Ontario’s energy sector needs to connect all activities.

By Marc-Antoine Joly, P.Eng. | Joly Solutions
In collaboration with Rick Baker, the Ontario Energy Collaborative Association (OECA)

The whitepaper, 12 OEB Initiatives: Examining Opportunities Between Them – Regulatory Update, Completion Tracking & Risk Assessment, is current to September 12, 2026.

 Its purpose is straightforward: identify where collaboration across regulatory and organizational interfaces could support timely and efficient growth in Ontario. 

The paper is not intended to advocate for a particular regulatory outcome. Its “Collaborative Insights” are synthesis observations designed to identify cross-organizational interfaces and questions worth discussing; they are not OEB positions or formal OECA policy positions. 

The twelve files touch almost every major part of Ontario's evolving electricity framework: utility remuneration, customer connections, regional planning, distributed energy resources, non-wires solutions, customer data, service rules, gas-electric coordination and the developing role of electricity distributors. 

Individually, each can be rational.

The implementation challenge appears when one initiative depends on another.

A connection process may become faster internally, for example, but the customer outcome can still depend on an LDC, transmitter, the IESO, municipal approvals, equipment suppliers and the customer exchanging accurate information at the right time. The OEB's connection work increasingly recognizes that these interfaces affect not only utility service, but factories, housing, data centres, EV infrastructure and broader economic development. 

Similarly, a distributed-energy resource may have technical value at the distribution, transmission and wholesale levels, but turning that value into an investable project requires clarity around compensation, duration, measurement, dispatch rights and the ability to combine legitimate value streams without double counting. 

Those are not simply policy questions. They are interface questions.

Ontario is asking electricity distributors to remain prudent regulated utilities while also supporting electrification, new load, distributed resources and economic growth.

Those objectives are not necessarily contradictory, but the mechanisms surrounding them need to work together.

The Next Generation Rate Framework, for example, is deliberately bringing performance-based regulation, spending patterns, benchmarking and incremental-capital policy into an integrated review. The OEB says the framework needs to remain fit for purpose as distributors build for electrification and economic growth. 

At the same time, non-wires solutions, local eDSM, DER procurement and increasingly active distribution-system capabilities create alternatives to conventional infrastructure. 

The regulatory challenge is therefore not simply how much should be spent? 

It is increasingly what outcome is needed, when is it needed, and which solution delivers it most effectively?

Many material opportunities now sit between traditional mandates.

The whitepaper identifies potential gaps around early studies, capacity planning, enabling infrastructure and project development—work that may need to occur before responsibility fits neatly into customer funding, utility remuneration or broader system investment. 

The same pattern appears in data and planning.

Electricity and natural-gas forecasts can no longer be treated as entirely independent as electrification changes gas demand while electricity generation may continue to depend on gas during important system conditions. The OEB's gas-electric coordination initiative consequently focuses on better information exchange, assumptions and planning coordination. 

Regional planning is moving in a similar direction. The OEB's work emphasizes continuously current forecasts, stronger municipal coordination and clearer implementation accountability rather than treating planning as something rebuilt periodically from scratch. 

Since the whitepaper's September 12 research cut-off, the OEB has taken another step and launched its Regional Planning Reform Implementation initiative on September 17 to implement those recommendations, including streamlined planning, improved forecasting and clearer responsibilities. 

The direction is increasingly clear: coordination capacity itself is becoming infrastructure.

Ontario already conducts substantial consultation.

The more interesting measure is what consultation produces.

Does it clarify an interface? 

Establish a shared assumption? 

Create a usable market signal? 

Resolve accountability? 

Produce a repeatable process? 

Allow a project to move?

The whitepaper suggests broader participation can add practical perspective from municipalities, customers, investors, technology providers, data users, consultants and implementation specialists alongside utilities and established sector participants. 

That is also where OECA can provide a useful connective function.

The paper does not suggest replacing the OEB, IESO, utilities or established industry organizations. Instead, it describes a role for an independent collaborative forum that can bring together organizations responsible for different pieces of the same problem, test implementation barriers and carry recurring issues back into formal regulatory and planning processes. 

One of the strongest themes for me is the relationship between visibility and investment. The DER work illustrates this particularly well. Customers, aggregators and private investors can respond to system requirements when they can understand, where the need exists,  when it exists,  how much capacity is required,  for how long, and  what performance is expected.

That principle extends well beyond DERs.

