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Tag Archives: Feed In Tariff

Ontario is rejecting wind power: Wind Concerns Ontario to Wynne government

11 Tuesday Aug 2015

Posted by ottawawindconcerns in Health, Renewable energy, Wind power

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

community opposition wind farms, Feed In Tariff, IESO, Kathleen Wynne, Large Renewables Procurement, Nation municipality, Not a Willing host, Town of Essex, Wind Concerns Ontario, wind farm, wind mills, wind turbines

NEWS RELEASE

Ontario Communities Reject Wind Power Proposals               

                                                                                                                                                <!OTTAWA, Aug. 11, 2015 /CNW/ – More than 90 communities have now declared themselves to be unwilling hosts to huge power generation projects using wind turbines.

The municipality of Nation, east of Ottawa, yesterday reversed an earlier statement of support, and the Town of Essex declared it wants no more wind turbines.

“The Premier promised not to force power projects on communities,” says Wind Concerns Ontario president Jane Wilson. “But we still can’t say ‘no.’ Making the unwilling host declaration is a powerful statement to this government.”

Ontario citizens are increasingly aware that large-scale wind power brings potential environmental damage, harms wildlife, is linked to health impacts due to the noise and infrasound, and is causing electricity bills to climb beyond affordability.

Despite a surplus power supply and the high cost of renewables, Ontario is contracting for more wind power this year. “The people of Ontario are saying ‘We’ve had enough,'” says Wilson. “The current procurement program should be abandoned immediately.”

www.windconcernsontario.ca

SOURCE Wind Concerns Ontario

Achtung Ontario! Renewables are a money pit

12 Tuesday Aug 2014

Posted by ottawawindconcerns in Renewable energy, Wind power

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

electricity prices Ontario, Feed In Tariff, Germany renewables, Green Energy Act, Ontario, Ontario economy, renewable energy, renewable power, renewables subsidies, wind farms, wind power

Germany, the model for Ontario’s wind and solar developments, now regrets its spending spree

Brady Yauch, Financial Post, August 12, 2014

Germany – the country on which Ontario modelled its approach to renewable energy development – has a $412-billion lesson for Ontario. That’s the amount the country has spent on subsidies in support of solar and wind energy, among other renewables, over the past 20 years, all in the push to wean the country off fossil fuel and nuclear generation.

On the surface – and according to many news sites – the program has been a success, and not just because of the 378,000 people renewables now employ.

By the end of 2012 (the most recent year for data), wind and solar provided about 13% of all German electricity consumption. Adding in hydro and biomass, renewables provided more than 23%. And in May, headline writers around the world proudly trumpeted that renewable energy provided 75% of the country’s total electricity consumption.

Not what it seems

But scratch a bit below the surface and an entirely different picture emerges – one with households being pushed into “energy poverty” as renewable subsidies lead to soaring power bills, handouts to the country’s big businesses and exporters so they can avoid paying for those subsidies and a systematic bankrupting of traditional utilities. As for that one day in May when headlines celebrated that 75% of power generation came from renewables, well, it was a Sunday when demand for power is at its lowest level.

Germany’s decision to support renewable energy at all costs has, ultimately, cost the country’s ratepayers billions of dollars and led to a doubling of monthly electricity bills over the past decade. Households now pay the second highest rates for electricity in the EU – second only to Denmark, the world leader in wind turbines. The country’s feed-in tariff program – which offers renewable energy producers a guaranteed rate for their power – has already cost $412-billion, but could, according to one estimate from the former Minister of the Environment Peter, produce an $884-billion price tag by 2022. Germany will hand out $31.1-billion of renewable energy subsidies in this year alone.

The price of electricity paid by German households has increased from 14 cents (euro) per kilowatt hour in 2000 to 29 cents per kilowatt hour last year – marking a 107% increase, while inflation over that time period was about 22%. The biggest reason for that increase is the renewable energy subsidy, which amounted to 1.4% of the total bill when it was first introduced in 2000, but now accounts for 18%. That renewable levy now costs the average household in Germany more than $320 a year.

Electricity now a luxury

Rising electricity prices for households led Der Spiegel, one of the country’s most respected magazines, to warn that electricity was becoming a “luxury good.” More than 300,000 households each year are being left in the dark because they can’t afford electricity.

German households are being hit particularly hard by the cost of renewable subsidies because the country’s largest businesses – many of them exporters and in energy-intensive sectors – have been exempt from paying for them. Regulators and politicians – fearing that that high electricity prices would hurt the economy and result in job losses or plant closures – gave big business a free pass and instead shifted the costs to households.

The renewable subsidies have distorted Germany’s power market to such an extent that traditional utilities are being pushed to the brink of collapse. Electricity generated from solar and wind has no relationship with the market. Because the price the producers receive is guaranteed and is not based on demand, they dump their output whenever it is produced. This glut of power has, at times, pushed the price of wholesale power below zero – meaning the utilities need to pay someone to use it. This has skewed the price to such an extent that traditional generators can’t economically produce power – they simply stop producing when the price goes too low.

While the answer would seem to be to close those uneconomic generators, that’s not possible since renewable energy is intermittent – at times it will produce no power, while at others it will produce too much – and traditional generators are needed to provide a secure, reliable source of power. Utilities are being asked to keep producing power even though the economics of it don’t make sense anymore. To prevent utilities in Germany from pulling out of the business of generation, the government now offers more than billion dollars in “balancing payments” – sometimes 400 times the price of power – to stabilize the grid.

