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Tag Archives: cost benefit wind power

Nation says NO to huge wind farms

11 Tuesday Aug 2015

Posted by ottawawindconcerns in Uncategorized

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

community opposition wind farms, cost benefit wind power, Julie Leroux, Nation, Not a Willing host, Save The Nation, St Bernardin, St Isidore, wind farms Eastern Ontario, wind power, wind power project, wind power projects, wind turbines

Wind power project rejected: the people of Nation speak

Council for the municipality of Nation, just east of Ottawa, met last evening and decided to reverse a motion of support for two wind power projects, in St Bernardin and St Isidore. Nation is now Not A Willing Host to wind power projects, making it the 90th community in Ontario to reject wind power proposals. The community group Save The Nation/Sauvon La Nation held a huge public meeting last week, and revealed that council had passed the support motion with no public discussion or input.  The majority of residents are opposed to the power projects on the grounds that the potential for environmental damage is significant, and the impact on agriculture and the social fabric of the communities would be extensive. “We are not for sale,” said Julie Leroux of Save The Nation in an interview. EDF of France had claimed it has spent hundreds of thousands wooing the community, paying for hockey dinners and other events designed to sway farm owners to sign leases for the project. See the story from CTV News here: http://ottawa.ctvnews.ca/residents-of-nation-east-of-ottawa-fight-wind-turbine-projects-1.2510730 Related story: the town of Essex last night voted not to support a new wind power project, saying they want no more wind turbines. There are now 91 Not A Willing Host communities in Ontario.

Wind power on TVOntario: problems, social costs

27 Friday Mar 2015

Posted by ottawawindconcerns in Uncategorized

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Canadian Wind Energy Association, cost benefit wind power, EDP, EDP Renewables, electricity bills Ontario, electricity rates Ontario, energy poverty, green energy, Green Energy Act, Ottawa wind concerns, The Agenda, TVOntario, wind farms, wind power

March 27, 2015

TVOntario’s public affairs program, The Agenda with Steve Paikin, dealt with the controversy over the implementation of Ontario’s push for power generation from wind this week, with an edition of the show, followed by the debut of new documentary film Big Wind.

Ottawa Wind Concerns’ chairperson (and Wind Concerns Ontario president) Jane Wilson was a guest for the entire Agenda program, which is available online at http://tvo.org/video/211902/wind-power-wind-problems.

The documentary is also online at TVOntario’s website, at http://tvo.org/video/211702/big-wind

There are opportunities to comment at both links.

Ottawa economist on the Fraser Institute report: Ontario in bad shape

18 Tuesday Mar 2014

Posted by ottawawindconcerns in Ottawa, Renewable energy, Wind power

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Charles Sousa, cost benefit wind power, finances Ontario, Fraser Institute, health care Ontario, Kathleen Wynne, Ontario, Ontario government, Ontario Liberal government, public debt Ontario, renewable energy Ontario, Robert Lyman

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE FRASER INSTITUTE REPORT

Comparing the Debt Burdens of Ontario and California

On March 8, 2014, the Vancouver-based Fraser Institute published a research study comparing the debt burdens of the state of California and the province of Ontario. Within the United States, many people consider California to represent a prime example of irresponsible government spending coupled with poor cash management. However, the Fraser Institute report uses a number of measures to compare Ontario’s situation to that of California. In almost all cases, Ontario is much worse.

Here are the highlights of the report:

  • California’s current debt in the form of government-issued bonds is US $144.8 billion, while Ontario carries CDN $267.5 billion, almost double the amount of California.
  • This figure actually understates the disparity between the two regions, as California has a much larger economy. The gross debt in the form of bonds is 7.6% of California’s economy, while it is a “whopping” 40.9% of Ontario’s economy, more than five times as large as California.
  • Per capita, each Ontarian’s share of provincial government debt is CDN $20,166 (i.e. $80,664 for a family of four), compared to US$ 3,844 in state government debt for each resident of California.
  • Servicing this debt through interest payments is more costly in Ontario. 9.2% of budget revenues in Ontario are devoted to interest payments, compared to 2.8% in California.
  • Ontario’s expenditures as a share of the economy grew from 15.5% in 2001-2002 to 19% in 2011-2012.
  • Over this period, total government spending in Ontario has been steadily increasing from one year to the next. Thus, unlike California, Ontario has not managed to stabilize the growth of the debt in terms of GDP.
  • Ontario’s net debt for 2012-2013 is the second highest as a percentage of GDP of any Canadian province, trailing only Quebec. However, Quebec’s annual budget deficit was only half as large – 0.7 % compared to Ontario’s 1.4 %.
  • Ontario’s budget analysts project that from 2012-2013 to 2015-2016 net interest payments will represent the fastest growing expense for the provincial government, growing at 5.5 % annually – more than twice the projected rate of health care expenditures.

