Tag Archives: wind power Ontario

Polls: what fun they are

20 Wednesday Feb 2013

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

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Oraclepoll Research Limited has just released the “Ontario Omnibus Survey” 2013 (well, it says 2012, but the survey was done this past January) which was commissioned by the wind power developer lobby organization, CanWEA or the Canadian Wind Energy Association. The company surveyed 1,000 people by telephone—that figure represents one out of 9,000 electors in Ontario.

Last year’s survey entertained very different questions and statements, including “Wind energy is one of the safest forms of electricity generation compared to other sources (nuclear and coal).” Agree, neither agree nor disagree, or Disagree. The response was that 78% agreed! 79% in Toronto!

This year’s statement–what the company reported on, anyway–was “Ontario should continue to strive to be a Canadian leader in wind and solar energy [sic]* production.” Agree, neither agree nor disagree or Disagree.

69% agreed!!! 76% in Toronto!!Where there will never be a wind turbine or wind power plant!

Oraclepoll also asked people to rank their preference in power generation: solar, wind, natural gas, hydro, or nuclear. Solar came out on top followed by wind. Now, we know this is no choice at all because when you choose wind as your source of power, you are actually choosing gas, because intermittent wind power needs back-up from something during peak periods of demand…and right now, that’s gas.

We are reminded of an episode of Yes Prime Minister which takes a look at how polls are crafted; the word choice in questions or statements is critical to the outcome of the polls. You may wish to take a short two-minute humour break and view the video, here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0ZZJXw4MTA

With that in mind, here are the statements we’d like to have seen:

Are you concerned about rising power bills in Ontario?

Are you concerned about the effects on small and medium business of higher electricity bills?

Are you worried about the potential for job losses as small and medium business cope with higher power bills?

Are you concerned about higher food prices as a result of higher power costs to local farmers?

Are you concerned about the subsidies given to wind power developers which can be as much as $500,000 per wind turbine, per year?

Are you aware of the health problems being reported in Ontario due to exposure to noise and vibration from wind turbines?

Are you aware of the damage to the environment from large-scale wind turbines, including the killing of birds and other wildlife?

Do you think Ontario should approve hundreds more large-scale wind power generation facilities?

Think the poll might have come out differently with those introductory questions?

Here is a link to the latest CanWEA-sponsored poll.

http://www.canwea.ca/pdf/Canwea-Ontario-Omnibus-Report_Feb2013_Q2_and_Q3.pdf

*Energy is what is used to produce power.

Globe and Mail: wind power in Ontario is “green nightmare”

03 Sunday Feb 2013

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And here it is: wind power generation is not “green” … it won’t replace fossil fuel power generation it doesn’t save lives, and it doesn’t even really work very well. That, and it is actually harmful to the environment, as the power projects displace the natural environment, and harm birds and other wildlife.

Here in the weekend edition of The Globe and Mail, is Margaret Wente’s column on the McGuinty government’s legacy in Ontario. Let’s hope North Gower-Richmond-Ottawa isn’t a victim of the legacy too.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/commentary/mcguintys-legacy-is-a-green-nightmare/article8131320/

This week marks the preliminary hearing in the appeal against the wind power project approved for Ostrander Point, on the south tip of Prince Edward County, which is recognized as a “globally significant” Important Bird Area by the Ontario government and Nature Canada, and where rare plants and endangered wildlife exist. (Hearing is in Picton at the Town Hall, Friday February 8th, starting at 11 a.m.)

Mark your datebook for Thursday night, CBC’s Doc Zone is carrying the made-in-Ontario doc film “Wind Rush.” Catch a preview here: http://www.cbc.ca/doczone/episode/wind-rush.html?subpage=windmill

Email us at ottawawindconcerns@yahoo.ca

The wind power lobbyists get rich: David Frum

27 Sunday Jan 2013

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

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Excellent summary of what wind power in Ontario is really all about from columnist David Frum. Using the example of the egregious project proposed –and now approved–for Prince Edward County and Ostrander Point, Mr Frum says wind power is harming the environment, not helping it.

Add to that the health impacts for residents nearby wind power generation facilities (they’re not “farms”) and you have a lose-lose situation.

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/01/26/david-frum-expensive-power-ruined-landscapes/

Expensive power, ruined lands

David Frum

Must we despoil Ontario’s environment in order to save it?

