The 10,000 MW job ahead for the Canadian nuclear industry

What’s in this article:

1. Strategy and Tactics of Big Gas: In the early 2000s, two Ontario natural gas companies, Union Gas and Enbridge, gave funding to the Ontario Clean Air Alliance (OCAA) for a campaign to undermine the provincial government’s support for nuclear energy. Their strategy was to position themselves as champions of clean air while promoting a fossil fuel.
2. Media Influence: The OCAA’s anti-nuclear campaign, based on mis/disinformation, attracted attention through voluminous uncritical mainstream media coverage, gaining traction and reinforcing public mistrust of nuclear energy while promoting natural gas as a cleaner alternative, despite its high carbon intensity.
3. Nuclear Industry’s Inaction: The Canadian nuclear sector failed to capitalize on opportunities to challenge the dominance of gas in heating markets, lacking the initiative to promote itself as the best energy source for residential and commercial domestic hot water and space heating. Instead of promoting nuclear, the industry took the “all tools in the toolbox” approach.
4. Energy Narratives and Misinformation: The gas industry successfully perpetuated the notion that electric heating is infeasible, despite the huge counter-example of Quebec, thereby maintaining its market share while the nuclear industry remained passive and failed to effectively advocate for its capabilities.

In the early part of the 21st Century, Ontario’s two biggest natural gas utilities Union Gas and Enbridge began funding a faux “green” group called the Ontario Clean Air Alliance. The aim was to kibosh what the companies felt was an alarming new development: the amenability of the new Liberal provincial government to new nuclear in Ontario.

The Liberals had come to power in 2003 in part on a promise to shut down Ontario’s coal-fired power plants. Coal was a hugely important component of Ontario’s electrical supply; it had stepped in when half the Ontario nuclear fleet was laid up for political reasons in the mid-1990s.

The gas companies thought they should be the ones to pick up the business when coal—of which there was more than 8,000 MW of capacity—departed. The Libs thought it was a better idea to simply return laid up nuclear to service. Contrarily, the OCAA thought the “Clean Air” in their acronym provided good cover for their real purpose, which was to help their new natural gas clients get that business instead.

Flush with gas funds, the OCAA mounted a campaign based on misinformation and disinformation. Their case was recycled and amplified by a mainstream media that still believed The China Syndrome (1979, starring Jack Lemmon and Jane Fonda) was a documentary instead of what it actually was, which was a not-half-bad Hollywood science fiction drama, based on the premise that a few tons of melted reactor fuel was capable of spontaneously burning through 12,756 kilometers of earth and coming out the other side—in China, hence the movie’s name. This silly notion seemed to have been taken as fact by the aspiring Woodwards and Bernsteins of the day.

Free advertising for Fossil Fuels

The media’s uncritical amplification of a lobbying organization’s sales pitch constituted free advertising for Big Gas. Worse, the fact that much of the OCAA’s claims made their way into general reporting gave them a gravitas they probably did not deserve, and could have played a major role in perpetuating public mistrust of nuclear. In reality, this was a case of an astroturf “green” lobby selling natural gas, a carbon-heavy fossil fuel, by subterfuge, to unsuspecting Ontario electricity ratepayers.

In short, this was a business competition in which one of the competitors had dressed up as champion of clean air when in fact it sold fossil fuel. And the nuclear industry, on the short end of this tilted playing field, failed to challenge them.

The gas utilities eventually terminated funding to OCAA. But they’d profited from their investment. The OCAA and their media enablers had trumpeted the false renewable energy narrative to Ontario citizens, and helped cement RE-plus-gas in the minds of Ontarians as a viable replacement for coal, when in fact RE is superfluous and gas would do all the work. The Liberals themselves fell in love with the RE fantasy, even codifying it in the Green Energy Act of 2009. (The GEA turned out to be electoral seppuku for the Liberals; see our article “Greenwashing pots and kettles, Part V”.)

