City urged to help residents lower bills

OTTAWA, ONTARIO - The head of the city's non-profit energy-efficiency partner says income generated from Hydro Ottawa should be plugged back into energy-saving measures to help offset the higher costs of electricity.

Envirocentre general manager Dana Silk said his group was disappointed income generated from Hydro Ottawa went into the city's general revenue, and not back into programs that might aid energy consumers.

Earlier this year the privately run Hydro Ottawa paid out a dividend of $17.6 million to its sole shareholder, the City of Ottawa, after posting income of $29.4 million in 2009. That's a gain from the previous year, when it paid a dividend of $17.2 million, $15.2 of which was based on net income from energy sales. About $2 million of the previous dividend was based on both income from and the sale of Telecom Ottawa.

Silk says landlords that don't pay the hydro bill have no incentive to make the homes of low income-residents more environmentally efficient.

"That's where the city of Ottawa could step in to apply this dividend," he said.

Hydro revenues could become more of an issue in the coming year because bills have started to rise across the city. The provincial HST, which came into effect on July 1, has increased taxes of electricity bills from five per cent to 13 per cent.

Hydro Ottawa has also slowly began to introduce time-of-use billing, where customers pay more for using electricity during peak hours of the day, part of an Ontario mandate to have time-of-use billing in place province-wide by the end of 2011.

And Hydro Ottawa said in its 2009 annual report that an increase in transmission rates paid to Hydro One would likely bump customers bills about 0.5 per cent, or 46 cents a month.

Social worker Marie Etienne said low-income residents in the city are likely to be hardest hit by the added costs.

She said a client said he wanted to become homeless to avoid paying his hydro bill.

"He's not a young man. He's sixty years old," said Etienne. "He said it's really hard. He couldn't afford to buy food and wanted to choose to go on the street because he cannot afford to pay his hydro bills."

Hélène Ménard, the executive director of budget-counsellors Entraide Budgetaire, said since people receive hydro bills every two months, many people will be just getting their first post-HST bill in September, one likely to be higher than usual because of Ottawa's hot summer.

"I think in September we will be hearing that a lot more people cannot afford to live in their houses any more," said Ménard.

The winter will also pose serious problems for seniors on fixed-incomes, she said, particularly once time-of-use billing comes into effect.

"If you are at fixed income living at home all day, you don't have choices to leave home and go to work during the day," she said. "An elderly person will not put down heat to 50 during the day."

Councillor Bob Monette said the issue has come up before the city's corporate services committee before and said he would like to see it addressed.

"It's very frustrating right now," said Monette. "One minute we're congratulating Hydro Ottawa on how well they've done and... then we turn around and increase the rates to residents."

Monette said some of the revenue the city receives could be earmarked for promotion of smart use of electricity and energy-saving tips, but said he's prefer to see the money used to go back to the people paying Hydro Ottawa.

"The customers would be my number one priority," he said.