The Government of Ontario is forcing a Cochrane-based renewable energy producer to shut down.

On May 11, the 40 MW gas-fired biomass power generator, Cochrane Power, will cease operations due to the end of its existing agreement to generate electricity from the Ontario Electricity Finance Corporation (OEFC). OEFC had issued an extension to Cochrane Power’s agreement to allow time for negotiations of agreement with the Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO). However, on the same day OEFC was issuing the extension, the Minister of Energy directed IESO to suspend any negotiations for a new operating agreement with IESO until June. Last week, the Minister of Energy issued said to the IESO to suspended negotiations until at least September and perhaps much longer. As a result 175,000 additional tons of wood waste a year from environmentally responsible use as fuel will now be diverted into local landfills. Five hundred jobs and a $20 million economy are also under threat by the current outcome.

The Mayor of Cochrane, Peter Politis, is taking the concerns of the community directly to Queens Park.

“This is one of the most frustrating issues I’ve had to deal with in my five years as Mayor,” said Politis. “How can the government give a company an extension to complete the negotiations already started and then issue a moratorium actually preventing those same negotiations? Worse, how can the government know the magnitude of the impacts both economically and environmentally, and simply ignore four months of the pleas for us to recognize the need for a rational adjustment?”

“We have been working very hard to ensure a future for this facility, but without an agreement to sell our electricity to the grid, we are forced to stop generating it,” said John Brace, CEO, Northland Power. “It is difficult to understand why the facility has not been granted a further extension until the IESO’s strategy is delivered and negotiations can be concluded. Cochrane Power supports the province’s Long-Term Energy Plan; it is existing infrastructure, it is combined heat and power, and it uses biomass, a renewable resource, for power generation. The facility provides an environmentally sound way to use wood waste from local industry rather than diverting it to landfill. All this without adversely impacting the electricity ratepayer in Ontario.”