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Tag Archives: Rick Conroy

Green energy done badly: views from around the world

02 Saturday Apr 2016

Posted by ottawawindconcerns in Renewable energy, Wind power

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Tags

electricity bills, environmental damage, Financial Post, Germany green energy, green energy, Ontario economy, power grid Ontario, Rick Conroy, Terence Corcoran, wind farms, wind power, wind turbines, Wynne government

WEEKEND READING

Wind Concerns Ontario

April 2, 2016

We present a collection of stories that review the manner in which strategies that are supposedly positive for the environment have been enacted (usually without any sort of cost-benefit or full impact analysis), and what the results are to date.

From Terence Corcoran’s review in The Financial Post, to a review of German energy policy (this is a sad, sad story worthy of Dickens), an article in Prince Edward County’s Wellington Times (one of the last independent newspapers in Canada) on a wind power developer’s arrogance, and last, an opinion on what the real effect on the local environment green energy policies are in reality, the collection deserves a read … and consideration by the Ontario government.

Will they? In the words of the team of academics lead by the University of Ottawa’s Stewart Fast, writing recently about the disastrous implementation of the Green Energy Act on Ontario communities, “Our recommendations will unfortunately remain unaddressed, without further consideration or assessment of the lessons that could be learned.” [Fast et al. Lessons learned from Ontario wind energy disputes, January, 2016]

Terence Corcoran, The Financial Post, “Clean, green, and catastrophic.” (Note: our Parker Gallant provided some figures for this article.)

Handelsblatt (Global edition) “How to kill an industry”. (Thanks to energy economist Robert Lyman in Ottawa for sending this in.)

Rick Conroy, The Wellington Times, “There’s always a catch.” (“The wolf has been sent to find out what’s killing all the lambs …” Conroy writes.)

Last, this letter to the editor of Ontario Farmer, excerpted here.

“Off-grid will make a bad situation worse for reluctant grid payees”

A farming friend recently took me on a “crop tour” of rural businesses that are partially or fully off-grid. We saw a sawmill, a pressed-steel manufacturer, a maker of wood-burning stoves, a cabinet-maker and an ethanol plant. Finding it progressively more difficult to remain profitable in the agricultural business with skyrocketing electrical costs, my friend is seriously looking at more cost-effective alternatives. If going off-grid works for others, perhaps it will work for him.

“Off-grid” means that these business owners are no longer victims of usurious hydro rates the Ontario Green Energy Act (GEA) has imposed on the vast majority who obtain electricity from Hydro One and other such utility companies. Are these enterprises trailblazers illuminating a path to greater energy independence for other beleaguered hydro ratepayers?

Or are they creating an even greater financial burden for those who remain on the grid?

And what may be the environmental impact if a great many businesses follow suit?

Operating the Ontario power grid has become exorbitantly expensive under the GEA. It is becoming ever more expensive as greater numbers of windmills spring up to further sully our rural landscapes. … Operating costs of a centralized generation and distribution system are borne by all users. The more users there are, the less share of fixed costs each user pays. Businesses fleeing to off-grid energy alternatives leave fewer users on-grid bearing fixed costs; thus, each user pays more. While going off-grid may financially benefit those who do it, greater economic burden falls on those remaining on-grid, and most have no choice.

Fossil fuels are the primary energy source for off-grid users. Electricity to run their businesses must be generated by some sort of power plant, typically an internal combustion engine driving and electrical generator. It’s far removed from the most cost-effective or environmentally friendly way to generate and distribute electricity —the way we used to do it — but the GEA has made grid power so prohibitively expensive off-grid generation has become economically viable for major energy users.

Dave Plumb

Belmont, Ontario

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Rick Conroy on Amherst Island wind power project: the terrible prospect

01 Saturday Feb 2014

Posted by ottawawindconcerns in Renewable energy, Wind power

≈ 3 Comments

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Algonquin Power, Amherst Island wind farm, bird kills wind farms, James Bradley Environment, Ministry of Natural Resources Ontario, Ontario Ministry of the Environment, Prince Edward County wind projects, Rick Conroy, Wellington Times, wind farms and environment, wind farms and health effects, wind farms environmental damage, wind farms Ontario

There are very few independent newspapers left in Canada. Most are now part of chains, and as a result, their editorial content follows whatever line the ownership decrees. Here then is the refreshing view of wind power in Ontario from editor of The Wellington Times, the “must-read” tab in Prince Edward County.

The Times

Last defence

The channel that separates Amherst Island from Prince Edward County is scarcely two kilometres wide. The island itself is tiny—just 20 kilometres long and seven kilometres across at its widest point. It is likely that in some ancient past Prince Edward County and Amherst Island were connected.

Now these communities share a common threat—a threat to the birds that stopover on their way north and south. To the animals that live here and make this unique habitat their own. To a pastoral way of life. And to the very health and well-being of the folks who who call these island communities home.