Robert Lyman

Ottawa, March 18, 2014

Editor: It’s worth noting that Energy Minister Bob Chiarelli admits Ontario is spending $1B a year on power generated from wind energy; he also admits we don’t need it. Sound financial planning!

The Fraser Institute report is available here.

Lisa MacLeod roars on the Green Energy Act!

06 Thursday Mar 2014

Posted by ottawawindconcerns in Renewable energy, Wind power

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

cost benefit wind power, FIT program, Green Energy Act, Lisa MacLeod, subsidies for wind power, wind power Ontario

Yesterday was the occasion for debate on the Green Energy Act, as the government is now scrambling to correct its domestic input policy—illegal as determined by the World economic regulatory body.

Nepean-Carleton MPP and PC Energy Critic Lisa MacLeod covered the gamut of problems with the Green Energy Act in her speech. You may read the full account here (recommended). An excerpt follows:

…But if they want to talk about children’s health, I’ll talk about a child’s health. I’ll talk about Madi Vanstone, who every day we’ve brought up in the assembly here. I can’t help but think that the Ontario that I live in, the Ontario that I’m raising my daughter in, is spending $22 billion for 1% of energy to make Liberal friends rich when little girls in this province who need life-saving drugs can’t get them. And why can’t she get them? Because this Premier said it costs too much. She said that it costs too much; we couldn’t afford it. We could afford to make Mike Crawley a rich man, we can afford to make NextEra a rich company and we can ensure that Samsung basically has a seat at the cabinet table here, but apparently our government cannot and will not choose to support a child who needs help. That’s the reality that we’re in in Ontario today. People can’t understand it. It was well documented, I thought, by Christina Blizzard. I thought she laid out the case on that quite clearly, and I thought that she pointed out what most people in Ontario are saying.
You look at the cost of power now—and I had the opportunity to speak to the supply motion, I guess it was a week ago. I talked about the opportunity I had to visit many of my colleagues’ ridings and talk to many people who are in their communities, and we talked about the high cost of energy and how that is hurting the people of this province and hurting manufacturers, and we talked about what our plan would be.
We’ve written a number of white papers. Some of them were just, effectively, ideas that we put forward that we’ll run on; others were ideas for discussion that we’ve talked about. But, very clearly, people are looking for a rational solution to the mismanagement by the government.
We’ve put forward a number of, I think, very thoughtful ideas and very sensible ideas to review not only the existing Green Energy Act—I think we’ve been very clear that we would repeal it—but we also talked about looking at some of the entities that we have in Ontario, like the OPG and Hydro One, monetizing them to bring more accountability. We know that there are some very serious and straightforward concerns there. We know, for example, that we’re exporting about $1 billion worth of power. …
You think about this: He has just acknowledged in this House that to create 1.1% of power is $22 billion. They had to acknowledge, albeit it was the Auditor General who forced them, that it was $1.1 billion for them to save five seats. With that amount of waste and that amount of mismanagement, we could not only eradicate our deficit, but we could make significant investments into our communities in health care and education, and we would still have power that we wouldn’t have to export. A novel idea, Speaker, but that is the reality; it is the truth, and it is something that we have said consistently—and the only party to do so since 2009.
That’s why we stand here day in and day out. We stand for the people in Strathroy and Stratford. We talk to the people in Cobourg, the people in Oxford and the people in Barry’s Bay. We talk about the people who are opposing these high subsidies and who are opposing these invasions on their land. We talk to them. We ask them to stay in Ontario and make sure that they continue to support us so that we can change this.
…
Let me be abundantly clear, Speaker: This is a government who is too concerned with its own ideology, and too concerned with its buddies that they could make a little bit more rich, that they had no concern whatsoever about the people paying the bill; that they have no concern whatsoever of the broader implications in an international trade war that they have now thrust us into. They don’t care, Speaker. They didn’t do their job at the beginning.
They’re not doing their job now, they didn’t do their job then, and everybody in Ontario is paying for it.

