As a renewable energy advocate, I should be celebrating. On paper, Ontario’s recent gains in solar and wind power announcements sound like the kind of energy transition we’ve been fighting for. But the Ontario government is still hiding its fossil fuel secrets in plain sight.

Early April, Ontario announced 1,315 MW of new renewable energy — enough to power every home in Ottawa with power left over — under the province’s largest-ever competitive auction, aiming for up to 7,500 MW of new power by 2029. The government claimed this as a policy triumph — proof that their “technologically agnostic” approach of having all energy types, including gas, compete has delivered us the lowest-cost energy in the name of affordability. It hasn’t.

This has little to do with Ontario’s policy and everything to do with global market trends. Renewable energy costs have dropped worldwide — solar by around 90% and wind by roughly 70% in the past decade. Ontario paying 8.8 cents per kilowatt-hour is not shrewd negotiation. It’s the predictable result of falling technology costs that any government would have gotten.

The irony is rich. In 2018, Premier Doug Ford cancelled 758 renewable energy projects that had already been contracted, paying $231 million to break those deals. Now, his government wants applause for procuring 14 renewable energy projects at prices the market was going to deliver anyway. Cue the tiniest hand clap.

But here’s what the government doesn’t want to emphasize: these new renewables are now cheaper than running existing gas plants at 9.8 cents per kilowatt-hour and nuclear reactors at 12.4 cents. Only hydro dams — many built decades ago — are cheaper at 6.6 cents.

The picture becomes even more troubling when you look at what actually got approved in this latest announcement. Of the 14 selected projects, 12 are solar and just two are wind — a striking imbalance, given that wind typically delivers more consistent, higher-capacity power. Despite this, dozens of additional renewable projects had already secured municipal support across Ontario, with local councils effectively voting ‘yes’ on the energy transition. The demand is clearly there. 

You might think we’d continue down this road, following the economic case for expanding renewables, with demand and supply only growing, but this latest announcement was just the warm-up act. Ontario’s energy auction – otherwise called the Long-Term 2 – is only beginning with three more years to go. The real test starts this summer and that’s where the trouble could lie.

We’ve been tracking Ontario’s energy auction over the last year, and we’ve also found that the next window — the capacity stream, which decides grid reliability — is oversubscribed with fossil fuel infrastructure. We tracked over 1,800 MW worth of gas plant bids competing for a target of just 600 MW. One project alone — the Courtright gas plant at around 500 MW — could swallow nearly the entire target. Meanwhile, its non-emitting competitor, battery storage, costs less than half the price of gas and is the proven solution for grid reliability in jurisdictions around the world now transitioning to non-emitting energy grids.

Ontario is moving against that shift. Our grid was roughly 96% non-emitting in 2017 — one of the cleanest in North America. By 2025, that had fallen to 81%, the worst emissions performance since coal was phased out. Why? Because gas generation jumped from 4% of the electricity mix to 19% in that time.

While global markets pivot rapidly in the face of volatile fossil fuel prices and geopolitical instability, Ontario is heading in the opposite direction. Make no mistake: the recent gains in renewable energy are a step in the right direction,but if we’re meeting grid reliability with fossil fuels, we’re still heading the wrong way.