Transport committee  When we enter into an arrangement with a proponent, whether they're building a renewable energy facility, a transmission line or another kind of generation, we do not pay them anything until the project comes into service. Therefore, those would be some costs to the proponent, because they would not have met the obligations that they would have under their contract with the IESO.

Transport committee  Our assessment looked at the cost of the project against the benefits that ratepayers would receive from having the project: its ability to arbitrage energy across two systems, its ability to support the growth in southwestern Ontario and its ability to help us meet our reliability needs and our adequacy goals.

Transport committee  I want to be clear that we support continuing to explore this project. We did support the project when it was put forward by ITC. We did a lot of analysis and saw a benefit for ratepayers. We did enter into negotiations, and when we negotiate, we negotiate on behalf of Ontario's ratepayers, to get the best deal that we can.

Transport committee  We found in our assessment of the project that, as has been discussed quite a bit today, having a connection with the PJM footprint would provide economic and environmental benefit, particularly around emissions. That comes from Ontario being able to export, at times, emissions-free electricity and being able to import emissions-free electricity from PJM, which also has a fairly large renewable energy presence.

Transport committee  What we have to remember about this particular project, and about all of our tie lines, is that they are importing and exporting energy every hour, as opposed to at a peak when you may have a lot of generation online. There are many times during the course of the year when demand is much lower.

Transport committee  It's important to note that we value all of our interties with our neighbours. Our interties provide extremely valuable services to maintain the reliability of the electricity system. They can provide capacity, which means that when we are in tight times, we can import capacity from neighbouring jurisdictions.

Transport committee  Our assessments did reveal that there would be a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. That modelling was based on our understanding of the system at the time. Those reductions could happen in a number of ways. For example, it would give Ontario access to renewable energy within the PJM footprint, and it would give PJM access to clean energy available in Ontario, which has a strong base of nuclear and hydro power.

Transport committee  Certainly. We—

Transport committee  Again, we have to build a lot of infrastructure in Ontario to meet the needs of Ontarians, and we welcome any involvement from any level of government that helps to manage that cost for Ontarians. I do want to stress that, in our assessments, we focus on the economic value of the line to ratepayers.

Transport committee  We do not have an explicit decarbonization mandate. However, I would point you to the Ontario government's powering Ontario's growth plan and the IESO's own work on the pathways to decarbonization. When we look at what is happening in Ontario, given the recent developments particularly around demand, as my colleague from NextEra raised, we have a lot of battery plants being built.

Transport committee  I would stress that the IESO's relationship was with ITC, and that we were negotiating an arrangement to pay for an availability payment for the line. We were not involved in how ITC would then finance the project. It is up to any proponent to determine how it will do that. I will say there is a lot of infrastructure that needs to be built over the next number of years, and we would certainly welcome any way to reduce the cost of that infrastructure for Ontarians.

Transport committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair, for the invitation to appear before this committee. I am the vice-president of planning, conservation and resource adequacy and chief energy transition officer for Ontario's Independent Electricity System Operator. My role is to ensure the long-term reliability, affordability and sustainability of Ontario's bulk electricity system, and my responsibilities include long-term system planning, overseeing the acquisition of new generation and other system infrastructure, and the delivery of energy efficiency programming.