On Feb. 8, the Environmental Review Tribunal will consider an application to build nine large wind turbines on one of the most scenic points in one of Ontario’s most scenic places.

Ostrander Point Road bisects the small peninsula leading to the Prince Edward Point National Wildlife Area. The peninsula is an open area of meadows and wood thickets, bounded to north and south by the Lake. It’s a true beauty spot, but it also happens to get a lot of wind. Which is why the Ministry of the Environment has approved a project to generate up to 22.5 megawatts of electricity from wind turbines 200-300 feet tall.

This project is the first of many planned for Prince Edward County. This uniquely beautiful region of Ontario — now enjoying an economic revival thanks to winemaking, artisan farming and tourism — is to be spiked with turbines to realize the McGuinty government’s green-energy ambitions.

Moving Ontario off coal is a laudable aspiration. But moving to power that flunks the market test is no boon to the environment. Money is a limited resource, too, and money that is wasted on projects that don’ t make sense is money unavailable for other purposes: hazardous waste clean up, water purification, land conservation.

Wind energy continues to flunk the market test. Ontario buys wind energy at a price 50% higher than it would have to pay for electricity from natural gas. (A new natural gas facility can make money selling electricity at 7-8 cents a kilowatt-hour. Ontario buys newly installed windpower at prices of about 11 cents per kilowatt-hour.)

Worse, unlike solar power, windpower is not likely to become more economic in the future. The main items in the cost of wind are the cost of acquiring the ground underneath the turbines, the cost of wiring turbines to the grid, and the cost of maintaining those wires — in other words, land and labor. Solar power can at least promise to slide down a cost curve. Wind can’t.

Yet Ontario already has installed 1,500 megawatts of wind capacity and is committing to more. Why? There are cheaper and less landscape-blotting ways to go green. But a series of bad decisions in the past have pushed Ontario into a cul-de-sac demanding more and more bad decisions in the years ahead.

The cheapest and cleanest of all energy sources is hydropower. That was true in the past, and it remains true now. Canada has abundant hydro potential — and in fact Manitoba and Quebec have abundant hydro for sale right now.

But if Hydro is cheap in the long run, it requires big investments in the here and now: big investments not only in dams and other facilities, but also big investments in the transmission wires to move the electricity to market.

Those investments must be financed by debt, and Ontario flinches from piling new debt atop its terrifying mountain of existing debt.

Here’s the real beauty of windpower from the McGuinty government’s point of view: The higher cost of wind electricity can be hidden from view, tucked into Hydro consumers’ bills, hidden by gimmicks that few people notice and fewer people understand.

In exchange for receiving a higher price for his power — a much higher price — the wind power producer shoulders the capital cost of financing new electricity capacity. The transaction has the same loan-shark logic as “rent to own” vs. borrowing to buy: You pay more over the life of the product in return for not tapping your dwindling credit.

The bad decision is pushed along by a heavy seasoning of ideology: wind good! dams bad!

And of course lobbying and interest-group politicking exert their own sway over Queen’s Park: A power source that costs 50% more than its next competitor can always find a few hundred thousand dollars to hire and reward friends and supporters.

Wind enriches lobbyists. It satisfies certain varieties of environmentalists. And it protects the McGuinty government from awkward financial realities. That’s a win-win-win all around, except for the over-charged power customers (who won’t know what’s happening until it’s too late) and the people who live upon the brutalized landscape of Prince Edward County (and how many of them — us! — are there anyway)?

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Ottawa Hydro rates up: what’s the rest of the story? Subsidies…

10 Thursday Jan 2013

Posted by in Ottawa, Renewable energy, Wind power

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In today’s Ottawa Citizen, a report from Don Butler on the rise in rates for power from Ottawa Hydro. Here’s a comment from someone whose opinion we regard highly, Robert Lyman, former Director-General, Environmental Affairs, with Transport Canada.

