In celebration of the announcement earlier yesterday that Stephen Colbert would be taking over from David Letterman as host of The Late Show, the Environmental Commissioner of Ontario shared with the closing plenary of the All-Energy Conference in Toronto his top ten list for energy planning in Ontario. GallonDaily believes that the list has applicability to many other jurisdictions, so we are presenting an abbreviated version of the Commissioner’s list here:

10.Plan on the basis of all fuels. We obsess on electricity planning, which is domestically produced, but Ontario’s energy planning often ignores petroleum fuels, which are imported.
9. Integrate the cost of carbon. Even Exxon is putting a shadow price for carbon in its long term planning. Ontario should do the same.
8. Provide transparency, honesty, and stakeholder participation in energy planning. Key word: honesty. Miller argues that governments and industry should respond to the misinformation that is controlling the public policy debate.
7. Take advantage of the technological opportunities that we have, including smart grid, energy storage, and waste heat.
6. Pursue building retrofits and building energy consumption labelling seriously.
5. Support geothermal and solar hot water.
4. Seize the low carbon opportunities in transportation, especially electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles and light and heavy rail.
3. Create an open policy forum in the energy sector.
2. Conservation first, everywhere: it’s the cheapest and best way forward.
1. Leadership: we need someone to show us the path forward, because we do not have a vision of where we are going.

This is a GallonDaily original post based on a presentation witnessed at the All-Energy Canada conference in Toronto on 10th April 2014.