Amherst Island wind project “not financially viable”

05 Wednesday Mar 2014

Posted by ottawawindconcerns in Renewable energy, Wind power

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Algonquin Power, Amherst Island wind farm, cost benefit wind power, Windlectric

Wind power on Amherst Island: not financially viable

Posted on March 5, 2014

Members of the community on Amherst Island (who, it must be said, are doing anything and everything to protect their community from a proposed wind power plant) have undertaken a financial analysis of the power project.

Note that this is something the government of Ontario has never done, despite the Auditor General’s chiding of them to do this in 2011. The result of this analysis? Wind power doesn’t make any sense.

Read the report at http://freewco.wordpress.com/2014/03/05/wind-power-on-amherst-island-not-financially-viable/

European Parliament policy advisor: wind is a loser

16 Sunday Feb 2014

Posted by ottawawindconcerns in Renewable energy, Wind power

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Ben Acheson, cost benefit wind power, energy poverty, fuel poverty, global wind power lobby, wind power UK

Here is a very short video prepared by Ben Acheson, policy advisor on energy and the environment to Member of European Parliament Struan Stevenson. He reviews the European experience with wind power and says, it’s time to chalk this up as a loss.

And what a loss. Billions in the pockets of developers, and “fuel poverty” for the people.

Watch the video here.

OPA regional plans

20 Wednesday Nov 2013

Posted by ottawawindconcerns in Ottawa, Renewable energy, Wind power

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

cost benefit wind power, Ontario Power Authority, power supply Greater Ottawa, wind power North Gower, wind power Ottawa, wind power Richmond

Please see our new page/tab this morning on the regional power plans prepared by the Ontario Power Authority, specifically the plan for Greater Ottawa.

Already, the OPA is talking about a “sparse” power supply outside the Greenbelt, and the need for more power in Ottawa.

This bears watching.

An OPA staffer told someone in our community at one of their “conversation” events this past summer, when she expressed concern about an expensive wind power project that provide power out of phase with demand, “I understand your concerns, but WE have to think of the ‘big picture’.”

This is the OPA’s “big picture” for Ottawa.

Parker Gallant: are Ontario’s electricity bills a regressive tax?

07 Monday Oct 2013

Posted by ottawawindconcerns in Ottawa, Renewable energy, Wind power

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

cost benefit wind power, cost-benefit renewable power, Dalton McGuinty, Feed In Tariff Ontario, Kathleen Wynne, Ontario electricity bills, OPA, Parker Gallant

On September 10, 2013, when the temperature hit 34 degrees in Toronto, demand for electricity in Ontario peaked at 8 PM when we were consuming 22,417 megawatts (MW) of power.  At that point according to the Adequacy Report from the IESO, we still had excess capacity−8,437 MW in fact, or enough to power over seven million average Ontario homes.

