Ontario's New Energy Conservation Plan

Ontario Government to Save Energy
Today, the Ontario Government announced that it was going to spend billions of dollars over the next twenty years to build more nuclear reactors in Ontario to produce electricity. Plans are also being made to reduce energy consumption in Ontario through a conservation campaign.

Market for Energy-Saving Devices
What this means is that we are going to see an explosion in the sale of energy-saving devices and personal energy-generating devices. In the short term, there is going to be a big business opportunity for people in alternative energy.

In fact, I am thinking about getting into retail sales of energy-saving devices on the Internet. Today, I purchased a Folding Solar Powered Panel that can produce 12 Volts of electricity from Canadian Tire. I am testing it to see who efficiently it can charge electrical items.

I also purchased some of those spiral energy-saving light bulbs which are more expensive than the standard ones but are supposed to save 78% of the energy costs. I plugged on in beside an old light bulb and I cannot notice any difference in light generation. I may put together a website selling these items in bulk so that people who do not have ready access to a Canadian Tire or other store can save energy.

The Energy Conservation Paradox
Nuclear power is so expensive to deliver (owing to construction and maintenance costs) that I don't think any future plants should be built. We must look to other, more democratic sources of energy such as solar, tidal, and wind power. Also, conservation of energy tends to ignore that energy conserved in Ontario is just another unit of energy available for consumption somewhere else. From a purely economic point of view, this paradox suggest that conservation is something that we should look at after we have consumed as much cheap energy as possible.

Canadian Tire is already selling larger solar panels for about $500 a piece which can probably generate quite a bit of electricity to batteries for use when needed. Maybe I'll be experimenting with one of those next.