If Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty thought he was going to be garlanded with praise for his $7 billion, 2,500-megawatt wind and solar deal with Samsung, the last 24 hours must have been disappointing.
Critics of the deal, particularly Tim Hudak of the opposition Progressive Conservative party, have lashed McGuinty for the “sweetheart” and “secret” deal.
Sweetheart because the consortium, which includes Korean Electric Power Corp., will get $437 million Canadian dollars in incentive payments over the 25-year life of the deal if it creates 16,000 jobs.
The incentive payment is over and above the feed-in tariffs for wind and solar that the consortium will receive.
Hudak also notes that there are no specific job guarantees in the contract and of the 16,000 jobs, only 1,440 will be permanent. Hudak’s press people help out with the math – that’s $303,000 per permanent new job.
The deal was secret because McGuinty negotiated it behind closed doors, according to David Butters of the Association of Power Producers of Ontario.
Butters notes that the deal undercuts other projects because the government has set aside 500 megawatts of the limited transmission capacity for the consortium.
McGuinty has brushed past the criticism and stuck to his key message: the project will be the nucleus of Ontario’s green energy industry. The deal calls for Samsung to bring other manufacturers into the region to tap the American market.
McGuinty said:
Above all this means that Ontario is officially the place to be for green energy manufacturing in North America… During the next several years the U.S. is going to build many many thousand of megawatts of energy from renewables. Someone is going to have to supply that technology.
It’s not going to be China if McGuinty has his way.