MPP Jim Wilson, also the interim leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario, put forward a bill to amend the Planning Act, to return the local land-use planning powers that were removed by the Green Energy Act in 2009.
The Green Energy Act actually superceded 21 pieces of legislation in Ontario, in order to ease the way for large wind and solar power generation projects, but mostly wind.
You may recall that, following a petition by residents in the North Gower-Richmond area to the City of Ottawa last year, Ottawa City Council unanimously passed a resolution supporting the residents’ declaration that the community was Not A Willing Host to large-scale wind power projects, and asked the province to return local land-use planning powers.
Rideau-Goulbourn councillor Scott Moffatt responded to the news in an email to Ottawa Wind Concerns with this comment:
I am aware that this bill was introduced by MPP Wilson in 2013 and am pleased to see him re-introduce it today at Queen’s Park. It certainly echoes the motion that was carried at Council last November.
Scott Moffatt
It is extremely disappointing that while the Ontario government, including Energy Minister Bob Chiarelli, has said communities could play a larger role in the siting of power projects and that community approval would be important, the newly released procurement process guidelines indicate that communities can still not say NO.
Nobody home? Health Canada didn’t bother to ask why
HEALTH CANADA NOISE STUDY A MISSED OPPORTUNITY TO FIND THE TRUTH: WIND CONCERNS ONTARIO
(Reposted from the Wind Concerns Ontario website)
Wind Concerns Ontario advises results summary and public pamphlet be withdrawn
November 25, 2014
On November 6, 2014, Health Canada released its long-awaited results of the $2.1-million, publicly funded Wind Turbine Noise and Health Study. Only, it didn’t: what was released in a whirlwind public relations effort was a summary of the study results—no data was presented, nor was there a full formal report, or a publication that had undergone the promised “peer” review, by scientists.
Wind Concerns Ontario immediately convened an expert panel to review the documents available (the summary plus a PowerPoint presentation, and basic study details available on the government website) and has produced a summary report of their comments. The panel consisted of several university professors with expertise in physics and acoustics, as well as an epidemiologist, and a health researcher.
The unanimous conclusion of the expert panel is that the study design was flawed; even so, there are clear findings of a relationship between wind turbine noise and adverse health effects.
Key findings from the review panel:
Study summary was released prematurely, without a full report, expected peer review, supporting data or analysis
Study design was to raise questions but Health Canada concludes inappropriately there is “no association” between turbine noise and adverse health effects; however, the study does find significant correlation between turbine noise and annoyance (an established adverse health effect)—these statements contradict
Population sample used included people who were getting a direct benefit from wind power development including money
A significant number of addresses were found to have vacant homes or houses that had been demolished—the reasons for this were not explored
Work on infrasound and low frequency noise is completely inadequate, say acoustics experts. One hour averages were used (in summer, the season of low wind); also industry-sourced estimates of yearly averages were used in place of actual in-home noise measurement
Numerous biases and other errors affect the credibility of some of the study results, as presented in the summary
As the stakeholder group in Ontario, a coalition of community groups and individuals concerned about the impact of industrial-scale wind power generation projects on human health, the environment, and the economy, Wind Concerns Ontario wishes to express its disappointment in Health Canada, which has as its goal the protection of the health of Canadians, using sound science.
Wind Concerns Ontario sent a letter today to the Minister of Health, the Honourable Rona Ambrose, together with the summary of our review panel comments, and a series of recommendations.
We recommend that:
Health Canada should remove the summary findings from the Health Canada website in their current version
Health Canada should release the final report only after it has gone through the normal peer-review process and been accepted for publication in a recognized academic journal
Health Canada should return to the study areas and present the study findings in a series of public meetings, as befitting a publicly-funded research project
Health Canada should rescind the “pamphlet” in its current form and if such a publication is deemed necessary, remove the claims about the “comprehensive” nature of the study, and further, affix the disclaimer more prominently.
