{"id":2878,"date":"2010-02-25T12:32:46","date_gmt":"2010-02-25T16:32:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=2878"},"modified":"2010-02-25T11:53:29","modified_gmt":"2010-02-25T15:53:29","slug":"ontario-will-have-the-highest-electricity-rates-in-north-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2010\/02\/25\/ontario-will-have-the-highest-electricity-rates-in-north-america\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Ontario will have the highest electricity rates in North America&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/network.nationalpost.com\/np\/blogs\/fullcomment\/archive\/2010\/02\/24\/ontario-power-risk.aspx\" target=\"_blank\">Parker Gallant<\/a> is quite disturbed by the most recent annual report from Hydro One, Ontario&#8217;s government-owned electrical transmission corporation:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>No major media reported on Hydro One\u2019s annual statement to \u201cinvestors,\u201d as the company puts it, even though the report is a dog\u2019s breakfast of warning signs and bizarre trends that spell trouble.<\/p>\n<p>[. . .]<\/p>\n<p>As debt rises, Hydro One\u2019s debt-to-equity ratio weakened from 1.71:1 to 1.91:1. It borrows money to pay for capital costs surrounding the province\u2019s Green Energy Act and puts the company at risk of a debt ratings downgrade, which will drive borrowing costs up.<\/p>\n<p>Return on equity is down to 8.7% from 9.7% in 2008, indicating an overall decline in the value of the company. Return on assets fell to 3% from 3.5%. As a result, the dividend payment to the province was $188-million, down 27.4%. But the CEO says the company is \u201con target.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Even though revenues and costs are rising, and profit falling, Hydro One handles less electricity &mdash; 139.2 terawatts, a decline of 6.4%. The cost of distribution per terawatt was up by 14.9%. Operations and maintenance costs keep rising as power transmitted declines. The number of employees rose 7.7%. Since 2002, when the company had 3,933 employees to distribute 153.2 terawatts, total employment has jumped 38% to 4,400 to distribute 9% less power. Are these additional 1500 staff working in the field or at head office working on rate increase applications?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Parker Gallant is quite disturbed by the most recent annual report from Hydro One, Ontario&#8217;s government-owned electrical transmission corporation: No major media reported on Hydro One\u2019s annual statement to \u201cinvestors,\u201d as the company puts it, even though the report is a dog\u2019s breakfast of warning signs and bizarre trends that spell trouble. [. . .] [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,25,84],"tags":[497,469,87],"class_list":["post-2878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-economics","category-government","tag-electricity","tag-monopolies","tag-ontario"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-Kq","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2878"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2878\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2880,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2878\/revisions\/2880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}