Grid refurbishment tends to languish. In 2003 we had a massive blackout across parts of North Eastern US, Ontario Canada and Quebec Canada. Ontario was particularly hard hit. The Ontario provincial government of the day (about to lose office a few months later) had done what right wingers typically do - deregulate and defer/cancel investments. The successor government which lasted the next 15 years spent billions refurbishing transmission capacity, transformer stations, and cogeneration, but outside of policy wonks, no one knows that this is where the money went because the general public mainly consumed the partisan opposition attack that increased costs and expenditures were a result of a “green energy act” that heaped expensively subsidized green power onto the energy mix. This remains a complete fallacy that was never born out by the numbers. Yes, the per unit cost of some green projects was very expensive in the initial stages, when compared to conventional generation, and was subsidized in order to create a marketplace to launch them and diversity the grid, but as an overall component of the mix they were (and remain) so small a percentage that they scarcely impact consumer rates. Solar accounts for 2% of the grid, for instance. No matter, the tag stuck. People came to feel they were paying for social engineering when if you look back, they did pay a lot, but did so for honest to goodness electrical, structural, mechanical and civil infrastructure, NOT, green energy. The right wing party returned to power in 2018 and promptly cancelled “green energy projects” it will be interesting to see, in a few years time, what level of infrastructure maintenance expenditure they sustain. Will they invest in the not so sexy stuff, or simply let it languish as happened from 1995-2003?
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