Thank you for the question.
In terms of doing this in a few minutes, European federalism is a lot more complex than Canadian federalism sometimes. There are leaders and followers in the European Union on renewables, for sure. Germany is the main leader, and actually the world leader in that, so you'll see a lot more uptake in places like that. The U.K., for example, is not seen as a leader in the same sense.
I think the difficulty with finding the right mechanism.... Mr. Strahl had asked a question about subsidies, and I admitted that Ontario has made some mistakes. The problem with finding the right policy framework on renewables is because the price point is moving so quickly, how do you find the right mechanism to protect ratepayers but also encourage innovation and encourage uptake of these new industries?
What we've seen is that it's a success story. It's the kind of problem that you want to have. The price points have been changing so quickly with renewables that there's a lot of back and forth about how to do that in a just fashion, so you'll often hear stories here that are trying to dismiss what's going on in Germany, where they're adjusting their renewables framework. They're doing it for a reason; they're doing it to try to protect ratepayers while continuing to deal with this rollout. So in a general way for the European Union I think it is a bit of a mishmash.
I think what we need to look for in North America.... Ontario has made a commitment in its climate plan to make it the easiest and most affordable place in North America for homeowners and communities to install renewable or storage facilities. That is an interesting way to pose the question. They don't know yet what the mechanism will be. What's happening with energy markets is that in Canada we started with selling big hydro, like in Ontario and Quebec, really large power stations, and everyone was a consumer. The word that's now being used is “prosumer”. There is an actual two-way market that's taking place. People who have solar power on their roof are also selling it into a market. So it's about finding those market mechanisms that enable that, that are also fair to other consumers, which I think Mr. Strahl was getting at, and also for maintaining some basic facilities on the grid. That is the struggle we're dealing with in North America.
New York state is doing some renewable.... I forget what it's referred to as, but in their energy vision they're doing a lot on micro-grids and trying to enable how we allow communities to develop power on their own. I think that's something where across party lines we could find some agreement, and it is about finding those mechanisms. I don't have a clear answer to that because it's in development. But watching Ontario, it's kind of at the leading edge of it in Canada, but there are other areas like New York state in the United States that could also be looked at.
I think that tension is just because of the innovation, and it's about finding the right policy mechanism. With a nuclear plant, they come online and then you charge them the price and you increase it with operation maintenance costs for 30 years. It's fairly simple.
With renewables, we have to change our thinking from top down to bottom up.