Ontario’s hell-bent determination to phase out coal-fired generation raised electricity rates without significantly improving air pollution levels, a new Fraser Institute report says.

Report co-author Ross McKitrick, an economics professor at the University of Guelph, said the findings should act as a cautionary tale for Alberta and Ottawa currently going down the same road.

Even though there was reliable information available at the time that showed Ontario coal was not a big player in common air pollution ingredients, the political agenda made it impossible to discuss less expensive options to full closure, he said.

“They just demonized it up and down — made it impossible to even have the conversation,” added McKitrick. “They turned it into a really dirty word and that had the effect of shutting down the whole discussion even before it began which, of course, led to a lot of really bad decision making ... The lessons translate directly over to Alberta.”

Ontario closed its last coal plant in 2014, and made it illegal to open any more.

The most significant closures were the Lambton and Nanticoke stations which represented 25% of the province’s total supply of electricity.

Dan Moulton, a spokesman for Energy Minister Glenn Thibeault, said coal plants were a major contributor to air pollution, and a 2016 Toronto Vital Signs report shows a 23% drop in premature deaths and a 41% drop in hospitalizations caused by air pollution since 2004.

“Eliminating coal also took the equivalent of 7 million cars off our roads which remains the single largest climate change action undertaken on the continent,” Moulton said in an e-mail. “The fact is, smog days caused by coal-fired power plants were making our kids sick. Today, those smog days are gone and our kids have cleaner air to breathe.”

The Fraser Institute report, Did the Coal Phase-out Reduce Air Pollution, looked at the impact of closing the plants on the level of fine particulates, nitrogen oxides and ground-level ozones in Toronto, Hamilton and Ottawa.

The small and, in some cases, statistically insignificant improvements in air quality in a few locations could have been achieved more cheaply with pollution control devices like scrubbers, the report concluded.

Residential wood-burning fireplaces, dust from unpaved roads and even meat cooking were bigger contributors to fine particulate emissions than coal-fired generation, according to the 2005 Environment Canada Air Pollution Emissions Inventory.

McKitrick also disputed the health savings claim, noting the government argued in 2005 that it could save $3 billion in annual health care costs by shuttering coal — roughly 10% of the whole health care budget at the time.

“It wasn’t questioned,” McKitrick said. “People were at the time and largely remain very uniformed about the sources of air pollution emissions in Ontario so this picture was created that these two power plants were blanketing the province with smog.”

Scrubbers would not have reduced greenhouse gas emissions, but McKitrick argued the purchase of carbon offsets would have been an inexpensive option.

Expert: No coal costs $5 billion a year

About $5 billion in annual hydro bills are associated with the provincial government’s move to close coal plants and replace them with more expensive sources of electricity, says an independent energy advisor.

Tom Adams said while it’s difficult to pinpoint the exact impact on bills, the cost is far more than the extra $2 a month per customer predicted by one anti-coal group.

“It was a decisive change in the trajectory of electricity costs,” Adams said Monday. “Figuring out exactly what the cost of getting rid of coal is, that’s hard country because there are so many moving parts ... But if I’m asked to put a price tag on it, it’s something like $5 billion a year.”

An Ontario auditor report noted that between 2003-14, the province eliminated 7,546 MW of electricity generation from coal and added 13,595 MW of new capacity — mostly wind, natural gas and nuclear power.

During that time period, Ontario electricity consumers saw the commodity portion of their bill rise by 80%, the auditor found.

While all three provincial political parties favoured the eventual phase out of coal, they were a “little foggy” about how they would replace that relatively cheap and plentiful source of generation, Adams said.

Expensive renewables, gas plant fiascos, pricey nuclear power refurbishment contracts and other questionable actions followed that decision — all driving up the price of electricity, Adams said.

Dan Moulton, a spokesman for Energy Minister Glenn Thibeault, said there have been costs incurred as the government modernized and cleaned up the electricity system. “Ontario has already done the heavy lifting to rebuild aging infrastructure and transition off of coal,” he said.