Well ….someone has to let the cat out of the bag!
Ontario is about to leap ahead of the rest of North America with sweeping new all inclusive green energy deal!
Big breaking news! Sometime in September they are going to announce it, and by years end they planning on implementing a renewable energy scheme that will most certainly help Ontario leapfrog into the 21st century in clean green style! Last week Dwight Duncan, Minister of Energy for the province, sent letters to the OPA (Ontario Power Authority) and the Ontario Energy Board instructing them to implement specific changes by December. These changes will facilitate this renewal, and that is pretty much what it is, a virtual renaissance (of green energy)!
This is how it breaks down; the province has decided that it will pay people a premium for green energy. Called feed-in tariffs, they are in use in Germany and Japan and being looked at seriously by several US states and some of our Provinces. So far Ontario is the first to step up to the plate, and it is open to home-owners, farms, small businesses.. everybody is invited to create up to 10 megawatts (ten 1MW turbines, or a little under 60,000 of the biggest solar panels around), and like I said, they will buy it at a fixed premium for 20 years; so for a homeowner, instead of paying $0.05 a KW you can run your house for free and sell your excess energy back to the grid at $0.06… this is definitely going to spurn a lot of people into taking the plunge! The OPA has been instructed to finalize a pricing scheme and the OEB has till December to make sure there are no barriers or restrictions to accessing the grid.
Ontario has been tendering contracts to create some green electricity already. They have green-lighted 10 projects this year in the +50MW category, and are now tendering offers for an additional 1,000MW in the +20MW category. For the last category, the >10MW, they decided rather than go through the traditional method, they will open up the floodgates! The feed-in tariff not only clears all the governmental red-tape (sure there will be some new tape), it also adds a financial incentive for everyone to make the switch. Sure, interest free loans and/or tax rebates will still help speed things up, but the idea of anyone being able to become and energy provider, and make money from it, will really catalyze the situation!
Rumor has it that they are going to completely mirror a position paper they requested from the Ontario Sustainable Energy Association called Powering Ontario Communities. Very inspiring!
And Duncan, who does look like a man who takes his job very seriously,
seems simply giddy about the prospects for the province taking the lead in North America. And he knows that this means one thing beyond appeasing the constituents desire for renewables: the one thing the governments like more than anything (well aside from getting re-elected): creating jobs!
No surprise to those in the know, but renewable energy means a creation of so many jobs, we will have to increase immigration. I’m serious! Let’s check out some facts:
Wind
Ontario is 3x the size of Germany who now have 15,000MW of wind-power. And Minister Duncan is, by the way, negotiating with a few of the heavy wind turbine companies to open up some plants here.. Ontario has over 1,500km of great-lake shores, perfect for windmills, and an additional 55,000 farms (each one a potential energy producer as well) In fact, it’s estimated that we can have 8,000MW here easily in but a few years. The economists say that if this is the case, it will also mean $14BN spent internally and the creation of anywhere from 30-90,000 jobs.
Low Impact Hydro
Another boon to rural Ontario is the embrace of low impact hydro. Unlike a mega-destructive mega-dams producing megawatts, one can generate 500KW from a non-intrusive low-impact hydroelectric generator. Ontario has already identified 2,000 potential sites for LIH, that’s not only another 1,000MW, but another 250-500 jobs in the economically depressed rural regions!
Biomass
Sure, I think its funny to talk about pooh power, but the truth of it is that this Province has, like I said, over 55,000 farms. That’s a lot of pig manure and chicken waste! Since the whole planet isn’t going vegan tomorrow morning, the least we can do is stop letting that pooh contaminate the soil and water tables, and turn it into something good-like clean electricity! The David Suzuki Foundation’s report Smart Energy estimated that we can generate 2,450MW from biomass sources. And that’s not just pooh. The biomass arena is full of fast-growing grasses, like switchgrass, that are then turned into pellets and then gasified to make heat and/or electricity. While Germany (again) has an enormous biomass industry, and (they say) we can’t expect to be as big as them, they do employ 50,000 people in this sector. Suzuki’s team estimated that Ontario could generate up to 6,000 jobs this way!
Solar
Sure, there is a dearth in the silicon world these days… but that is going to be short-lived. What Ontario is going to embark will make sure that this becomes the most PV’d area in the land! So what does that mean to us? Well, in the United States last year they shipped a total of 1GW (that’s 1,000MW). Total. That’s all solar manufacturers… What Ontario is looking at, is getting somewhere between 1-3GW on roofs, in solar shingles and solar mounts. That means that companies like ATS, and CanRom (in Ontario) and ICP (Quebec) are going to have to expand and build new plants.. not only that but people will also have to become solar-installation technicians. That’s another 20,000 jobs!
So what does the near future hold for Ontario? Well going by that math, 15,000MW and 50,000-100,000 new jobs! Sure, that still leaves Ontario needing another 15,000MW as we’re getting close to that 30GW daily load… but I am now so optimistic, that I’m certain other things will come into play (efficiencies, negawatts, new heat/cooling…). It’s like that U2 song.. a beautiful day is dawning… and it’s the kind of thing we are going to see a lot more of…. Get ready for a positive future!
