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The previous Liberal government of Ontario — whatever its failings — can rightly boast it successfully completed one of North America’s largest-ever reductions of industrial greenhouse gas emissions linked to human-induced climate change.

From 2003 to 2014, a remarkably short time frame for such an achievement, premier Dalton McGuinty and his successor Kathleen Wynne cut Ontario’s use of coal to produce electricity from 25% of all power generation, to 0%.

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They did this almost entirely through the use of nuclear power and natural gas to replace coal.

Nuclear power emits neither greenhouse gases nor traditional airborne pollution, while natural gas burns at about half the carbon intensity of coal, as well as burning more cleanly than coal with regard to traditional pollutants.

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While McGuinty and Wynne played up the role of renewables such as wind and solar power in eliminating Ontario’s use of coal, they were bit players because neither can provide base-load power to the grid on demand, nor can the intermittent energy they produce be stored until it’s needed.