Wind Blog

Bruce Power has announced plans to ship 16 old generators from the Bruce Plant to Sweden for recycling. The 100 tonne generators will be loaded onto a ship in the Port of Owen Sound for their passage through the Great Lakes, then on to Sweden. 90% of the material in the generators will be recycled, with the balance returned to the Bruce Plant to store as low level nuclear waste. The Mayor of Owen Sound, Sarnia, and others have expressed concerns, and believe the plan needs careful study. I think there are legitimate concerns and questions that need to be answered before this plan to move toxic material is approved.
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Our electricity generating plants are old. The coal and nuclear plants were built between the late 60’s and the 1980’s. Some of them need replacing, as the cost to keep them operating is becoming too high. Read the rest of this entry »

The Ontario Power Authority has proposed a major change to the MicroFIT program, and it has people hopping mad. The MicroFIT program is part of the Province’s Feed In Tariff program that allows people to generate power and sell it back to the grid. The OPA has proposed to reduce the tariff for ground mounted photo voltaic arrays to 58.8 cents/kWh from 80.2.
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Gideon Forman, Executive Director of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment made a presentation at the monthly meeting of the Bruce Peninsula Environment Group (BPEG). The topic was the impact of wind turbines on human health. It made for a lively evening.
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Wind turbines sometimes come under criticism for killing birds. While it is true that wind turbines kill some birds, the average turbine kills about 2 birds per year. This number needs to be kept in perspective. For ecologists, it isn’t the death of an individuals that matters – all living things will die someday. It is the impact on populations that matters. A recent story on the possible impact on birds in the US Gulf of Mexico from the BP oil spill may help to provide perspective.
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This is the title of a new book by Tom Rand. I have heard of Tom Rand – he is involved with Clean Tech in Toronto, and has a profile in the clean energy space. So I though I would read his book.
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The President of Houston Spectra Energy, which owns Union Gas, was in the Toronto Star today. Greg Ebel is giving interviews and speeches extolling the virtues of natural gas, and questioning why the province is signing contracts to buy wind and solar energy, when new technology has given us “100 years worth of gas” that can be used to produce electricity.

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Alanna Mitchell, former environment reporter for the Globe and Mail, and author of Dancing at the Dead Sea has written a major and important book about the sea. Or maybe it is about climate change, and it impact on life in the sea. It is a must read for anyone concerned about climate change. It stands beside The Weathermakers for its importance to our understanding of the science behind climate change.
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This year’s Federal budget is wildly over the top in its claims to be stimulating the economy. And in the renewable energy sector, the only Federal program of note has lost its funding. There will be less jobs building renewable energy facilities in the future.
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The European Wind Energy Association released statistics on newly installed wind in 2009. The number demonstrates clearly that other sources of generation are threatened by wind.
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