Renewable producers still can’t survive without subsidies

The rise of renewable power has also led to coal making a comeback. The amount of generation from coal actually increased from 43% of all output in 2011 to nearly 45% in 2012. Electricity generation from lignite, a cheaper and dirtier form of coal, has also been on the rise because, according to one Germany utility, it’s the only thing that can compete with subsidized renewable energy.

The energy situation in Germany has become so disruptive and politically untenable that the government has recently done everything it can to pull back on subsidies and other support for renewable energy, much to the dismay of renewable producers that still can’t survive on their own.

Far from being a success, Germany’s rush into renewable energy has crushed households, taxpayers and utilities. Ontario needs a better model.

Brady Yauch is an economist and the executive director of Consumer Policy Institute.

Read the full article here.

Wind and solar power: the hidden costs

20 Tuesday May 2014

Posted by ottawawindconcerns in Ottawa, Renewable energy, Wind power

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

cost of wind power, cost-benefit analysis wind power, electricity generation, Feed In Tariff, FIT, hydro bills Ontario, Ontario electricity bills, renewable energy, renewable energy generation, renewable energy projects, renewable power, Robert Lyman, Scott Luft, solar power, wind farms, wind power

Wind power: not free

Wind power: not free

Here, from Ottawa-based energy-specialist economist Robert Lyman, a quick look at what many people don’t know (and aren’t getting told by the government or the wind power lobby) about the costs of generating power from wind and solar.

A must-read.

THE HIDDEN COSTS OF ONTARIO RENEWABLE ELECTRICITY GENERATION 

Ontario residents can be forgiven if they fail to understand the public debate during the current (2014) provincial election about the costs of different types of electricity generation and why these have caused electricity rates for consumers to rise so much over the past ten years. The complexity of the system makes it difficult to explain the costs associated with one source of supply, namely the renewable energy generation  (industrial wind turbines and solar power generators). In this note, I will nonetheless try to explain in layperson’s terms why these costs are significant.

Electricity supply in Ontario takes place within the framework of the policy and legislative framework established by the Ontario government, an important part of which is the Green Energy and Economy Act of 2009 (GEA). Historically, the goal of Ontario electricity policy was to keep electricity rates for consumers as low as possible consistent with the goal of maintaining adequate and reliable supply. Within the current framework, however, that is no longer the goal. The GEA seeks to stimulate investment in renewable energy projects (such as wind, solar, hydro, biomass and biogas) and to increase energy conservation.  To do this, it:

  • Changed the review process for renewable energy projects to reduce environmental assessment and hasten approvals
  • Created a Feed-in-Tariff that the Independent Electricity Systems Operator (IESO) must pay, guaranteeing the specific rates for energy generated from renewable sources (typically, the rates are fixed for the full term of the twenty year contracts, with inflation escalators)
  • Established the right to connect to the electricity grid for renewable energy projects and gave renewable energy source preferential access over other sources of generation
  • Implemented a “smart” grid to support the development of renewable energy projects
  • Eliminated local approval requirements that local governments previously could impose on renewable energy projects

The guaranteed rates paid under the FIT system are not negotiated based upon the actual costs of production. In fact, the actual costs of production are largely unknown. …

Read the full analysis here: THE HIDDEN COSTS OF ONTARIO RENEWABLE ELECTRICITY GENERATION

Samsung project “dead” in Southgate

03 Thursday Apr 2014

Posted by ottawawindconcerns in Health, Renewable energy, Wind power

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Brian Milne, community opposition wind farms, Feed In Tariff, Not a Willing host, Samsung, Southgate, unwilling host, wind farms

Mayor says there were too many “issues” and not enough municipal control. Samsung’s proposed agreement demanded all building permits, access to roads and virtually everything they needed, in return for payments of $180,000 per year for the wind power project. Each of the 56 turbines would have netted Samsung $775,000 per year, under the government’s Feed In Tariff subsidy program.

The community held a meeting a few weeks ago, featuring a local Realtor who said property values in Southgate would disappear, and University of Guelph economics professor Ross McKitrick, who said wind power is expensive and ineffective as a reliable source of power.

Here is the news story.

News Centre

Samsung Project Dead

Thursday, April 3, 2014 8:28 AM by Jon Meyer

Southgate Council votes against the wind project with unwilling host status.

There is audio for this story.

MP3 - click to open click to open MP3 version

or click the play button to listen now.

(Southgate) – The large wind turbine project in Southgate has apparently been stopped.

Mayor Brian Milne says the Samsung, Pattern Energy project needed willing host status from the Township to move ahead.

At last night’s meeting, Milne says Council voted unanimously to stop the wind  project by declaring itself an unwilling host.

Milne says there was no way the township could resolve a number of issues it had with the project, without more control.

He says it was apparent the project would tear the community apart.

Samsung needed willing host status to move ahead with its 50 turbine, 120-megawatt wind farm proposal.

Milne applauds the Province for giving them that out clause, and the ability to say no.

But Milne wishes the Province gave them site plan control.

Instead, he says council had to say yes, with no conditions.

He says just three weeks ago Southgate was in the process of considering being a willing host.

But Milne says that was only if they could come to terms on a agreement on a number of issues — which included a good neighbour policy and issues around health and property values.

But Milne says they couldn’t come to those terms, and they had no choice but to stop the project.

The decision comes…

Read the full story here.

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