Not often noted is the strategic nature of Big Gas’s patronage of OCAA. Big Gas has to know that an ascendant, incumbent nuclear is unbeatable. The reason is nuclear’s ability to provide bulk power on demand with no greenhouse gases or air contaminants. There are only 3 expandable powergen technologies that can underpin electricity grids: coal, gas, and nuclear. Keeping this in mind, you have to admire Big Gas for relentless rhetoric that framed new-generation options as coal vs gas, and never mentioning nuclear. And you have to admire their sometimes-passive, sometimes-active support for “green” groups—those groups’ pro-RE, anti-nuke advocacy that would, if successful, assure multi-decadal business for gas companies. But only if nuclear is out of the picture.

But there’s an even bigger part to this story. The residential heating market in Ontario is dominated by gas. It was once owned by oil. It should be electric. If electric, the kWhs could only come from nuclear plants; it doesn’t make sense otherwise.

This was a market made to measure for nuclear to take.

By bankrolling OCAA, Big Gas actively sought to diminish its only competitor in the power generation and space heating markets. Likely wanting to win Enbridge back as a client, OCAA has ever since pitched scheme after scheme to Ontario policymakers, each and every one of which would have, if implemented, resulted in huge upswings in gas use in Ontario and Quebec. So the early investment in OCAA continues to pay off. (During the pandemic, the OCAA even dabbled in anti-vaxxery.)

The Ontario Heating Energy Market is Worth $$$ Billions

At the time OCAA was working on Big Gas’s dime, high level policy was creating the political conditions that could have favoured exactly the opposite of what Big Gas wanted: the takeover of its bread-and-butter market, which is residential/commercial/industrial heating. That market is worth billions of dollars in Ontario alone, and, for federal and provincial environmental policymakers who worry about climate change, it’s a major source of anthropogenic CO₂.

Nuclear, the only industry capable of supplanting gas as the main provider of heating energy, seemed to act as if it didn’t care. A study by the CNWC showed that residential domestic hot water (DHW) represents a roughly 4,500 MW baseload power demand. If met with electrical resistance, as it should be, then the supply to meet that demand would have to be roughly a Darlington-size power plant. All of those 4500 MW could and should be met with electricity; and again only nuclear can ensure that the supply to meet it is CO₂-free. DHW is a natural monopoly for nuclear, but to win that market the nuclear industry has to be interested in it.

The long-sighted view is that nuclear let Enbridge dominate a market that should have belonged to nuclear—and for all the right reasons: carbon- and pollution-free, and more affordable in the long run.

Those 70,000 nuclear jobs, which contributed in 2014 to 90 billion kWh of reliable, inertia-rich electrical energy in Ontario alone, with no CO₂ and no air pollution? It seems as if the gas-funded OCAA would be happy if they were all gone.

Making a list, checking it twice, we don’t care who’s naughty, we’re going to be nice

The response of the nuclear industry has been to endlessly iterate through the following list:

1. Ontario energy requires a mix of sources. All tools in the toolbox!
2. Never say “we are the best.” Instead, act like we’re all exactly the same.
3. Endlessly tell everyone “we’re safe!” while leaving it unsaid that all nuclear’s competitors are far less safe.
4. There are no enemies in non-emitting powergen. Wind and solar are our friends!
5. We shouldn’t try to electrify heat. Gas is good!

Enbridge today (according to OCAA) no longer pays OCAA to spread mis/disiformation about nuclear. Yet the company’s lobbying tentacles reach everywhere there’s a public official that could be influenced. According to a former green lobbyist who wishes to remain anonymous, Enbridge “drove the bus” on provincial policy development on everything from summer air conditioning “demand management” (i.e., limiting, at the distribution level, electrical flow to AC) to heat pump purchaser rebates.

The company’s reach goes deep into municipal councils across Ontario, many of which have said they want natural gas phased out. Has anyone noticed nobody calls for that any more? A Toronto city councillor said they needed to be mindful of calling for that—Enbridge won’t like it.

Enbridge often acts like a bully in its expansionism, and is zealous in defense of its turf. Enbridge wants to keep its heating business. It also wants powergen, and paid an astroturf ENGO to help them get it. It seems nuclear’s reaction is to be Polyanna: everything is great, we love everybody, everybody gets to sit at our table.

There is a case here to build 10,000 MW of new nuclear capacity just to meet heating demand. Is the nuclear industry disinterested in pursuing this?

