Utilities donating to Ontario Liberals
ONTARIO - Ontario's New Democrats want to know why publicly owned electrical utilities are donating to the governing Liberal party.
Elections Ontario documents show local utilities, including Essex Power and Oakville Hydro, have donated thousands of dollars to the Ontario Liberal Party in the past few years.
NDP Leader Andrea Horwath says with electricity bills soaring, municipally owned utilities should not be using ratepayers' money to make political donations.
The documents show Oakville Hydro gave the Liberals $8,500 for a 2009 byelection in the Haliburton area, hundreds of kilometres away.
Newmarket-Tay Power Distribution, which is over 150 kilometres from Haliburton, gave the Liberals $1,350 for the same byelection and another $1,000 for the central party.
Essex Power Corporation donated $1,700 to the governing Liberals to help them win a byelection this year in Toronto-Centre, nearly 400 kilometres away from its base in southwestern Ontario.
Other public utilities donating to the Liberals included Thunder Bay Hydro, Greater Sudbury Hydro Plus, St. Catharines Power Generation and Niagara-on-the-Lake Hydro.
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Ireland goes 25 days without using coal to generate electricity
DUBLIN - The island of Ireland has gone a record length of time without using coal-fired electricity generation on its power system, Eirgrid has confirmed.
The all-island grid operated without coal between April 11th and May 7th – a total of 25 days, it confirmed. This is the longest period of time the grid has operated without coal since the all-island electricity market was introduced in 2007.
Ireland’s largest generating station, Moneypoint in Co Clare, uses coal, as do some of the larger generation sites in Northern Ireland.
The analysis coincides with the European statistics agency, Eurostat publishing figures showing annual CO2 emissions…
