Decarbonizing Ontario's power grid could cost billions, some of which would be spent in the north

A new report says that Ontario's electricity system will have to get two or three times larger in order to meet climate change goals and the north could play a big part in that.

The Independent Electricity System Operator's Pathways to Decarbonization study says it's possible to get fossil fuels off the electricity grid by 2050.

But it would cost an estimated $400 billion to build the new generating stations and transmission lines required to no longer rely on natural-gas-fired power plants, including two in the northeast along the TransCanada pipeline in Kirkland Lake and in Tunis, near Iroquois Falls.

"It is a very significant challenge. There will be a lot of capital and labour required to do it. We will need to get going on certain things very quickly," said Chuck Farmer, the vice-president of planning, conservation and resource adequacy with the Independent Electricity System Operator.

"Hopefully people can see that there is a way forward."

The recent report from Ontario's auditor general also noted that the provincial government has identified potential hydroelectric dams in the north that collectively could generated 3,000 to 4,000 megawatts of electricity, but no other details have been made public.

Farmer says building power lines to deliver that electricity to cities in the south will also be a big and expensive job. 

"I think where we have to start is by making sure that the energy from those facilities if they get to be developed in the future if they produce energy that we can deliver that energy to where it is used and primarily that is in the south," he said.

Northeastern Ontario previously had six power plants running on natural gas that were among the region's top 15 big carbon emitters, but four of them have recently been purchased by data mining firm Validus Power.