Weeks after Ontario’s Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) triumphantly unveiled the biggest battery storage procurement in Canadian history, persistent questions remain about how much of that storage capacity will be powered by high-emitting natural gas, The Energy Mix has learned.
As the IESO moves ahead with plans to add 1,500 megawatts of new natural gas-fired generating capacity at four existing generating stations, independent analysts are also looking into how long the province will actually be using the gas plants, how much they’ll drive up climate pollution—and whether the procurement was needed in the first place.
The discussion about provincial power planning became that much more complex and fraught over the last week, when Energy Minister Todd Smith announced a procurement for utility-scale renewables in 2025-26 that he said would be the biggest the country has ever seen. The province is moving immediately to add 4,800 MW of new nuclear capacity at the massive Bruce complex on Lake Huron and three more small modular nuclear reactors at the Darlington nuclear generating site on Lake Ontario.
But the other big uncertainty is the extent to which the IESO’s battery procurement will end up depending on natural gas, a fuel whose primary component is methane, a climate super-pollutant with 85 times the warming potential of carbon dioxide over a 20-year span.
Get the details on this exclusive report by The Energy Mix here.