Energy illiteracy: it’s all kilowatt-hours

Grid electrical demand in the IESO Ottawa zone hit an all-time high of 2,508 MW at 6 pm on Monday December 20 2004, 21 years ago. The outdoor temperature in Ottawa at that hour was −25°C.

The all-time demand high for the Toronto zone was 10,285 MW. That occurred at 2 pm on Thursday July 21 2011, over 13 years ago.

As you can see in the tables below, neither the Toronto nor Ottawa zone Jan 2025 highs were anything close to those zones’ all-time highs. You might expect Ottawa, which in this month has experienced Polar Vortex nighttime lows in the mid–minus teens for more than a week, might nudge in the direction of Ottawa’s all time demand peak.

In fact, it’s been nowhere near that. And that’s not because Ottawa buildings—homes, apartment and office buildings, and other commercial/industrial buildings—are not right this minute experiencing significant heat loss to the environment. It’s because the gas industry has successfully told us that heating with electricity is impossible, or a bad idea.

And this with a jurisdiction about two kilometers east across the Ottawa River, which has comfortably heated with electric resistance—mostly baseboard heaters—for many decades.

You’d think the shining example of Quebec might serve as inspiration for the nuclear industry to put a public case to electrify heat in Ontario. There is a case for doubling Ontario’s existing nuclear generating capacity.

But Ontario’s heating market today is owned by Enbridge, so the exact opposite is happening. Have a look at the two tables below. They’re a picture of nuclear letting Enbridge continue to own a market that should belong to nuclear. And Enbridge’s market is expanding.

All nukes have to go on for growing the sector is vague references to some mythical electrification in the distant future, where they still have to share the supply market with wind and solar, which cannot meet current electrical demand let alone current-demand-plus-heating. We won’t talk about that. We won’t quantify the market, nor the new nuclear capacity required to meet its minimum demand, and we won’t put those numbers in front of policymakers. We’re Polyanna—we love everybody, and everybody deserves a trophy.

Toronto top ten electrical demand hours, Jan 2025

Ottawa top ten electrical demand hours, Jan 2025

The electric utility sector in Ontario once upon a time operated under a regulated monopoly structure. A single company, Ontario Hydro, owned and operated the system. Today that’s been split apart into 5 different entities. The former pool operator, now called the IESO, won’t even acknowledge that Ontario communities have something called a heating demand. Instead, the IESO refers to electricity as “energy” and refrains from even attempting to quantify heating demand. Thunder Bay’s heating demand on −15°C days exceeds Thunder Bay’s all-time electrical demand high (199 MW) by 15 MW, and the IESO still refers to the latter as T-Bay’s “energy demand”. Transport energy demand, Ontario’s second-highest energy demand after heat, is also unmentioned.

The tables above represent the near-total success of Enbridge in not just maintaining incumbency in the Ontario heat market, but also expanding it. Today, the main factors driving daily grid electrical demand variations are, in order of importance, time of day and day of week. As you can see, every one of the top-ten Toronto and Ottawa demand hours in Jan 2025 was in the 5PM to 8PM time slot. Nineteen of those 20 hours occurred on non-holiday week days.

In the CNWC policy position on urban electrification, we stressed that Canadian residential electric service must be capable of handling 200 amps. That’s the sine qua non for serious electrification that can meet residential demand for space and domestic water heating.

With 200 amp service and outlets, you can have a portable 5 kilowatt radiant heater. You can have an electric barbecue with proper power that you can just plug in and turn on. And of course you can also get a level 2 EV charger.

These are the last things the gas industry wants to see. And the gas industry is getting its way.

The job ahead for the nuclear industry

Get the message across that 4,500 MW of nuclear capacity—a Darlington-size power plant— is needed just to meet Ontario’s DHW baseload demand with non-emitting electric power. Only nuclear can supply that.

Then relentlessly drive home the message that the space heating baseload is at least anogther Darlington on top of that. And oh yes, EV-based personal motor vehicle transport requires more than another Darlington in addition.

These are economy-transforming numbers, and they clearly point the way to sustainable prosperity for the next 100 years.

The CNWC in November 2021 announced the results of a study of Ontario DHW baseload energy demand; you can find it here.