So the question becomes, if we have power to spare, why do we continue to add expensive sources of power generation like wind and solar to the electricity grid?   Surely the addition of that expensive generation that must be backed up will do nothing more than drive electricity prices up.
Has our electricity system turned into nothing more than a form of wealth transfer or, perhaps, a regressive tax?   The latter is defined as: “A tax that takes a larger percentage from low-income people than from high-income people. A regressive tax is generally a tax that is applied uniformly. This means that it hits lower-income individuals harder.”
As it turns out, the management of our electricity system by the Liberal government during the past 10 years has been both.   Consider the following points and see if any of them were meant to keep our electricity prices competitive with other markets, and that might have helped to create jobs in Ontario. Job creation may have resulted in tax revenue that could have been use to reduce our deficit, improve health care, built better transit, or provide better government services.
Reality in Ontario today
Here is what ratepayers must accept:
§     Paying for smart meters and resulting time-of-use pricing–we eat supper after 7 PM and do our laundry in the middle of the night
§     Paying to replace smart meters because they “don’t communicate”
§     Paying for the development of the “smart grid” which turns out to be not so smart.
§     Subsidizing very large energy consumers by picking up a chunk ($200/400 million) of what they would have to pay if they were a household, just to keep remaining manufacturing jobs
§     Paying huge Net Revenue payments to gas plant electricity generators for sitting idle
§     Paying wind generators to not produce electricity
§     Paying solar generators to not produce electricity
§     Paying to erect meteorological stations to measure how much wind generators might have produced so that we can pay them for not producing
§     Paying for “steaming off” perfectly clean nuclear power from Bruce Power
§     Paying for the Ontario Power Authority to run ads on TV, radio and the newspapers to tell us to conserve electricity, racking up average annual spending of $300 million
§     Paying for costs of operating the Ontario Power Authority, which we were told was a temporary long-term planning agency
§     Paying to get the local distribution company to pick up old refrigerators and being told it’s free
§     Paying to move two gas generation plants at a cost of about $1 billion
§     Paying to have the school boards in Toronto and elsewhere put solar panels on their roofs so they could generate money to fix some of the roofs
§     Paying for grants to people that can afford to purchase new expensive electric vehicles (EVs)
§     Paying to put in charging stations for those EVs that use the streets but don’t pay gas taxes
§     Paying for someone else to use coupons to purchase CFL or LED light bulbs
§     Paying for grants to small and medium sized companies to retrofit their lighting systems
§     Paying for expensive electricity generated by solar panels placed on your local municipally owned arena
§     Paying for grants so your municipality can exchange incandescent and halogen street lights to LED lights
§     Paying your local distribution company extra money each year because their revenue deteriorated because you conserved electricity, so they asked for and got a rate increase blessed by the Ontario Energy Board
§     Paying to connect wind and solar generators to the transmission system run by Hydro One, a wholly owned provincial monopoly
§     Paying the cost of electricity produced by your neighbour for those solar panels on his roof for which he gets 80 cents a kilowatt hour
§     Paying for the costs of solar power produced by corporations like Loblaws, Canadian Tire,  IKEA, etc., which they sell into the electricity grid at 70 cents a kilowatt hour, but buy the power they need at the same (or lower) price that you pay
§     Paying forever for “residual stranded debt” that should have been paid off 5 years ago.
§     Paying for the sale of surplus electricity to New York, Michigan, etc. at a price 75/85% below its cost
§     Paying HST on our electricity bills which automatically added 7% to its cost and generates well in excess of $1 billion for the province’s coffers
Now look over these 28 points and think about which represent “wealth transfers” and which represent a “regressive tax.”   Review them again and pick out any that added cost-effective new generation.  Hint: you will probably have trouble finding the latter!
Ontario’s legacy
Energy Minister Chiarelli recently bragged about the reputed $35 billion in new investment attracted to the province by the Green Energy and Green Economy Act and the 31,000 jobs that it supposedly created. Those 31,000 jobs (most are relatively short term construction jobs) will cost the ratepayers of the province over $3 million each.
What Minister Chiarelli didn’t say was that the $35-billion investment will cost ratepayers well over $100/120 billion by the time those 20-year contracts have ended, and most of that will be extracted from the pockets of many Ontarians who cannot afford the “regressive tax” it has become. Many are discovering they can’t afford to turn their lights on for fear of being unable to buy groceries.
What a legacy for the McGuinty/Wynne team.
Parker Gallant,
October 3, 2013
The opinions expressed here are those of the author and not necessarily Wind Concerns Ontario.

Ottawa economist on 10 years of power mismanagement in Ontario

23 Tuesday Jul 2013

Posted by ottawawindconcerns in Health, Ottawa, Renewable energy, Wind power

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Bob Chiarelli, Bob Lyman, cost benefit wind power, cost-benefit renewable power, Dalton McGuinty, electricity rates Ontario, Feed In Tariff Ontario, Green Energy Act, Kathleen Wynne, Ontario by-elections, Ontario Ministry of Energy, Ontario Power Authority, Ontario's electricity system, Ottawa wind concerns, Parker Gallant, power bills Ontario, Robert Lyman, Wind Concerns Ontario

You’ve read Bob Lyman, an economist specializing in energy issues, on these pages before.