Big breaking news! Sometime in September they are going to announce it, and by years end they planning on implementing a renewable energy scheme that will most certainly help Ontario leapfrog into the 21st century in clean green style! Last week Dwight Duncan, Minister of Energy for the province, sent letters to the OPA (Ontario Power Authority) and the Ontario Energy Board instructing them to implement specific changes by December. These changes will facilitate this renewal, and that is pretty much what it is, a virtual renaissance (of green energy)!
This is how it breaks down; the province has decided that it will pay people a premium for green energy. Called feed-in tariffs, they are in use in Germany and Japan and being looked at seriously by several US states and some of our Provinces. So far Ontario is the first to step up to the plate, and it is open to home-owners, farms, small businesses.. everybody is invited to create up to 10 megawatts (ten 1MW turbines, or a little under 60,000 of the biggest solar panels around), and like I said, they will buy it at a fixed premium for 20 years; so for a homeowner, instead of paying $0.05 a KW you can run your house for free and sell your excess energy back to the grid at $0.06… this is definitely going to spurn a lot of people into taking the plunge! The OPA has been instructed to finalize a pricing scheme and the OEB has till December to make sure there are no barriers or restrictions to accessing the grid.
Ontario has been tendering contracts to create some green electricity already. They have green-lighted 10 projects this year in the +50MW category, and are now tendering offers for an additional 1,000MW in the +20MW category. For the last category, the >10MW, they decided rather than go through the traditional method, they will open up the floodgates! The feed-in tariff not only clears all the governmental red-tape (sure there will be some new tape), it also adds a financial incentive for everyone to make the switch. Sure, interest free loans and/or tax rebates will still help speed things up, but the idea of anyone being able to become and energy provider, and make money from it, will really catalyze the situation!
Rumor has it that they are going to completely mirror a position paper they requested from the Ontario Sustainable Energy Association called Powering Ontario Communities. Very inspiring!
And Duncan, who does look like a man who takes his job very seriously,
seems simply giddy about the prospects for the province taking the lead in North America. And he knows that this means one thing beyond appeasing the constituents desire for renewables: the one thing the governments like more than anything (well aside from getting re-elected): creating jobs!
No surprise to those in the know, but renewable energy means a creation of so many jobs, we will have to increase immigration. I’m serious! Let’s check out some facts:
Wind
Ontario is 3x the size of Germany who now have 15,000MW of wind-power. And Minister Duncan is, by the way, negotiating with a few of the heavy wind turbine companies to open up some plants here.. Ontario has over 1,500km of great-lake shores, perfect for windmills, and an additional 55,000 farms (each one a potential energy producer as well) In fact, it’s estimated that we can have 8,000MW here easily in but a few years. The economists say that if this is the case, it will also mean $14BN spent internally and the creation of anywhere from 30-90,000 jobs.
Low Impact Hydro
Another boon to rural Ontario is the embrace of low impact hydro. Unlike a mega-destructive mega-dams producing megawatts, one can generate 500KW from a non-intrusive low-impact hydroelectric generator. Ontario has already identified 2,000 potential sites for LIH, that’s not only another 1,000MW, but another 250-500 jobs in the economically depressed rural regions!
Biomass
Sure, I think its funny to talk about pooh power, but the truth of it is that this Province has, like I said, over 55,000 farms. That’s a lot of pig manure and chicken waste! Since the whole planet isn’t going vegan tomorrow morning, the least we can do is stop letting that pooh contaminate the soil and water tables, and turn it into something good-like clean electricity! The David Suzuki Foundation’s report Smart Energy estimated that we can generate 2,450MW from biomass sources. And that’s not just pooh. The biomass arena is full of fast-growing grasses, like switchgrass, that are then turned into pellets and then gasified to make heat and/or electricity. While Germany (again) has an enormous biomass industry, and (they say) we can’t expect to be as big as them, they do employ 50,000 people in this sector. Suzuki’s team estimated that Ontario could generate up to 6,000 jobs this way!
Solar
Sure, there is a dearth in the silicon world these days… but that is going to be short-lived. What Ontario is going to embark will make sure that this becomes the most PV’d area in the land! So what does that mean to us? Well, in the United States last year they shipped a total of 1GW (that’s 1,000MW). Total. That’s all solar manufacturers… What Ontario is looking at, is getting somewhere between 1-3GW on roofs, in solar shingles and solar mounts. That means that companies like ATS, and CanRom (in Ontario) and ICP (Quebec) are going to have to expand and build new plants.. not only that but people will also have to become solar-installation technicians. That’s another 20,000 jobs!
So what does the near future hold for Ontario? Well going by that math, 15,000MW and 50,000-100,000 new jobs! Sure, that still leaves Ontario needing another 15,000MW as we’re getting close to that 30GW daily load… but I am now so optimistic, that I’m certain other things will come into play (efficiencies, negawatts, new heat/cooling…). It’s like that U2 song.. a beautiful day is dawning… and it’s the kind of thing we are going to see a lot more of…. Get ready for a positive future!