April 2, 2026

Local “environmental” coalition CAFES or Community Associations for Environmental Sustainability and OREC, the Ottawa Renewable Energy Cooperative, are teaming up this year to “educate” Ottawa’s rural residents on the positive benefits of accepting renewable energy projects.

In its most recent email newsletter, CAFES announces “Thumbs Up for Renewable Energy” program which “will focus particularly on rural areas of Ottawa, where many projects may be proposed.”

The timing is linked to the next Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) Request For Proposals, which may include large industrial wind power installations.

CAFES says it will host “workshops, site visits, community events, and accessible information resources, the project will help residents better understand the electricity system, engage in discussions about local energy project planning with proper safeguards, and position us to maximize local benefits.”

CAFES claims that Ontario needs a “more resilient grid” without mentioning that industrial-scale or grid-scale wind power projects actually destabilize the grid, require fossil-fuel backup, and in Ontario at least, are completely out of phase with demand. Last year saw weeks when there was no wind, and wind power in Ontario was dramatically below capacity.

Hardly “resilient.”

Although not a charity because of its political bent, CAFES nonetheless receives grants from unnamed sources.

Unaudited financial statements filed for the organization for 2024 show that CAFES received $86,848 in “grant revenue” and a further $28,799 from “donations and fundraising for a total of $138,055 in revenues that year.

As written in this space before, CAFES is all about saving trees and birds and frogs but at the same time quite OK with deforestation of landscapes and the use of productive farmland for wind turbines, which are an industrial land use.

Acknowledging that municipalities have an important role in renewable energy installations (the Ontario government made municipal support a mandatory requirement for successful project applications), CAFES also says their goal is to get projects approved faster and with fewer regulations: “CAFES will be advocating for a more enabling provincial regulatory environment for renewable energy and energy storage.”

In an Open Letter to CAFES written last year following their appearance at Ottawa’s Agricultural and Rural Affairs Committee (ARAC), Ottawa Wind Concerns criticized the group for their stance to reduce regulation and simply approve projects. CAFES had told ARAC that the City of Ottawa needed to “minimize delays” and simply approve renewable energy projects.

Translation: get out of the way and approve big projects.

No matter what citizen concerns exist for the environment, loss of farmland, and money spent on an unreliable, weather-dependent power source. Or that the energy minister himself, Stephen Lecce, has said renewables, i.e., industrial wind, are not the affordable reliable solution Ontario needs.

CAFES and its partner OREC that seeks investment in power projects certainly have the money to put on workshops and events (even free lunches as they did to promote battery storage) to promote their agenda, but we’ve already seen the enthusiasm rural communities will bring to opposing industrial projects in quiet rural areas. In Ontario, 159 municipalities are now Unwilling Hosts to new wind power project, a decision they made out of experience with industrial wind, not fear of the unknown.

The patronizing nature of this campaign to “educate” rural residents on their electricity system will not go unnoticed.

ottawawindconcerns@gmail.com