The great Solar game
We know that the use of traditional hydro is not good for the environment, consequently Pols are under great presure to move into renewables - Solar and Wind. In both areas the move is not without growing pains. Wind has been coming under attack by residents who are going to have to live with the behemoths of generation. Some windmills are going to be over 200 metres high. Residents who are going to have to live with these things are using any argument they can to stop the installation. The greatest objection is one that may hold some water; until somebody can prove they are healthy to live beside perhaps they should not be installed.Solar power, on the other hand is very economical to run, but expensive to install. Solar banks that can be installed on household roofs are extremely expensive for what they are and have a long payback period. But George Smitherman, chasing a legacy item, has worked out a deal with the hydro companies and Samsung to blanket the province with both jobs and turbines. Well that was until the last provincial Cabinet meeting, where according to "informed sources" the plan was trashed by the majority. So back to the drawing board. But one of the key elements is the basis for the formation of a local buying group for solar installations. join the group set up by "Go Green Together" and you will be able to join in discounts produced by bulk buying.
But the rationale for going green on your rooftop is the decision made by Smitherman to direct the hydro company to buy back all the power produced by solar panels at 80cents per kwh, this directive is for the next twenty years. When one buys traditional power at an average of 10 cents per hour that is a whacking 70cent subsidy per kwh used. What a deal! put enough panels on your roof to power your needs and you will end up being given about 70 cents for each kwh used. That's the way I read it, please correct me if I am wrong. The big question is - how many panels do I need to cover my consumption, because if my roof isn't big enough to handle the requirement why bother?
10 comments:
A while back I heard wind advocate windbag Paul Gipe give the short sgrift to Matt Galloway on CBC. I was so incensed by Mr. Gipe's high-handed arrogance that I wrote and told him how it is precisely his kind of holier-than-thou attitude that gives causes like his a bad name. I didn't hear back from Mr. Gipe -the message was replied to by Marion Fraser -whom I think might be Marion Botsford Fraser, writer and Walrus staffer. She dressed me down as if having the nerve to question the catechism and the catechist all at the same time was heresy in the extreme.
Anyway, in July I was passing through Swift Current Sask., when I met a farmer in a motel bar who serves on his local municipal council. He was very disturbed at the number of turbines dotting the prairie withing earshot of his farm. He told me you can feel them at night from 2-miles away and he wondered who's going to take them down when they've outlived their usefulness. He refuses to allow them on his property and wondered why every entreaty he got to hand over his pasture to a wind company came from Bay Street in Toronto.
I happen to thing the whole thing is a scam to appease the more rabid end of the environmental lobby and to access easy money from provincial governments eager to appease the more rabid end of the environmental lobby.
DJC
Of all the 'green' initiatives we've seen floated, this one of subsidizing the cost of solar panels on the roof is the one that has captured popular imagination. The others come across as preachy: do this because you love the planet, don't you? This one comes across as inviting: do this and you might make money to offset some of your on-going energy expenses or cover off all of that and make a little on the side.
I hope the 'green' preachers now realize: that's how to grab our attention.
I wonder how you could "feel" a wind farm - they don't generate wind - they slow it down. Some kind of turbulence could be generated maybe?
Some interesting reading here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_effects_of_wind_power
Some of the more extreme opposition to wind turbines reminds me of the opposition to railways in the Britain of the 1830s. I quote from "Railways and the Victorian Imagination" by Michael Freeman, Yale University Press ( page 13):
"As one surveys and ponders the mass of contemporary documentation that records the dawn of the railway age in Britain, it is hard to avoid being drawn towards the more cataclysmic perspectives. John Milton's Pandemonium has been cited as the image that best represents or captures the impact that the industrial revolution and the coming of the machine age had upon people’s minds. The sight of a moving cylindrical contraption on wheels, belching smoke and fumes, but without any visible means of animate propulsion, brought desperate fears and anxieties, as well as awe and admiration."
Despite DJC's criticisms of Via rail he would probably admit that on the whole railways were a net benefit to society. Perhaps in another 180 years the opposition to wind turbines will also be considered as somewhat extreme and rather exaggerated.
Some of the more extreme opposition to wind turbines reminds me of the opposition to railways in the Britain of the 1830s. I quote from "Railways and the Victorian Imagination" by Michael Freeman, Yale University Press ( page 13):
"As one surveys and ponders the mass of contemporary documentation that records the dawn of the railway age in Britain, it is hard to avoid being drawn towards the more cataclysmic perspectives. John Milton's Pandemonium has been cited as the image that best represents or captures the impact that the industrial revolution and the coming of the machine age had upon people’s minds. The sight of a moving cylindrical contraption on wheels, belching smoke and fumes, but without any visible means of animate propulsion, brought desperate fears and anxieties, as well as awe and admiration."
