Electricity prices have to go up to fight CO2: Epcor boss
The Edmonton Journal
Friday, September 05, 2008
EDMONTON - Producing cleaner electricity will cost more, and Canadians will have to foot the bill through higher electricity prices, Epcor's president told the Ontario Energy Network on Thursday in Toronto.
"We can't conserve our way to a zero-emission future," Don Lowry said. "If we want to maximize the role of energy conservation can play, there is one very powerful tool that needs to be used more effectively -- and that's the price signal."
The first step is to stop subsidizing consumer power prices, Lowry said.
In Alberta, household electricity consumption dropped by 10 per cent in 2001 after prices rose in line with a spike in natural gas prices.
Epcor recently signed a licence agreement with Siemens AG to provide gasification technology for a proposed near-zero-emission coal-gasification project at its Genesee generating station west of Edmonton. A $2-billion plant, the first of its kind in the world, could be running by 2015.
For such plans to be affordable, "price hikes are needed to reflect the true cost of electricity and governments need to support early-stage commercialization of emission-reduction technologies like CO2 capture and sequestration," Lowry said.
