated for importing electricity from Quebec, but the same policymakers who are skeptical about keeping Pickering running are also skeptical about locking Ontario into a relationship with Hydro Quebec to keep the lights on.
It's worth remembering that in any scenario, it’s not just Pickering’s loss we need to make up: electrifying large parts of the economy currently powered by fossil fuels will require huge amounts of new electrical capacity, one way or the other.
For better or worse, the window to keep Pickering operating is almost certainly closing soon, if it hasn’t already. The one remaining wild card in this debate might end up being some of the major building trade unions in the province’s energy sector. Premier Doug Ford and the Progressive Conservatives were just re-elected with an increased majority in part due to substantial outreach to building trades unions; similar unions exist both at Pickering itself and within the suppliers for the nuclear industry. The prospect of saving roughly 4,000 jobs at Pickering (and more throughout the supply chain) could be a tempting argument for a government looking for concrete ways to show that its election season words are matched with governing deeds.
“We’re at this fork in the road,” Keefer says. “The easy thing to do is to run our gas plants, and even build more gas plants… in my mind, it’s a perfect moment for organized labour to flex its muscles.”
(Disclosure: A family member of the author is employed by the IESO, which has been directed to address Ontario’s electricity needs with the closure of Pickering.)
John Michael McGrath is a staff writer at TVO.org covering provincial politics and policy.
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