June 23, 2021

Last night the City of Ottawa announced in a meeting to update rural communities on the revised Official Plan that the development of industrial-scale wind power facilities will be encouraged, and that these will be “directed” to Ottawa’s rural communities.

Staff claimed that renewable energy development — wind and solar — are a provincial direction, and the City has no choice but to pursue this.

“That is completely false,” says Jane Wilson, resident of North Gower and chair of community group Ottawa Wind Concerns. “The province is actually committed to affordable and reliable electricity —that’s not weather-dependent intermittent wind power.

“The City seems to ignore the disaster that wind power was for Ontario, and the role it played in creating energy poverty by boosting electricity bills by 270 percent,” Wilson said. “Wind turbines also have high impact on the environment, producing disturbing noise emissions, and killing birds and bats, which are important to the ecosystem.”

In fact, Ottawa’s Energy Evolution report proposes as much as 3,200 megawatts of wind power for the capital area, as many as 700 powerful turbines. The plan calls for 20 megawatts by 2025.

“There is no cost-benefit or impact analysis in that report, and no full, honest accounting to the people of Ottawa as to how much this will cost us all. Funding is supposed to come from the federal government so every Canadian taxpayer as Ottawa repeats the failed Ontario experiment with wind power,” Wilson said.

Contact: Jane Wilson, OTTAWA WIND CONCERNS

ottawawindconcerns@gmail.com