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Siemens is closing its windmill-blade factory in Tillsonburg, kicking one of the struts out of the provincial Liberals’ plan to remake Ontario into a manufacturing centre for green-energy equipment.

So long, Green Energy Act. That was painful.

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Not least for the 350 or so workers at the plant near London, most of whom are out of work immediately. Some will stay on for a few months to wind the operation up, but it’ll be fully shuttered in 2018, Siemens says. They’re just not selling enough of the 50-metre-long windmill blades the factory makes to stay in business.

The Tillsonburg factory was one of four children of the Green Energy and Green Economy Act of 2009 (the full title, though the second part usually gets dropped) and the province’s multibillion-dollar deal with Samsung to kickstart Ontario’s wind- and solar-power industries. The government overpaid for electricity, on purpose, expecting the extra money to build the foundations of a permanent green-energy industry that would supply not only our domestic needs but others’ as well. If someone in Ohio was building a wind farm, they’d be able to buy turbines from Ontario.