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Huron County resident concerned about new green energy contracts
Credit: By Janice MacKay | April 7, 2016 | blackburnnews.com ~~
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Translate: FROM English | TO English
A former wind advocate in Huron County says the province’s green energy approach is creating more emissions.
A former organizer for Citizen’s for Renewable Energy in Huron County calls it ridiculous that province is continuing to bring more wind projects on line.
Bob Budd says unreliable renewable energy must be backed up by emissions-creating natural gas, which must increase along with the green energy production.
Budd quotes the Ontario Society of Professional Engineers who say by 2032 we’ll increase emissions as we increase our reliance on natural gas.
“We’re taking this mix of intermittent wind and solar, combining it with a lot more natural gas, so we end up with a grid that’s dirtier, because that natural gas and renewables is replacing about a third of our nuclear fleet, the gold standard of emissions free power production,” says Budd.
Budd says private fossil fuels companies are being paid for power that used to come from publicly owned clean nuclear and hydro-electric sources.
He adds more companies, farms and residents are converting to cheaper dirtier natural gas. Ontario has no natural gas resources of its own and is relying on natural gas through fracking in the U.S.
He adds that our electricity system only creates about 9% of Ontario’s emissions, compared to 39% created by the transportation system. But he says its difficult to encourage clean electric cars when we keep pushing the price power up.
Budd says it would have made much more sense to have used all of the money we are pouring into offshore corporations for green energy, to reduce transportation emissions.
He adds we are forced to export power costing us about $0.12 a kilowatt hour for a price of about $0.02.He says it’s bizarre that we are helping neighbouring jurisdictions offer cheaper power to lure companies to their regions.
“That last round of contracts for wind, we basically curtailed five times that amount,” says Budd. “We paid them not to produce five times the amount that we just contracted last year. So to add that this year, and to double that again next year, it’s just almost ridiculous.”
The province recently awarded Just contracts for five new wind farms, and is now opening competition for twice that amount of wind energy.
Ontario will accept the bids for 600 megawatts of wind energy, 250 megawatts of solar, 50 megawatts of hydroelectricity and 30 megawatts of bioenergy.
Budd says renewable energy like wind only makes sense for small scale applications.
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