Gas customers across Ontario should be paying close attention to Bill 165, which is up for debate this week at committee hearings at Queen’s Park.
Bill 165 is called the Keeping Energy Costs Down Act – part of a sad trend in dishonest naming, as it will increasecosts. Most importantly, the bill will reinstate free or highly discounted methane gas pipelines for new developments, subsidies that were slated to end in January, 2025. Reinstating those subsidies will cost more than $250-million a year, which will be added to the accumulated capital costs that all customers are paying off via their gas bills.
This is financial insanity. Gas pipelines are paid off over roughly 60 years , so a pipeline built today will be paid off in the 2080s. This is long beyond the point at which fossil fuel use is set to drastically decline. Investments in new gas pipelines today will almost certainly go bad, and Bill 165 forces Ontario’s gas customers to make that bad investment.