Tag Archives: subsidies renewables

Ontario needs to learn from Europe’s green energy debacle, says policy advisor

16 Thursday Apr 2015

Posted by in Renewable energy, Wind power

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Financial Post, April 14

Ontario will follow the EU at its peril — power rates will soar while industries depart

As the Ontario government announces new unilateral climate policies, Canadian policymakers would be well advised to heed the lessons of Europe’s self-defeating green energy debacle.

The European Union has long been committed to unilateral efforts to tackle climate change. For the last 20 years, Europe has felt a duty to set an example through radical climate policy-making at home. Political leaders were convinced that the development of a low-carbon economy based on renewables would give Europe a competitive advantage.

European governments have advanced the most expensive forms of energy generation at the expense of the least expensive kinds. No other major emitter has followed the EU’s aggressive climate policy and targets. As a result, electricity prices in Europe are now more than double those in North America and Europe’s remaining and struggling manufacturers are rapidly losing ground to international competition. European companies and investors are pouring money into the U.S., where energy prices have fallen to less than half those in the EU, thanks to the shale gas revolution.

Although EU policy has managed to reduce CO2 emissions domestically, this was only achieved by shifting energy-intensive industries to overseas locations without stringent emission limits, where energy and labour is cheap and which are now growing much faster than the EU.

Most products consumed in the EU today are imported from countries without binding CO2 targets. While the EU’s domestic CO2 emissions have fallen, if you factor in CO2 emissions embedded in goods imported into EU, the figure remains substantially higher.

Of all the unintended consequences of EU climate policy perhaps the most bizarre is the detrimental effect of wind and solar schemes on the price of electricity generated by natural gas. Many gas power plants can no longer operate enough hours. They incur big costs as they have to be switched on and off to back-up renewables.

Most products consumed in the EU today are imported from countries without binding CO2 targets

This week, Germany’s energy industry association warned that more than half of all power plants in planning are about to fold: Even the most efficient gas-fired power plants can no longer be operated profitably.

Every 10 new units worth of wind power installation has to be backed up with some eight units worth of fossil fuel generation. This is because fossil fuel plants have to power up suddenly to meet the deficiencies of intermittent renewables. In short, renewables do not provide an escape route from fossil fuel use without which they are unsustainable.

Read more here: http://business.financialpost.com/fp-comment/eus-green-energy-debacle-shows-the-futility-of-climate-change-policies

Eastern Ontario farmers on turbines: expensive, inefficient, and No thanks

11 Friday Apr 2014

Posted by in Wind power

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According to the Eastern edition of Farmers Forum, the paper did a survey at the recent Farm Show in Ottawa and asked people whether they “approve” of wind turbines.

The startling result is the majority of those responding said they did NOT approve of large-scale wind turbines, and the reason for most was that wind power was expensive and inefficient. Several remarked on what having turbines would do to their community (thank you! You are the good guys!) and others said that the economics just didn’t make any sense. The Auditor General for Ontario said that to the government in 2011, but it still has not done any cost-benefit analysis.

Note that one North Gower area farm owner said he is “not allergic to money” and would still put one on his property—not where he lives, we venture.

Farmers not sold on wind turbines, survey says

By Brandy Harrison

OTTAWA — While farmers are among the few who can directly benefit financially from hosting wind turbines, Eastern Ontario farmers are more likely to oppose than support them, a Farmers Forum survey shows.

In a random survey of 100 farmers at the Ottawa Valley Farm Show from March 11 to 13, nearly half — 48 per cent — disapproved of wind turbines. Another 29 per cent approved and the remaining 23 per cent said they were neutral.

But positions on the issue weren’t always clear cut. Even when farmers threw their lot in with one side of the debate or the other, their reasoning was peppered with pros and cons.

It’s in stark contrast to a Farmers Forum survey of 50 Western Ontario farmers at the London Farm Show in early March, where 58 per cent were strongly opposed to wind turbines. Farmers opposed outnumbered those who approved by nearly three-to-one.

The number of turbines reveal the difference: Of the 67 wind projects representing more than 1,200 turbines province-wide, almost all the turbines dot the landscape of Western Ontario. Only two projects are in Eastern Ontario, an 86-turbine project on Wolfe Island, south of Kingston, and another 10 turbines near Brinston, south of Winchester, which were completed in January.

Wind power is so controversial that 13 farmers polled at the farm show wanted to remain anonymous, unwilling to come out publicly as a supporter or a critic.

Nearly three-quarters of farmers who disapproved liked green energy in theory but panned turbines — and sometimes the Green Energy Act as a whole — as a too-costly, inefficient electricity source that’s driving up their power bill.

Eric VanDenBroek doesn’t mind the look of the turbines that are only a short drive from his Winchester dairy farm but isn’t a fan of the way the program was rolled out.

“Financially, it’s already proving to be a disaster,” …

Read the full story and see the chart of responses here.