Duncan meets potential power suppliers

- Ontario's Energy Minister is meeting with corporations about being potential new suppliers of electricity to the province as he starts to restructure Ontario Power Generation with the appointment of an interim board.

"We have been meeting with new potential suppliers to bring new (electricity) supply on and I'm hoping we'll have some announcements fairly soon," Dwight Duncan said recently. Companies included in that list are Calgary-based TransAlta Corp. and TransCanada Corp., two major Canadian companies that have power generation divisions.

As for the appointment of the three-member interim board of directors at OPG, Duncan called it "a housekeeping measure" since the board - in place while the government considers the future of OPG - will be replaced with a full slate of directors in several months.

Duncan named former federal energy minister Jake Epp as chairman of the interim board, only days after Epp's report blamed senior managers for botching the restoration of the Pickering nuclear plant where refit costs could now escalate to $4 billion.

After the report was made public on December 4, the province fired OPG's top three executives and the Crown corporation's entire board resigned.

The two other interim board members will be Ian Ross, a lawyer and former senior director at the Richard Ivey School of Business in London, Ont. and Kathryn Bouey, a deputy minister for the Management Board of Cabinet.

The interim board's job is to "watch over the day-to-day functions until such time as we appoint the blue-chip committee next week," Duncan said.

As the government cleans out the executive suites at Ontario's power plant owner and operator, Duncan is looking ahead. With the future of the Pickering nuclear plant unclear and the Liberal government's promise to close all coal-fired electricity plants by 2007 - which produce about 25 per cent of the province's electricity - Ontario will need more capacity.

"We need new supply in Ontario, there's a long history of private generation. We want to make sure we have an attractive investment climate selling into a public system to ensure that we have adequate supply of energy going forward," Duncan said.

Last week, Duncan met with the TransAlta CEO Stephen Snyder and Fred Gallagher, the CEO and managing director of TransAlta's wind division, Vision Quest.

"We've had some fairly broad conversations - not negotiating plants per se - but broad discussions about electricity related issues," said spokesman Tim Richter.

TransCanada also confirmed that its executives had met with Energy Ministry officials to talk about "energy policy and the need for additional supply in Ontario," said spokeswoman Hejdi Feick.

Both companies already have electricity generation plants in Ontario.

TransAlta has natural gas generation plants in Ottawa, Windsor, Mississauga, and Sarnia. TransCanada operates five small electricity generation stations in northern Ontario and has a one-third stake in the Bruce nuclear plant.

Richter said the talks included topics such as the requirements to attract new energy supply to the province and renewable energy options.

While TransAlta isn't looking at new generation plants for Ontario right now, TransAlta does think there's room for wind power operations to grow in the province, Richter said.

But until Ontario sets out an electricity policy - what the price and market will be like - companies can't make long-term decisions, he said.

"As soon as the government decides how they want to bring on new supply we'll look at it," Richter said. "It's the largest electricity market in Canada."