As Ontario’s electricity needs ramp up, groups are lobbying the provincial government to tap into the untouched wind power of the Great Lakes.
According to non-profit Ontario Clean Air Alliance, wind turbines on the Great Lakes could generate 100 per cent of Ontario’s electricity needs in the coming years. But offshore wind has been banned in Ontario since 2011 by a moratorium still in place.
On February 11, 2011, Dalton McGuinty, the Premier of Ontario at the time, issued a press release stating that offshore wind development would be subject to a moratorium. The reason for the moratorium was that the government felt there wasn’t enough research on how wind turbines affected people’s health and the environment.
The moratorium shut down a planned wind farm that was to be built on Lake Ontario, a few kilometres off the shore, near Scarborough.
Jack Gibbons, the chair of Ontario Clean Air Alliance, says the McGuinty government was getting pressure from Scarborough residents who didn’t like the aesthetics of the wind turbines. He adds that Brad Duguid, the Minister of Energy at the time—who had a hand in shutting the project down—was from Scarborough.
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But 14 years later and the moratorium is still in place. “The official reason was that there was need for more scientific research about the impact of wind farms, but that scientific research has been done by the Ministry of Natural Resources, and those studies concluded that they will have a minimal impact on the environment,” says Gibbons. “So, the official rationale for the moratorium no longer exists.”
Ontario’s Independent Electricity System Operator estimated in a report that the province’s electricity demand will increase by 75 per cent by 2050. In the report, the IESO specified that 65 per cent of this electricity would need to come from renewables, such as wind power.
Trillium Power Wind Corporation is prepared to make that happen. The company was in the process of planning a wind farm in Lake Ontario when the government issued its moratorium in 2011. Today, Trillium has the rights to bedrock on Lake Ontario, off Main Duck Island near Kingston.
The company says that if built, the wind farm, known as TPW1, will be nearly invisible from any shoreline and could generate around 500 megawatts of electricity, a similar output to natural gas-fired power plants.
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Offshore wind farms tend to have higher wind speeds, better wind consistency, and greater air density, producing more power more consistently than onshore wind farms. A 2023 report completed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in the U.S. found that Great Lake wind farms had the potential power capacity of 160 gigawatts for fixed-bottom wind turbines and about 415 gigawatts for floating wind turbines. Of that, Lake Ontario had the potential to contribute 35 gigawatts, mostly from offshore floating turbines. To put that in perspective, Toronto’s peak electricity demand requires approximately 4.7 gigawatts.
Yet, rather than lift the moratorium on offshore wind power, the current provincial government is moving in the other direction. Ontario Premier Doug Ford has announced significant investments in nuclear power, advancing four small modular reactors at the Darlington Nuclear Generating Station, and a new nuclear station at Bruce, with no signs of investing in wind power.
Gibbons points out that despite nuclear power being carbon zero, the nuclear waste produced by the generating stations needs to be fully isolated from people and the environment for one million years. Plus, a new nuclear reactor can take 10 to 15 years to build while an offshore wind farm takes 12 months and is cheaper to operate.
Gibbons adds that the uranium required to run the nuclear generating stations is imported from the U.S.—contradictory to Ford’s stance against U.S. imports since President Donald Trump’s tariffs.
“The Ford government’s energy plan doesn’t make any sense from the point of view of consumers or the environment or national security, but it does benefit our four largest energy utilities: Ontario Power Generation, Bruce Power, Enbridge Gas, and TC Energy,” says Gibbons. “Doug Ford’s plans will increase their revenues and increase their profits.”
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