Despite DJC's criticisms of Via rail he would probably admit that on the whole railways were a net benefit to society. Perhaps in another 180 years the opposition to wind turbines will also be considered as somewhat extreme and rather exaggerated.
I'm hoping to get an opinion piece published in The G&M about the madness of high-speed rail between Toronto and Montreal. The gist is this: We don't need HSR. We need SSR; Slow Speed Rail that stops in places like Cobourg and Port Hope (and maybe Brighton and Colborne too). But because the foamers (train buffs like Transport 2000)and the environmental lobby are all for spending $23-billion dollars on a Canadian TGV and because the idea is so ridiculous it'll probably happen. Just like the ridiculous idea of a new station where none is needed will happen. When you consider the massive upheaval of land, re-routing of rivers, blocking up of roads -HSR is an environmental catastrophe waiting to happen. Yet it's proponents, like the proponents of wind turbines see and hear ony what ausages their own consciences. They, and they alone, are saving the world. The rest of us are, if not criminals, luddites at best.
In December 2008 the schedule of the thrice-weekly VIA train from Vancouver to Toronto journey was re-adjusted to take 3½ days, VIA Rail explaining that the journey time cannot be made significantly shorter due to congestion caused by freight traffic. In 1895, it then took four days to travel the 2,700 miles between Vancouver and Toronto, which was an average speed of 28 miles per hour (or about 45 kph). The average speed for this rail journey has hardly increased since the 19th century.
In 1895 the journey time from Toronto to Ottawa then took ten hours, which was also an average speed of about 45 kph. However in 2008 the fastest Toronto to Ottawa train now takes just takes 4 hours and 21 minutes averaging 102 kph, over twice as fast as in 1895. Similarly the trip from Ottawa to Montreal was 4 hours in 1895 and now takes 1 hour and 44 minutes, the average speed increasing from 47 kph to 111 kph. Why does VIA Rail provide a useful and well used rail service in Southern Ontario and Southern Quebec but appears to neglect the rest of the country? A technical reason for the difference in average speeds might be that the railway between Vancouver and Toronto is still mainly single track, but between Toronto and Ottawa and Montreal the tracks are either double or used exclusively by VIA trains. But there may also be historical reasons. The original railway from the Pacific to Central Canada was a nation building project inspired by Conservative Prime Minister Sir John A MacDonald. The Dominion of Canada gave land grants totalling about the area of England to the Canadian Pacific Railway as an incentive. In the 1970s the CPR ceased to operate passenger trains but did not return the land. The trans-continental train was subsequently scaled back several times and re-routed so that it unfortunately now fails to serve major cities such as Sault Ste. Marie, Thunder Bay, Regina and Calgary. Now it serves mainly tourists and grandparents, but only three times a week.
Other countries have not abandoned passenger rail travel, but over the past 30 years have enhanced it. In Europe, Japan and other countries high speed trains provide fast, safe, economical, ecologically friendly travel that is seldom affected by bad weather. We do not even need the advantages and extra expense of 300 kph trains in Canada to make major improvements. If the existing southern Ontario and Quebec average train speed could be accomplished on cross-Canada journeys the trip from Vancouver to Toronto could be made in 42 hours. If the faster and more frequent transcontinental trains became as popular as the ones in southern Ontario and Quebec the benefits would not just be for transcontinental travellers but also for trips to and from all the intermediate cities. The existing rolling stock owned by VIA rail is capable of much faster average speeds than currently possible on the existing track, and interestingly if the journey times were halved the train frequency could be doubled with the existing rolling stock and staff.
It does not seem so unreasonable that 123 years after Canada’s first transcontinental train travel that there should be a double track passenger railway across the country. Canada is expecting major economic and employment problems and there is much talk about government subsidization the auto industry (which may unavoidable but not effective in the long term), or infrastructure projects to re-build sewers and bridges (which are important but really should be dealt with by ongoing maintenance and replacement programs). Government support to build a proper passenger railway would benefit the citizens of Canada by cheaper and faster travel, and would lead to a great stimulus to our economy and in job creation which is just what we need. The time taken to entirely rebuild tracks might last over ten years, but since the coming recession is expected to last a long time perhaps this could be precisely the kind of long term project with lasting benefits that the country requires.
But, Greg, VIA says we need more and better stations. Somehow VIA thinks more and better stations will improve sevice.
Your post is historically accurate and well researched and I thank you.
Perhaps you could address my sense of things that VIA is in the business not of getting people where they want to go but of spending public money as fast and as uselessly as they can get their fully-bilingual hands on it.
Merklin
I sent my piece to the G&M in January but they chose not to publish it. You are welcome to use any of my research in your efforts
Ben remarks, "until somebody can prove [wind turbines] are healthy to live beside perhaps they should not be installed."
The idea that Ben suggests has been termed the Precautionary Principle. This article describes a recent victory for this principle with respect to the issue of dumping industrial sludge on agricultural land.
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