Please read the full commentary document based on our review panel input here. WCO-HCanResponseNov25
The wind industry is dangerous to human health, posing risks to everything from dizziness and nausea to chronic stress and heart conditions
Lawrence Solomon, FR Comment, The Financial Post, November 25, 2014
A Canadian court will soon decide if wind turbines violate Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms by posing a risk to human health. Charter case decisions can be convoluted but the fundamental question of health at issue here is straightforward. Wind turbines, from all that is today known and by any rational measure, represent a risk to those living in their vicinity.
Although the wind industry and its government backers tend to dismiss concerns, the evidence of harm in communities that host wind turbines is overwhelming. Literally thousands of people around the world report similar adverse health effects, some so serious that owners abandon their homes. Studies of noise from turbines — though few in number, short in duration, tentative in their findings and conducted by interested parties — point to dangers. As if these weren’t enough, basic science sounds the alarm on wind turbines.
Wind turbines produce audible sound waves known to cause what medical science calls “annoyance,” a state of health that can lead to a constellation of illnesses called wind turbine syndrome (WTS). As Health Canada reported earlier this month, following a Statistics Canada survey it commissioned of people living in the vicinity of wind turbines, “[wind turbine noise] annoyance was found to be statistically related to several self-reported health effects including, but not limited to, blood pressure, migraines, tinnitus [ringing in the ears], dizziness” and sleep disorders. The annoyance was also found to be statistically associated with objective measurements of chronic stress and blood pressure. Health Canada’s bottom line: “the findings support a potential link between long-term high annoyance and health.”
The audible sound waves — these have a frequency above 20 Hz — may be the least of the worries faced by those living near wind turbines. The turbines also produce copious amounts of sound waves below 20 Hz, making them inaudible to the human ear and thus, say wind proponents, harmless. Yet sound at this low frequency, known as infrasound, should not be thought of as faint or weak. The U.S. military has studied the use of infrasound in non-lethal weapons. Many mammals — giraffes, elephants, whales — communicate with each other at infrasound frequencies, even when many kilometres apart. Powerful infrasound waves, in fact, explain how animals sense the coming of earthquakes well before humans do — and why animals fled to safety during the calamitous Sumatran and Japanese tsunamis of recent years.
The wind power project that was proposed for the North Gower area was to be 8-10, 2.5 megawatt wind turbines. 1,000 homes would have been within 3 km of the turbines. No new project has yet been proposed under the new “procurement” process for large renewable power projects (which we don’t need) in Ontario.
Turbines near Ridgetown: environmental review tribunals ignore evidence of adverse health effects
Big money on one side, families on the other
Jonathan Sher, London Free Press, November 20, 2014
A judicial fight over the future of wind turbines in Ontario wrapped up Thursday with the fate of the province’s green energy law in the hands of judges.
On one side is big money, wind energy giants like Samsung and a Liberal government intent on becoming a world leader in creating green energy.
On the other are four families in Huron and Bruce counties whose homes are close to dozens of proposed turbines.
But while it seems a David and Goliath affair, the underdogs have enlisted a legal pugilist who Thursday seemed to dance circles around the arguments of his adversaries, wrapping up a four-day hearing in London with an emotionally-loaded challenge to three Superior Court justices.
“The system has utterly broken down,” said Julian Falconer. “You have been tasked with keeping these people safe.”
Falconer was the most dynamic of lawyers representing four families in Southwestern Ontario battling the building of wind farms.
It’s not the first time lawyers have challenged the Green Energy Act in court. Three years ago, wind opponents lost in court fighting a decision by an environmental review tribunal to allow a wind farm. But the 2011 effort had a handicap this one does not — it was a judicial review, in which judges must give deference to the tribunal.
This time, Falconer wants the three-judge panel to:
Halt, by issuing what’s called a stay, wind farms that are expected to be tested in January.
Rule the environmental tribunal violated the constitutional rights of wind opponents when it refused to allow new evidence from a Health Canada study.
