Green Energy Act, 2009

The Green Energy Act (GEA), formally the Green Energy and Green Economy Act, 2009, introduced in the Ontario legislature on February 23, 2009 and later repealed on January 1, 2019, was intended to expand renewable energy production, encourage energy conservation and create green jobs. Among many clauses, the GEA was best known for creating a number of feed-in tariff rates for different types of energy sources. Notable among these is the microFIT program for small non-commercial systems under 10 kilowatts, and FIT, the larger commercial version which covers a number of project types with sizes into the megawatts.

The GEA was a highly controversial piece of legislation within Ontario, in part due to the high initial tariff, up to 80.2 cents/kWh for small systems under microFIT. It was also viewed as controversial by stakeholders outside Ontario due to its "made in Ontario" clauses which demanded a certain amount of Ontario labor and manufacturing input in order to receive the tariff rates. Changes to the program and rates, some of them applied retroactively, added confusion and sparked complaints about the way the program was being managed. The GEA became a major topic of political discourse within Ontario and was heavily debated during the 2011 Ontario general election; the PC party threatened to cancel the act outright if elected, while the Liberals actively supported the GEA as a primary plank of their re-election platform.