I'll take that first.
Certainly in general I do agree with Dr. Desrochers' thought process. Not having been a solar guy my entire life, I certainly have had different perspectives on things. That said, as I mentioned earlier, in the last four or five years we've been talking about the drop in the costs of solar technologies, which continue to come down. Solar is actually competitive with traditional and even non-renewable mixes.
We're talking about various jurisdictions around the world where solar is the lowest-cost energy source. This came from significant government investment, in Europe first, and Ontario was a big supporter of driving those costs down. There is a lot of competition. As it has grown, the market has driven competition. The module prices are continuing to drop from, as I said, $6 a watt down to 35¢ a watt. We are seeing situations here in Canada where we believe we are now the lowest-cost provider in certain circumstances.
I believe when the Government of Ontario first initiated the Ontario Green Energy Act, part of that was to incentivize and create an economy, recognizing that it wasn't a cost-competitive technology. Most quote the 80¢ rates, but there were 40¢ rates for the large industrial projects. Those continued to drop to where now, before the cancellation of the last large renewable procurement program, the prices ran around 15¢, or in that range. That's a very significant drop.
Those are private companies bidding those programs. Those are long-term contracts with an end of life. The government is going to realize, at the end of the 20-year contracts, that they are sitting on an asset that will likely run for another 20 years after that. The government, when going to recontract, can make the case to say, “Look, you have a sunk investment. There is a real value there. We'll give you 5¢ or 10¢ or 15¢ in 20 years' time for another long-term contract.”
I believe it is needed, in the case of solar and other technologies, to get there if we have a goal, which was cleaning the environment and developing a clean, renewable resource. And we did it.