Canada’s coal-fired electricity phase out plan, announced Nov 21, 2016, will of course have effects on consumers. Will Canadian citizens and businesses be able to handle the increased utility costs? Yes.
I would like to give consumers on Canadian (an in particular Albertan) electricity markets some context about our costs for electricity. Canada as a whole offers consumers some of the lowest electricity rates in the world.
The graph below shows 2015 average prices (in $US cents/kWh) of various nations around the world. source
Canada offered the 3rd lowest rates of the group sampled and at 7.23 cents/kWh was more than 50% lower than the top 2 nations. Alberta in the meantime has been experiencing market prices for electricity even lower than that. Throughout 2015 Park Power’s Floating Rate offering was in the 4-5 cents/kWh range.
In 2016 Alberta’s wholesale electricity has been trading at consistently record low prices which has reflected in our Floating Rates.
Now that you have some context, hopefully you will see that the phase out of coal-fired electricity in Canada, and Alberta, will not be a crippling provision placed on our economy. In all likelihood, in a few years electricity prices will return to where they were a few years ago. Yes more expensive than they are now but loads cheaper than the rest of the world.
I believe that Canada’s marketplace will be able to handle any increased costs associated with a price on carbon and a coal-fired electricity phase out and will benefit from the reduction in emissions that will come along with both.
In the meantime consumers can get off their old rate plans and take advantage of the savings offered by Park Power
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