Allow wind opponents to stop wind farms by showing they might be seriously harmed rather than proving they had been harmed.
The judges expect to issue a decision on the stay soon, and while they didn’t specify a date, it’s likely they’ll act by January.
Environmental review tribunals shield their eyes to contrary evidence, Falconer said.
“They keep the blinders on. They’re not interested in new information. They’re interested in getting the turbines up,” he said.
But lawyers for the government and wind companies disagreed, one arguing the Health Canada study only showed a link between turbines and annoyance and the early results hadn’t yet been peer-reviewed.
“It’s a work in progress,” said Darryl Cruz, who represents St. Columban Energy.
The decision by the environmental tribunal was correct and wind companies should be allowed to complete their wind farms, he said.
That’s a position one Niagara wind opponent has been fighting for about four years, moving from her Welland home to keep away from planned turbines.
“It’s just wrong,” Catherine Mitchell said.
Wind opponents say turbines cause dizziness, headaches, heart palpitations and other illness.
The government says that’s wrong and that neighbours are protected because turbines are placed at least 550 metres from homes.
Ontario has more than 6,000 wind turbines built, planned or proposed, mostly in the southwest. Turbines account for about 4% of Ontario’s power.
In Queen’s Park this week, MPP Jim Wilson asked the Premier and the Minister of the Environment whether it was true the government was about to approve a wind power project next to the Collingwood airport, despite concerns for aviation safety.
The government side of the Legislature is seen to be laughing at the question, so inappropriately that the Speaker has to admonish them saying, “That’s enough.”
In response, the Environment Minister said, “there are environmental assessments for these things,” and then said that the federal Minister of Transport refuses to return calls from provincial ministers. He concluded by saying that airport safety is a matter of federal jurisdiction and that Ontario is looking to the federal government for leadership.
(He then went on to claim that he flies in and out of the Island Airport in Toronto all the time, which is flanked by office towers, and has no problems.)
Health Canada: disappointing, perhaps unprofessional, performance?
This commentary is still in draft form, prepared by a member of the Association to Protect Amherst Island (APAI), but it is an excellent commentary on the summary released by Health Canada last week. The summary, that is, of the results of its $2.1 MM study on wind turbine noise and health, which was released in breakneck speed last Thursday, and which the media picked up as “no health effects seen.”
This is false, of course—our question right now is, WHY is Health Canada putting these results out there as “gospel” when the neither the results or the summary have been properly peer-reviewed, and there is in fact NO actual report…just this summary? One might also ask why a government department is touting its results summary–again, not reviewed or published–as “the most comprehensive” study in the world? Perhaps the PR budget might have been applied to the actual research.
Plenty of people in Ottawa are disappointed at the lack of professionalism demonstrated by Healthy Environments and Consumer Safety at Health Canada.
Just for interest, you may wish to read the testimony of the principal investigator, Dr David Michaud, at a wind power project appeal. In his testimony, Dr Michaud allows that there is research indicating an association between wind turbine noise and health effects, and he acknowledges that there are large studies ongoing throughout the world. Read the testimony summary here: http://www.falconers.ca/documents/SummaryofMichaudEvidence.pdf
October 2014 Breaks Record for Ontario Electricity Costs and Losses
Cost to consumers of government energy policies for one month reaches $1 billion
TORONTO, Nov. 5, 2014 /CNW/ – The Ontario government’s policy of pursuing “renewable” sources of power at a premium and selling off surplus at a loss has resulted in a record-breaking month of expenses and losses for Ontario’spower consumers.
In a document prepared by former bank vice-president and Wind Concerns Ontario executive Parker Gallant and energy analyst Scott Luft, figures from the Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) show that the Global Adjustment for Ontario power customers hit $1 billion.
