Prepare for better weather: Ontario to blow $80 million on charging stations for electric cars

Message to McGuinty: Most green-job schemes have been miserable failures - The Globe and Mail

Dalton McGuinty has hit the campaign trail, and he’s paving it green. Earlier this month he announced that Ontario will pump $80-million into building charging stations for electric cars. “They are peppy, they are quiet, and the thing that I like best as a father, and ultimately a grandfather, I would hope, is that they’re clean,” he said. By 2020, he hopes, one out of 20 cars in Ontario will be electrically powered.

Meantime, Costco, the giant retailer, has pulled the plug on its electric car-charging stations, which it had installed in its California parking lots. The reason is that nobody uses them. Even China – which promised it would leapfrog the world in electric-car development – is backing off.
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The moral of the story is as clear as a row of giant wind turbines on the horizon. Governments that invest in risky, expensive and unproven technologies will probably lose big. The only way they are able to lure private investment is with generous subsidies and long-term contracts. And even then, the failure rate is high. Ontario has already attracted its share of “suitcase” companies that are here so long as the money flows, and not a moment longer. And when they go belly-up, guess who’s stuck with the bills?