To be sure one nuclear reactor will be shut down, on economic grounds, and a wind farm pilot project is just in the embryonic stages. But nuclear power continues to shoulder the lion's share of our generation and that isn't likely to change in the near future. One major lesson I have learned over the past three decades as an environmentalist involved in industry is that the essential ingredients of sustainable development are economics and efficiency, or eco-efficiency as it is called efficiency in the use of materials and energy and in the prevention, disposal and recycling of wastes. It made the point that the principal challenge we now face is to re-shape industrial civilization around the concept of sustainable development and that this will create a whole new generation of opportunities for industry. There is no sector of industry of which this is more true than energy.
Energy is at the centre of the environment-economic interface.
And we at Ontario Hydro share with you a profoundly important interest in addressing the role of nuclear power in our energy future. The controversy over nuclear energy has somewhat receded during the rather stagnant period of growth in the 1990s in which the dramatic drop in the demand for electricity gave rise to substantial surpluses of supply. But this controversy will soon heat up again as utilities, including Ontario Hydro, face decisions on the major new capital investments required to extend the life of existing, aging nuclear plants. At the same time, on a global basis, most of the growth in new energy demand is occurring in the rapidly developing countries of Asia and Latin America which are already evidencing a strong interest in the nuclear option. Two other factors that will be given even greater weight in the renewal of the nuclear debate are increasing concern over the role of fossil fuels in global warming and the prospects of major new Chernobyl-type nuclear catastrophes in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.