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Bill to amend energy act fails and Ostrander project posted to EBR

Liberals and NDP united Thursday night to defeat the Private Member’s Bill sponsored by Prince Edward Hastings MPP Todd Smith which would have restored local municipal government zoning authority over industrial wind.
The vote was was on the motion for Second Reading of bill 10, an act to amend the Green Energy Act, 2009 and the Planning Act. It was defeated 45-32.
“I congratulate Todd on his efforts on this issue,” said Treat Hull, whose campaign for the Green Party in Prince Edward Hastings focused strongly on the wind issue in the provincial election. “Shame on the NDP for siding with the Liberal government against the clearly expressed voices of rural Ontario,” he said.
Former municipal councillor John Thompson counters Hull on Facebook saying the decision is “great news as this bill would have resulted in council’s spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in consuting and legal fees for case preparation and OMB appeals likely leading to the same result as the current REA process.
“The last council has received advice of this nature, too bad that the press reports selectively and some at Shire Hall have selective memory.”
Meanwhile, the Ostrander Point project in Prince Edward County was posted to the Environmental Registry this week.
The proposal is a Class 4 Wind Facility with a total expected generation capacity of 22.5 megawatts, located in the area of Helmer and Babylon roads in southern Prince Edward County.
The proposal is to be posted for a 60-day public review and comment period starting Nov. 30. Questions or comments should be submitted by Jan. 29, 2012 to be considered part of the decision making process by the Ministry of the Environment. Comments submitted in writing or electronically using the website form must reference EBR Registry number 011-5239.
Details here:  http://www.ebr.gov.on.ca/ERS-WEB-External/displaynoticecontent.do?noticeId=MTE1MDIx&statusId=MTcyMzgx&language=en

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  1. Tom says:

    This part of a article from this morning’s Toronto Star titled, Canada’s fossil-fuel powerplants rapped

    Canada’s fossil fuel-powered generating plants average higher greenhouse gas emissions for the same amount of electricity than American or Mexican stations, an international report has found.

    The figures, compiled by the commission that oversees the environmental portions of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), found that Canadian plants release an average of 0.9 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent for every megawatt-hour generated.

    That compares with 0.8 tonnes for U.S. plants and less than 0.7 tonnes for those in Mexico.

    “It’s an issue that has to do with the plant age, the technology, the fuel,” said Orlando Cabrera, one of the authors of the report for the Commission on Environmental Co-operation

    Reducing emissions using the sources that are renewable and safe comes with a price but it’s impact is far less than what we have now.

    We have to start somewhere. Don’t you agree? It is not about political parties and stone walling efforts to reduce the green house gas. Green energy whatever it is, is a step in the right direction.

  2. Chris Keen says:

    From The National Post:

    “A new report from the Auditor-General of Ontario fries much bigger fish. It demonstrates that no Canadian government has gone as far out of line as Ontario’s Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty in misappropriating the levers of authority to achieve green ends. It’s also doubtful any government has ever received such a scathing review from is own auditor.

    In 2009, the McGuinty government literally bulldozed its own regulatory regimes, charged ahead without cost-benefit analysis or business plans, refused to allow cost-cutting alternatives that would have saved ratepayers at least $8-billion and generally allowed the green-industry lobby to dictate the structure of the province’s electricity sector in its favour. The specifics of the report point not just to bad policy badly implemented, but to a high level of fiscal negligence and abuse of process and disdain for taxpayers and electricity consumers.

    Costs of electricity in Ontario, up 65% since 1999, are to rise another 46% in the next four years, or $31 per household per month.”

    The complete article is here:

    http://opinion.financialpost.com/2011/12/05/terence-corcoran-the-dark-side-of-green-energy/

    As Auditor-General Jim McCarter notes several times, much of that money will go to pay for locked-in contracts for wind, solar and renewable energy the province doesn’t need. For a decade to come, Ontario will likely have surplus electricity. Under contracts signed with green-energy producers and others, the government will pay electricity generators billions of dollars to not produce electricity.

  3. Tom says:

    I guess we can look forward to wind energy. As for the back yard comment, isn’t it time we accept that the future need for energy does not mean that it is OK as long as it installed somewhere else? It’s time that we stepped up to the plate.

  4. janet says:

    Just read the Financial Post expose (or suggestion to question what we are told about electricity) shared by Chris Keen. Question: do well-meaning but blinkered wind supporters ever READ those kinds of articles? If they do read them, do they just ignore them? Or call the researchers NIMBY? or what …

  5. Donna says:

    Shame on Smith for pandering to the local anti-wind coalition. He admitted in the energy debate that he didn’t know anything about energy and he was right.

    Canada is being shamed again at the Durban talks, being called a fossil and a bully, all thanks to the Conservatives.

  6. anne king says:

    Shame on the NDP. I thought they had the people in the forefront but it has become obvious that once elected they forget the reason for being there. It’s not in your backyard so why worry…

  7. Doris Lane says:

    Same on the NDP for voting with the Liberals on the pruvate n[members bill–I cannot understand why politicans of every strips do not see the fallacy of IWT’s

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