Earlier this month, the Ontario Ministry of Environment (MOE) deemed complete an application by a company controlled by Algonquin Power to construct as many as 37 industrial wind turbines on this small and fragile island. Thirty seven turbines. Each soaring more than 400 feet into the air— blades sweeping the sky over a span of 10,000 square metres (equal to two acres of sky for each turbine).

Once erected— there will be no escape. No place to avoid the unrelenting thrum or flicker from blades swooshing overhead. No safe passage for migrating birds seeking to avoid the treacherous minefield of turbines stretching across the island.

The playground for the only elementary school on the island lies within 550 metres of one of the proposed turbines. Hydro One won’t allow wind turbines that close to its transmission lines for fear of damage—but the Ontario government deems school children less valuable, it seems.

The simple truth is that it is impossible to cram 37 turbines onto this tiny island and avoid putting humans, animals and natural habitat at risk. It is why the developer, in a report prepared by a consultant on the threat posed by this project to more than 14 endangered or threatened species, stresses that it will work to minimize the impact of its project, but that its first obligation is to “ensure the commitments of the contract” and “ensure renewable energy is delivered to the province”. The developer has made it clear what its priorities are.

We know too, from experience in this community, what the province’s priorities are. The MOE and Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) is already running ahead to clear the regulatory path for the developer. Endangered species and human health concerns are merely check boxes on a form to be filled in.

Once the turbines are erected Amherst Island will be lost for at least a generation—disfigured and devastated for the duration of the developer’s guaranteed 20-year contract with the province. For species on the brink of survival, the damage may well be permanent.

Read the full article here.

Ostrander Point appeal: citizens vs government in court next week

17 Friday Jan 2014

Posted by ottawawindconcerns in Health, Renewable energy, Wind power

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

bird kills wind farms, Blanding's Turtle, ERTs, Green Energy Act, James Bradley Environment, Ontario Ministry of the Environment, Ostrander Point, Rick Conroy, Wellington Times, wind farms environmental damage, wind turbines environmental damage

Final chapter

Fair-Fight

PECFN and APPEC are represented by Eric Gillespie and Natalie Smith. The MOE is represented by Sylvia Davis and Sarah Kronkamp. Gilead Power’s case will be argued by Doug Hamilton, Chris Wayland and Sam Rogers of Mc- Carthy Tetrault.

Ostrander Point victory to be tested in appeal court next week

There are many people will be nervously watching developments in a Toronto courtroom beginning next Tuesday. It is here that likely the last chapter of the industrial wind turbines on Ostrander Point is to be written.

HOW WE GOT HERE
In 2009, the Green Energy Act was made law. The sweeping legislation comprised an array of measures designed to ease the development of more renewable energy projects in the province. It reduced or eliminated regulations and processes used by its safeguarding agencies, including the Ministry of Environment, the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Ontario Energy Board. It replaced several regulatory appeals with one—the Environmental Review Tribunal.

Politicians, such as former MPP Leona Dombrowski, assured anxious rural Ontario residents, communities and their local leaders that the ERT, or Tribunal, would be independent, thorough and their conclusions would be final. Many residents were unsettled by the assurances—viewing the ERT as merely the last checkbox for a developer to tick before being released to plunder the provincial treasure and lay waste to the rural countryside. It was viewed as a cynical contrivance by a government fixated on seeing thousands of industrial wind turbines spinning in the provincial countryside. It would be Premier Dalton McGuinty’s legacy to Ontarians.

To ensure ERT adjudicators weren’t being led astray by sympathetic arguments by those defending their communities, livelihoods and natural environment, the Green Energy Act dictated that the legal test for the ERT would be impossibly high.

To be successful an appeal to this panel would have to prove “serious harm to human health” or in the case of birds, animals and their habitat the requirement is to prove “serious and irreversible harm.”

OSTRANDER POINT
Late in 2011 the Ministry of Environment issued a Renewable Energy Approval to Gilead Power Corporation, enabling it to proceed with its plan to erect nine industrial wind turbines, each soaring 423 feet into the flight path of the millions of birds that migrate through the region each spring and fall. It granted the approval on Crown Land—essentially industrializing a rugged and largely wild bit of the south shore of Prince Edward County.

Two appeals were made to the province’s ERT.

The Alliance to Protect Prince Edward County presented witnesses who described the damaging effects of living near industrial wind turbines. They presented scientific and medical evidence to support their position that wind turbines were hurting Ontario residents and that no other project should be permitted until a thorough and independent study of the health effects was conducted and shown to be safe.

The Prince Edward County Field Naturalists presented expert evidence on the rare and sensitive alvar habitat at Ostrander Point. Evidence showed that a number of endangered species of birds and animals shared this unique ecosystem, and that tipping the balance to industrial development would put the survival of endangered species in peril.

Read the full article here.

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