Tim Hudak's Energy Policy, Such As It Is

Tom Adams, who occasionally achieves sanity when writing about energy issues, gets about half-way there in his piece yesterday, in particular when he touches on the pumped-storage project up in Marmora:

[PCPO MPP Todd ] Smith has ...hounded the Minister of Energy over why he has “delayed in arriving at a contract to produce power” for the pumped energy storage project in the Municipality of Marmora and Lake. Proposed by Toronto-based Northland Power, the project is designed to counter the grid problems caused by fickle wind and solar output – which Northland also develops...

After having visited the site for that pumped storage proposal in January, Mr. [Tim] Hudak labelled it “environmentally friendly” and complained that the Liberal government was “dragging its heels” on the project. Without the benefit of any publicly disclosed cost/benefit studies or public consultations with anyone other than proponents, he declared that the project “makes sense.”

Here's the kicker.  Progressive Conservative leader Tim Hudak's energy plan would kill Ontario's green energy sector, but go forward with an expensive ancillary project explicitly designed to store green energy.  That is very much like keeping your car battery manufacturer running after you've closed the auto-plant.

And this is regardless of whether Hudak's plan will break existing contracts, costing the province bazillions, as argued here, or not. He has said on a number of occasions that projects far enough down the pipeline will be allowed to go through; some of his MPPS have claimed a PCPO government will shut done everything, no matter what the cost.