Category Archives: Environmental sustainability
A mistake to link emissions reduction and job creation to the province’s electricity system
Ontario has so far approved thousands of green energy contracts, ranging in size from a few solar panels on the roof of a family home to industrial-scale projects, in which they agree to pay several times the going electricity rate … Continue reading
Filed under Environmental sustainability, Wind power
National food strategy rooted in Elgin
Posted by Ian: With no clearly defined picture as to what Canada’s agri-industry should look like in the coming decades, the Ontario Federation of Agriculture is taking a lead role in devising a national food strategy. OFA vice-president Mark Wales, … Continue reading
Despite bubbles, governments keep pumping air into alternative energy
While investment analysts are telling their clients to get out of solar power firms and warning about the continuing risks in wind and bioenergy schemes, Ottawa and the provinces are on a mad populist stampede to throw billions of dollars … Continue reading
Wind power is unreliable, expensive and doesn’t result in lower C02 emmissions. Why is Ontario still rushing ahead with it?
In October 2007, the Ontario Power Authority (OPA) — the government’s own agency, tasked with planning Ontario’s power system and now entering into long-term contracts with renewable energy producers — published its Integrated Power System Plan, where it analyzed a … Continue reading
Filed under Environmental sustainability, Wind power
Will Canada’s wind turbines invade lakes?
A proposal to put 700 wind turbines along the shores of Lakes St. Clair and Erie, each about as tall as a 40-story building, is provoking controversy in Canada and the U.S. The turbines, planted on the lake bottom and … Continue reading
Filed under Environmental sustainability, Wind power
Millions Have Been Invested in Wind Farms, but That Hasn’t Brought Jobs
Posted by Ian: Following Ontario’s $7 billion deal with Samsung, will the province really benefit from the creation of green energy jobs? Not according to a study looking at the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act which found early $2 billion … Continue reading
Here’s how a similar mindset to Dalton’s Green Energy Act is playing out in the north of England
Posted by Ian: Does this not sound very much like Dalton McGuinty’s Green Energy Act which severely limits local municipal and resident opposition to wind farms. And where is the requested study on the effects of wind turbine noise? Here’s … Continue reading
Filed under Environmental sustainability, Wind power
What happens when politics displaces market forces in green energy initiatives?
When driving through Don Quixote country in Spain’s Castille-La Mancha region, you are dazzled by the spectacle of wind farms proudly churning out the energy that will save Iberia and the planet, followed, once you cross into Andalusia, by solar … Continue reading
Filed under Environmental sustainability, Solar power, Wind power
S. Ontario straw becomes Ford Flex storage bins
Research at the University of Waterloo has led four southern Ontario farmers to send straw from soft, white winter wheat to an auto parts plant in Ohio for plastic production that is ending up as third-row storage bins in the … Continue reading