In his latest work, he has written an overview of the last 10 years of energy policy as it relates to electricity in Ontario, and come up with the very worrying conclusion: the whole thing has been grossly mismanaged.

The question now is, can Ontario ever get out of this hole? That’s tough when Ontario keeps approving big, expensive wind power projects on the order of one a week this summer, despite not having a current long-term energy plan.

Here is Bob Lyman’s latest:

Ten Years of Liberal Mismanagement of Ontario’s Electricity System

A Layperson’s Summary

On July 16, 2013, Parker Gallant, a retired banker who for about six years has written about Ontario electricity policies, wrote an article to mark the forthcoming tenth anniversary of the Liberal Party’s tenure as government of Ontario. Mr. Gallant’s article can be found at the following link:

http://www.freewco.blogspot.ca/2013/07/ontario-liberals-10-years-of.html

This article is of great importance for Ontario residents who want to understand what has been happening to electricity supply, demand and prices over the past decade and, perhaps more importantly, how they should weigh these developments as they contemplate forthcoming elections in the province. Shortly, there will be five by-elections in different parts of Ontario that may swing the balance of power in the legislature. It is also likely that there will be a general election in Ontario within the next two years.

Voters need to understand what the fuss is all about and how it affects them. Unfortunately, Mr. Gallant’s article, as wonderfully insightful as it is, might be difficult to understand for the average citizen who does not follow electricity matters on a regular basis. The objective of this note is to offer a somewhat simplified version of the story people should know. …

Read the whole document here: Ten Years of Liberal Mismanagement of Ontario’s Electricity System

Upcoming topics: what does the situation at Chatham-Kent airport (where 8 turbines have been order removed) really mean?

Please contact us at ottawawindconcerns@gmail.com

Donations welcome at PO Box 3, North Gower ON   K0A 2T0

Prowind: we want you to be “comfortable”

19 Friday Jul 2013

Posted by ottawawindconcerns in Health, Ottawa, Renewable energy, Wind power

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

cost benefit wind power, cost-benefit renewable power, Elizabeth Payne, Green Energy Act, health effects wind farms, health effects wind power, health effects wind turbine noise, indirect health effects wind turbines, infrasound wind turbines, North Gower wind farm, North Gower wind power project, Ottawa Citizen, Ottawa wind concerns, Prowind, Richmond wind farm, Rochelle Rumney, South Branch wind farm, wind power project Ottawa

In the article on the proposed wind power project for North Gower-Richmond appearing in today’s Ottawa Citizen (http://www.ottawacitizen.com/business/Wind+power+projects+harmful+cancelled+plants+critic+contends/8678755/story.html), wind power developer Prowind (based in Germany) representative Rochelle Rumney says the project is “on hold” until the new application process is announced by the Government of Ontario.

Taking a cue from the province, which is making lots of noise about “community engagement” while still NOT returning local land-use planning powers removed by the Green Energy Act, Rumney told the Citizen writer that Prowind wants to work with the community to “try to have everybody be comfortable with the project.”

Comfortable.

Really.

How do we get “comfortable” with the fact that Prowind has concealed the true locations of the turbines and to this date, does not depict the turbines just north-west of a housing subdivision on its website?

How do we get “comfortable” with the fact that by conservative estimates (and this has been accepted by the Ontario Superior Court of Justice) property values could decline by 22-50% ?

How do we get “comfortable” with the fact that, again by conservative estimates, if only 10% of the residents within 3 km of the turbines were to experience sleep disturbance and other health problems, that would mean over 100 people could be affected?

How do we get “comfortable” with the fact that a few people who live here can do this to the rest of their community?

This community has options, none of them comfortable, but they will be pursued.

Just a reminder of who we’re dealing with, here again is the photo of Prowind’s stunning Head Office in Hamilton, Ontario.

Prowind HQ-Hamilton

Donations welcome to cover costs including legal fees: PO Box 3, North Gower ON   K0A 2T0

Ottawa Wind Concerns Inc. is a corporate member of Wind Concerns Ontario.

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