There is a lively environmental debate over the provincial government's green light to the construction of a smelter near Langham. The broader question is the unwitting involvement of ordinary taxpayers.
According to Fortune Minerals' Environmental Impact Statement, one advantage of locating the smelter in Saskatchewan was the price of energy - 4.879 cents/kilowatt-hour (kWh) plus peak energy demand costs for an overall cost of approximately six cents/kWh. My electrical bill for energy and monthly charges is 14.0 cents/kWh.
Based on its most recent Annual Report, the total 2012 Sask-Power expense was $1,715 million and the net energy produced was 19,957 gigawatt-hours for a production cost of 8.6 cents/kWh. It would appear that large corporations get energy at prices far below the cost of production.
I appreciate that governments want to create jobs and large energy-consuming projects do create jobs but I would consider it a far greater feat if our government would negotiate with all non-renewable energy producing provinces that none of them would use subsidized non-renewable energy as a means of producing jobs, thus preventing this 'race to the bottom'.
I appreciate that past NDP governments share responsibility for current energy pricing policies but they are not the party that is currently promoting the development of huge energy-consuming corporations with what would appear to be taxpayer-subsidized energy rates.
Could we now have experts from all points of view have a public discussion about the merits of using subsidized non-renewable energy as an economic incentive to corporations to site huge energy-consuming facilities within the province.
Jack Jensen, Prince Albert, SK