The Global Adjustment is the difference between market rates for electricity, and what the government pays power generators. In the case of wind power, which has first right to the grid in Ontario, Ontario is buying high and selling low, says Gallant. “In the spring and fall every year, demand for power is low, but wind production is at a high—that is the problem with wind power: it is produced out-of-phase with demand. Because of the contracts the government has with the developers, we pay top dollar for the power and when we don’t need it, sell for bargain-basement prices. We pay about 13.5 cents per kilowatt hour for wind, and sell it off far below that; in October it was below 0.7 cents.
“This is economic disaster for Ontario,” Gallant adds.
Consumer power bills rose again on November 1st, and the government will also launch its new procurement process for wind and solar this month.
Wind Concerns Ontario has been opposed to the development of large-scale wind power in Ontario’s communities in part because it is an expensive yet unreliable source of power. The record-breaking October figures should spur the government to halt its wind power program, says president Jane Wilson. “Any decision to approve one more wind farm, or to launch the new procurement process for more contracts this month as planned, is completely unsupportable,” she says. “Wind power doesn’t work, and Ontario can’t afford this experiment any longer.”
Ontario has contracts for 43 wind power projects not currently operational, which will cost consumers $16 billion over the next 20 years.
New study explains why Ontario has gone from affordable electricity rates to among the highest in N America. Photo: Bloomberg
Ross McKitrick and Tom Adams, The Financial Post, October 30, 2014
Adding renewable generating capacity triggers changes throughout the system that multiply costs for consumers
Ontario’s green energy transformation – initiated a decade ago under then-Premier Dalton McGuinty – is now hitting consumers. The Nov 1 increase for households is the next twist of that screw. As Ontario consumers know all too well, the province has gone from having affordable electricity to having some of the highest and fastest-increasing rates in Canada.
Last year, in a report for the Fraser Institute called “Environmental and Economic Consequences of Ontario’s Green Energy Act,” one of us (McKitrick) explained how the Green Energy Act, passed in 2009, yielded at best tiny environmental benefits that cost at least ten times more than conventional pollution control methods, and was directly harming growth by driving down rates of return in key sectors like manufacturing.
But complex financial structures and a lack of official disclosure around large embedded costs have let supporters of the green energy act deny that green power is responsible for the price hikes. Green industry advocates, including the consulting firm Power Advisory and advocacy group Environmental Defense, have added up the direct payments to new renewable generators, and concluded that since those costs are relatively small, the impact of renewables on the total cost of power is likewise small.
However, such analyses ignore the indirect costs that arise from the way renewables interact with the rest of the power system. Adding renewable generating capacity triggers changes throughout the system that multiply costs for consumers through a mechanism called the Global Adjustment. Our new study, released Wednesday by the Fraser Institute, quantifies the impacts of different types of new generators on the Global Adjustment. The analysis pinpoints what causes the raw deal for consumers.
Here’s how it works: over the last decade, Ontario closed its coal-fired power plants and built a rapidly expanding portfolio of contracts with other generators including renewable energy companies producing power from hydro, wind, solar and biomass. These companies charge the Ontario Power Authority (OPA) higher-than-market-value prices for energy. To make up the difference, the OPA slaps an extra charge – called the Global Adjustment – on the electricity bills of Ontarians.
The Global Adjustment adds to the commodity portion of rates, which combined with charges for delivery, debt recovery, and regulatory factors constitute the overall rate. Elements of the Global Adjustment that are not disclosed include payments to generators to not generate, rates paid to historic non-utility generators, and costs for new hydro-electric developments.
Since 2007, the Global Adjustment has risen six cents per kilowatt-hour in inflation-adjusted terms, pushing up the commodity portion of bills by 50%. Not long ago, Ontario’s total industrial rate was less than six cents per kilowatt-hour. The rising Global Adjustment is by far the biggest driver of the resulting 21% increase in the overall average cost of power in the province over the period 2007-2013. The Global Adjustment’s upward path is a direct consequence of government intervention in the electricity market. Our analysis unpacking the costs of different types of generation shows that the consumer impact of new renewables substantially exceeds the direct payments to those generators by as much as 3 to 1. And renewables are a big part of the problem: Wind and solar systems provided less than 4% of Ontario’s power in 2013 but accounted for 20% of the commodity cost paid by Ontarians.