It applies to energy infrastructure, industrial loads, municipal growth, resilience, capacity planning and capital investment generally:

Define the problem clearly enough, and more solutions become possible.

That is closely aligned with how I approach engineering and operational advisory through Joly Solutions: make the invisible risks, dependencies and opportunities visible before committing to the solution.

The whitepaper closes with twelve questions for testing the effectiveness of implementation. Among them:

• Are accountabilities clear when customer outcomes depend on multiple regulated and non-regulated organizations? 
• Are planning forecasts kept continuously current? 
• Are benefit-cost assumptions sufficiently consistent to support comparable decisions? 
• Do remuneration models remain neutral between capital, operating, third-party and non-wires solutions? 
• Are regulatory initiatives sequenced so one does not force investment before another establishes cost recovery or accounting treatment? 
• Are we measuring collaboration through better information, faster issue resolution and fewer failed hand-offs—not simply more meetings?  

Those are useful questions well beyond the regulatory files themselves.

Ontario has substantial technical capability, strong institutions and increasingly sophisticated policy tools. The opportunity now is to make those pieces operate as a more connected system.

At Joly Solutions, we help organizations look across energy, infrastructure, production, utilities, and operational risk to identify practical opportunities that improve performance, reduce waste, and support more resilient investment decisions.

Circularity is often treated as a sustainability concept. In food and beverage, it should be treated as an operating discipline. At its simplest, circularity means looking at what already leaves a process and asking whether it still has value.

That includes raw material losses, rejected product, heat, water, packaging, by-products, downtime, rework, cleaning losses, and underused equipment capacity. These are not just environmental issues. They are cost, productivity, quality, and capital planning issues.

Food and beverage operations are full of recurring flows. Raw materials enter, finished products leave, and every step in between consumes energy, water, labour, packaging, chemicals, refrigeration, compressed air, steam, and time.

When product is lost, the cost is rarely just the ingredient. It can also include packaging, labour, cleaning, wastewater, energy, rework, lost line time, and reduced throughput. A plant may be paying for the same loss several times without seeing the full picture.

This is why circularity belongs in operational review, energy management, automation planning, and capital decision-making. It connects losses that are often managed separately.

The shift is simple: stop asking only how to dispose of something. Start asking why it exists, what it costs, and whether it can still do useful work.

Better questions include:

• What leaves the process every day?
• Which losses have become “normal”?
• What is the true cost of this loss?
• Can it be reduced before it is created?
• Can it replace something we buy or consume?
• Could another process, site, supplier, customer, or partner use it?
• Is this a waste issue, or a yield, quality, automation, maintenance, or controls issue?
• Would better metering, sensing, or line data change the decision?
• Are we adding capacity because of growth, or because losses are unmanaged?
• How will we prove the improvement worked?

These questions move circularity from a slogan to a practical method for finding stranded value inside daily operations.

Automation is often justified by labour savings, but in food and beverage the larger value may come from yield, consistency, reduced waste, and uptime.

Next-generation automation, sensors, machine vision, robotics, advanced controls, and AI-supported monitoring can reduce losses before they become waste streams. That can improve fill accuracy, portion control, cutting yield, product handling, packaging alignment, changeover speed, cleaning sequence control, quality detection, and maintenance planning.

Waste reduction and productivity improvement are often the same opportunity viewed from different angles.

The best time to capture circularity value is before the next project is built.

A new line, boiler, compressor, wastewater system, packaging format, or building expansion should not be assessed only on first cost and immediate capacity. It should also be tested for flexibility, recoverable value, future utility impact, cleaning burden, maintenance access, and avoidable waste.

Before approving capital, ask whether the project reduces waste or creates more of it, whether recoverable heat or water will be ignored, whether metering and controls should be added now, and whether the decision improves resilience or locks in higher operating cost.

Circularity in food and beverage does not need to be abstract. It is a disciplined way to reduce waste, improve productivity, manage utilities, plan capital, and make better use of the resources already moving through the operation.

Every recurring output should be tested against three practical questions:

• Can it be reused internally?
• Can it offset a purchased input nearby?
• Can it become a revenue stream or avoided-cost stream?

That is where circularity becomes commercially useful for food and beverage.

At Joly Solutions, we help organizations look across energy, infrastructure, production, utilities, and operational risk to identify practical opportunities that improve performance, reduce waste, and support more resilient investment decisions.