Green Energy Act Creates 20,000 Jobs

Written by Ontario Newsroom on 25 July 2011

McGuinty Government Supporting Clean, Renewable Energy

Ontario’s clean energy economy has created 20,000 jobs to date, while supplying clean, renewable energy to power our homes and businesses.

The Canadian Contemporary Dance Theatre in Toronto is just one example of an organization that is supporting jobs while generating clean, renewable energy for Ontario’s electricity system. The Theatre is using 96 solar panels mounted on the roof of its building – reducing its environmental footprint while feeding clean energy into the grid. This project supported 10 jobs during construction.

So far, more than 2,000 mid-size and large-scale Feed-in Tariff projects have been announced, representing enough electricity each year to power about 900,000 homes. This is part of Ontario’s plan to replace dirty, coal-fired plants with cleaner sources of renewable energy like water, wind, solar and bio-energy. It’s also part of the province’s plan to build a clean, modern and reliable electricity system for tomorrow.

Ontario’s Green Energy Act is on track to create 50,000 clean energy jobs by 2012.

QUICK FACTS

Environmentalist David Suzuki supports Ontario’s Green Energy Act
The Canadian Contemporary Dance Theatre (formerly Canadian Children’s Dance Theatre) received a grant from the Ontario Trillium Foundation for this project.
Ontario forecasts that by 2018, 10,700 megawatts of renewable power from wind, solar and bio-energy will have been brought online – enough electricity each year to power more than 2 million homes.
Coal usage for the first six months of 2011 was 94 per cent lower than coal usage for the same period in 2003.