In the fall of 2020, while most people were worrying about COVID-19, a document called Energy Evolution was presented to, and accepted by, Ottawa City Council.

It is a $57-B plan to address climate change by retrofitting buildings, requiring vehicles to be electricity-powered, and for new renewable sources of power, to get to a goal of Net Zero emissions by 2050.

Council’s acceptance of the document means it is now City policy.

It calls for 20 megawatts of wind turbines by 2025, 200 megawatts sometime thereafter, and ultimately, 3,200 megawatts of industrial-scale wind turbines.

The staff-written document (except for the part about 3,200 megawatts—that was written by Pollution Probe) claims that the turbines will be 5 or 6 megawatts. At the moment, the most powerful turbines in North America are 3.4 megawatts, as seen south of us in North Stormont (Finch, Crysler, Berwick).

The City completed its new Official Plan, which is now with the Ministry of Municipal Affairs for final approval. The City is working on new zoning bylaws, some of which relate to renewable energy projects.

These new zoning regulations are due in the first quarter of 2025. Draft regulations will be presented for comment and public “engagement” then go to committee and Council for approval. We have ONE SHOT at commenting.

There is pressure from so-called “environmental” groups to have few regulations and just process approvals as quickly as possible.

Our position is that the City is uninformed or misled about wind power and its impacts; the City has no plans to conduct any sort of cost-benefit or impact analysis and has done no review of the Ontario wind power program (a disaster).

No foundation for the plan

As well, many of the assumptions made in the Energy Evolution plan as regards electricity supply are either false, or now out of date. The authors refer only once to nuclear power and then only to say that Pickering Nuclear will end. That is not true now: Pickering will be refurbished and its life extended. New nuclear will be built in other locations in Ontario, including Bruce Power.

Former Ontario Energy Minister Todd Smith made clear in a far-reaching interview with Dr Chris Keefer in a Decouple podcast that Ontario’s goal is RELIABLE AFFORDABLE electricity …that’s not intermittent, weather-dependent wind power.

Conflicting land use

Industrial-scale wind turbines are an industrial use of the land and their use should not be permitted on farmland and near rural communities.

Ottawa Wind Concerns is recommending a 2-km setback between wind turbines and homes.

Read the Energy Evolution document here. Pages of note re: industrial-scale wind power are 17 and 68.

Ottawawindconcerns@gmail.com