The Citizen story is here: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/technology/Modest+Hydro+Ottawa+increase+masks+steep+rise+electricity+rates/7797528/story.html

With his permission, we post Bob Lyman’s comment here:

It tells only a small part of the story, of course. The focus of the article was on the effects of time-of-use rates as compared to delivery charges, with just a passing reference to the taxpayer subsidy that will expire in a few years. The other way of presenting the increases is in terms of the average costs of electrical energy minus the delivery (transmission and distribution) charges. Those increased 85 % from 2005 to 2011 and were projected by Ontario Power Generation to increase another 46% from 2012 to 2015. There are good reasons to believe that the 46% figure is an under-estimate.
More important, the article did not explain why costs are increasing so much, when demand is falling. The answer lies in much higher costs now being paid for new generation sources like wind and solar and the expensive energy “conservation” programs. The effects of these costs are just beginning to be felt. As industrial wind turbines become a much larger share of generation in future, the cost increases will accelerate.
Add to this the costs of implementing the “smart meters” program, which is probably in the range of $2 billion province-wide for the meters and local distribution costs alone, and the huge costs of expanding the transmission system to pick up all the disparate source of electricity generation from wind, and you have an electrical system headed for major rate increases for the foreseeable future.
We as taxpayers are providing a huge subsidy so that we as ratepayers will be lulled into thinking that the electrical energy system is all right. Unfortunately it isn’t.

 

We would add to this a repetition of the results of a Library of Parliament analysis of the wind power project planned for the south-west rural area of Ottawa, as requested by Nepean-Carleton MP Pierre Poilievre. The research found that the subsidy for this particular project would be on the order of $4.8 MILLION per year.

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MPPs call for halt to wind power development in North Gower-Richmond

03 Monday Sep 2012

Posted by in Health, Ottawa, Wind power

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From the latest online version of the EMC Manotick-Winchester, an account of a news conference held by Conservative MPPs Lisa MacLeod, Vic Fedeli, Randy Pettapiece and Bob Bailey.

The story is here http://www.emcmanotick.ca/20120830/news/Conservative+MPPs+decry+wind+power+in+North+Gower

and here:

Conservative MPPs decry wind power in North Gower

Posted Aug 30, 2012 By Emma Jackson

EMC news – A group of Progressive Conservative MPPs joined Nepean-Carleton MPP Lisa MacLeod in North Gower on Aug. 21 to oppose the Ontario government’s commitment to wind power in Ontario.

A small group of North Gower residents have been fighting a Prowind proposal to build 10 industrial wind turbines just outside the village boundaries, and PC energy critic Vic Fedeli and MPPs Bob Bailey and Randy Pettapiece took time from the Association of Municipalities Ontario conference in Ottawa to show their solidarity.

Fedeli did most of the talking at the brief event at the Rideau Township Archives on North Gower’s main street. He said the McGuinty government’s plan to bring green energy into the province is failing.

“The government’s dream of bringing green energy was forced on Ontario by overpaying for FIT (the feed-in tariff program) and guaranteeing to buy the power whenever it’s made, which is usually at night,” he told a small gathering of residents. “And they stripped municipalities of their decision-making power.”

He said the PC party would like to reverse those three elements of the Green Energy Act, so that residents can have more power to decide what energy projects are built in their communities.

“When you want green energy in your community, (municipalities can ask) is it in a willing host community, do we need the power and is it at a price we can afford,” Fedeli said.

The party is also asking to put all proposed wind projects in the province on hold until a federal study on the health effects of wind turbines is completed.

Gary Thomas, owner of Thomas Tree Farm on McCordick Road, said his house and farm will be within one kilometre of “four or five” turbines planned for the area. He said he’s done some basic calculations and thinks that from about December to February he will experience shadows from the turbines in the afternoons.

“It would drive you crazy. I couldn’t live there, and we’ve been here for 32 years,” said his wife Ruth Thomas.

Thomas said he’s concerned that it will ruin his old-fashioned Christmas tree cutting events. “With the turbines across the road, I don’t know how old-fashioned it will be,” he said.

Passing on the family farm will become difficult as well, because his son’s family will likely refuse to come because of health concerns.

Thomas said he wishes he could be more supportive of such an initiative.

“If they were of any benefit, it would be a different story,” he said. The Conservatives have long lambasted the McGuinty government for their commitment to wind power, claiming that turbines are inefficient and less green than traditional sources of power such as hydro.

Fedeli said he wants the government to focus on retrofitting existing dams and hydro plants to harness water energy, which he said would be more environmentally-friendly and more cost-effective.

Email us at ottawawindconcerns@yahoo.ca

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