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Food, not noisy, invasive, non-performing wind turbines is a better policy choice [Photo Ottawa Wind Concerns]

October 24, 2026

In a Facebook posting yesterday by Ecology Ottawa, statements were published from Ottawa’s top mayoral candidates on a variety of topics. Under “Emissions and Energy”, Ecology Ottawa quoted candidate Jeff Leiper as saying he wanted to enact the city’s Energy Evolution plan, which is part of the overall climate action plan.

From the document:

Emissions & energy (Q7–Q8)
● Commits to 2050 net zero and full implementation of Energy Evolution: building
energy efficiency, zero-emission municipal fleet and transit, less organic waste to
landfill; lead by example with municipal building retrofits; seek federal/provincial
funding; more frequent emissions reporting.

Informed readers will recall, the Energy Evolution plan is a $57-B “strategy to hit Net Zero. The plan was launched in the beginning of COVID in 2020, when the people of Ottawa had plenty of other things to think about. When it came to Council, after a limited and almost invisible public “engagement,” Councillor Allan Hubley candidly commented that this was the first he’d heard of the document, and Councillor Carol-Anne Meehan remarked that $57 billion was equal to the annual budget for more than a dozen Ontario cities.

The Energy Evolution document plans $57 B of spending on climate change action–including hundreds of industrial wind turbines

In the Electricity portion of the document are statements about the need for more electricity generation and for Ottawa to do more locally, despite being part of the Ontario power grid. The forecasts are based on the Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) predictions for demand published in 2016 (and since updated at least twice).

In specific, Energy Evolution laid out the following targets (Energy Evolution, page 45):

“The model indicates that the minimum results required to
meet the 100% scenario under the electricity sector are:

  • Solar photovoltaic (PV) reaches 1,060 MW by 2050
    (approximately 36 km2
    of solar PV47 mostly on rooftops)
  • Wind generation reaches 3,218 MW by 2050
    (approximately 710 large scale turbines)
  • 310 MW of local energy storage by 2030 and 612 MW
    by 205048 (122 large shipping containers of lithium
    batteries) approximately”

SEVEN HUNDRED industrial wind turbines.

Later in the document is a list of suggested funding sources, all of which are ludicrous (the same, one and only hapless taxpayer) and which make no sense in today’s economic environment.

What does it say that Mr Leiper now refers to a stale, out of date, highly compromised (activist group Pollution Probe wrote part of the Electricity section for the city), preposterous and poorly referenced document for key environmental action?

Criticisms of the plan are many the outrageous requirement of 700 wind turbines, with the cost, environmental impact, and the loss of rural land, mostly farmland, is completely divorced from reality.

This suggests that Mr Leiper is more interested in farming votes from members of Ecology Ottawa and the deeply conflicted CAFES (we love trees and birds and farms but we also love noisy, tree chopping, bird-killing, farmland gobbling industrial wind turbines too!).

Ottawa’s electricity future needs an informed, measured approach. Even the Ontario energy minister Stephen Lecce says wind (and solar) are not the way to an intelligent power system. Noting the unreliability and intermittency of wind, he remarked last year that you can’t run a full-time economy on part-time power.

Not an election promise to keep.