Getting to the bottom of the rate implications of adding renewables gained new urgency when Premier Wynne declared last month that the 2013 fleet of wind and solar will almost triple by 2021. This is an incredibly reckless decision. In his National Post column recently on the 2014 Ontario Economic Summit, co-chair Kevin Lynch, Vice-Chair of BMO Financial Group, stated bluntly “That Ontario has a serious growth problem is rather difficult to deny, or debate.”
What’s the solution? If the Province wants to contain electricity rate increases it needs to halt new hydroelectric, wind and solar projects. In order to reverse rate increases, the province should seek opportunities to terminate existing contracts between renewable energy companies and the OPA. Alas, as the Premier has indicated, that’s not where they’re headed.
Alternatives to costly new renewables include using some imported electricity from Quebec while Ontario refurbishes its nuclear power plants and maintaining 4 of 12 coal-fired power units at Lambton and Nanticoke that had been outfitted with advanced air pollution control equipment just prior to their closure, making them effectively as clean to operate as natural gas plants. Costly conservation programs encouraging consumers to use less electricity make particularly little sense these days in Ontario. Right now, Ontario is exporting vast amounts of electricity at prices that yield only pennies on the dollar, and also paying vast but undisclosed sums to generators to not generate.
Many European countries made costly commitments to renewable energy but are now winding them back. Germany is investing in new smog-free coal power generation. Environmentalists often suggested that following Europe is the way to go. Perhaps Ontario should consider following them now.
Ross McKitrick is a Professor of Economics at the University of Guelph and Senior Fellow of the Fraser Institute. Tom Adams is an independent energy consultant and advisor.
Another $20-million autumn weekend with Ontario power sold off cheap to neighbouring states and province
Another October weekend has come and gone along—and so has at least another $20 million of Ontario ratepayer dollars, due to selling off surplus Ontario power cheap.
This past weekend of October 24-26 saw Ontario sell off another 189,000 megawatt hours (MWh) of electricity to our neighbours in Michigan, New York and Quebec. Those MWh went for a song generating, $4.31 each and earning about $820K. The flip side is, ratepayers paid over $110 per MWh for that power generation. We lost $106 for each MWh (10.6 cents per kilowatt hour); that means the subsidized cost of those megawatt hours was over $20 million, or a one-time hit of about $4.50 for each of Ontario’s average electricity ratepayer. The trouble of course is that it is not a one-time hit, as this situation occurs frequently during spring and fall when demand for power is low.
Included in that $20 million we paid to export our surplus is the cost for the spasmodic production of electricity from thousands of industrial wind turbines throughout the province and, presumably, some solar production. Wind turbines produced over 52,000 MWh Octover 24-26, and wind power producers were paid for not producing another 17,000 MWh. That 69,000 MWh cost Ontario’s ratepayers half of the $20 million. It doesn’t include what Ontario Power Generation spilled in hydro, what gas generators were paid to idle, or what Bruce Nuclear was paid to steam off nuclear power.
What this past weekend and others before it should be telling the Ontario Liberal government and the Minister of Energy Bob Chiarelli is that Ontario’s ratepayers are consuming less of this expensive commodity. Premier Wynne’s “Conservation First” initiative, as Tom Adams notes in a recent post titled “Crock of Conservation,” has driven demand down but the energy ministry keeps adding more inefficient renewables to Ontario’s grid.
During the past weekend, Ontario exported 20% of its average electricity demand. If each Ministry of the Ontario government wasted 20% of their budget, the main stream media might pay attention but it seems that the Minister of Energy is allowed to waste ratepayer dollars without any serious oversight because the money is simply extracted, without effect on the Ontario deficit.
We can only hope for the day when it is recognized that ratepayers are also taxpayers, and that their money is being wasted with regularity due to Ontario’s energy policy.
Ottawa Wind Concerns 