Demonstration wind turbine in Toronto. Ontario wind power installations will be the first to shut down when conservation measures are successful, This Magazine has learned. Creative Commons photo by Flickr user Diego_3336.

Despite its recent investment in wind energy, Ontario will periodically ask wind operators to turn off their turbines, leaving gas and nuclear operating, This Magazine has learned.

Conservation efforts and more energy production have led to an occasional surplus of electricity in the province, requiring Ontario to power down some generators at certain times of the year. According to a source within Ontario’s non-renewable generating sector, wind generators will be the first to be shut down during surplus periods due to contracts that favour older natural gas plants. Ontario will soon have 1,200 Megawatts of wind power installed, and significant portions of it would periodically go unused under the scheme.

“It makes no sense to burn natural gas or nuclear fuel while wind turbines are locked out,” said the source. This agreed not to name the individual because doing so could lead to employer sanction.

Without any significant ability to store electricity, Ontario’s Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) balances energy generation with the amount being consumed every five minutes. The IESO adds power based on the lowest cost bids offered by generators, going from lowest cost up.

Some older gas plants have contracts that allow them to generate fixed amounts of power at all hours. Nuclear plants, which are unable to quickly change their level of production, offer their power at a negative price at times when demand is low. The need can become so low that only those offering at negative prices are asked to generate power.

However, the Ontario Power Authority, the government agency that controls contracts and planning for Ontario’s energy system, does not permit wind generators to run at negative pricing. A “Feed-in-Tariff” program offers a fixed cost for clean energy producers to operate. Key to the business plans of wind turbines is being able to sell every megawatt they are able to generate. The effect will be that nuclear and older gas plants will continue to run, while wind farms, co-operatives, First Nations, and farmers will be the first asked to shut down their turbines.

The generally accepted purpose of energy conservation—to reduce the need for dirtier power—will be turned on its head as turbines shut down when use is low. The policies will mean that when Ontarians work to reduce their energy use—if, say, Earth Hour happens at a time of moderate temperatures, as it did in 2010—consumers may unwittingly prompt the shutdown of greener energy producers.

Such negative pricing periods happened for 351 hours in 2009 and the issue will become more acute this year, with significantly more wind-power generators on the grid.

The OPA plans to add significant capacity throughout the province. Because Ontario’s demand for electricity can range from 12,000 to 27,000 megawatts, the OPA has reasoned that more generation is needed for peak times. Ontario recently signed a deal with Samsung C&T and Korean Electric Power to build and generate 600 megawatts of wind power in the province. Last Thursday, it announced 184 additional contracts for renewable energy projects, including wind and solar. It is also pursuing natural gas power plants including controversial projects in King and Oakville as well as renewable projects throughout the province. The King plant is planned to run on an as-needed basis, but that plan has been criticized by Holland Marsh farmers and environmental organizations.

According to a report by the Ontario Clean Air Alliance, the area’s power needs could be met by expanding programs which pay companies to reduce power, along with increased renewable generation and possibly cleaner ways of using natural gas.

The province’s plans for new nuclear generation last year stalled after a bid for two reactors came in at a cost of $26 billion. According to the Alliance, the cost of new nuclear energy is 21 cents per kilowatt hour, versus three cents for conservation and nine to thirteen cents for wind and water power.

Update – July 3, 2019: Those looking for technology recycling facilities can also visit this Tech Recycling Map for nearby centres.

MIT Professor Sheila Kennedy's solar-energy-producing textiles. Courtesy Sheila Kennedy.

Rick Mercer’s quip during the Copenhagen climate conference last December summed it up best: “So [Stephen] Harper flew to Copenhagen to have a club sandwich and hide in his room?”

The post-Copenhagen doldrums were still bringing us down when Thomas Auer, managing director of Transsolar, the German climate-engineering firm assigned to the Manitoba Hydro Place, stepped onto a stage at Toronto’s Interior Design Show in January to explain his vision on designing a world without oil. The future in sustainable architecture is about harnessing daylight and fresh air, he declared.

The theme that came up again and again in presentations from renowned engineers, architects, designers and futurists at IDS was if we are to kick our oil addiction, guilt-tripping us won’t work. But seduction through innovative design just might. As design guru Bruce Mau said, “I don’t believe we can succeed in sustainability without making it more sexy and beautiful.”

So imagine, for example, a beach house with billowing curtains that harvest sunlight and convert it to energy— enough to juice up your laptop or illuminate your bedroom at night. Sheila Kennedy, architect, inventor and MIT prof, has done just that. Her sensuous textiles (including lace) are implanted with ultra-thin photovoltaic strips that produce electricity when exposed to light.

For Fritz Haeg, desirable objects took a backseat to the human condition. A geodesic-dome-dwelling architect based in California, Haeg says the story of oil is one of disconnection. There was a time when we used the resources immediately within our reach and dealt with our waste locally as well, Haeg says, but oil took this away and unintentionally led to our present ignorance about the environment.

One of Fritz Haeg's Edible Estates. Courtesy Fritz Haeg.

Edible Estates, Haeg’s ongoing gardening project, is trying to change that. By turning eight suburban front lawns from spaces you cut and “keep off” into productive gardens, Haeg wants to bring back a reality rendered invisible by oil. He’s not a Slow Food idealist; instead, Haeg says that questioning the front lawn is just the easiest first wedge into unraveling the old structure of our cities. But he acknowledges the idea will face resistance in suburbia. “How far have we come from the core of our humanity that the act of growing our own food might be considered impolite, unseemly, threatening, radical or even hostile?” he asks.

Yello Strom energy metre in use. Courtesy Yello Strom.

Like Haeg, Ted Howes of global consultancy IDEO believes that we have to turn energy from an invisible commodity into a tangible experience. And social media can help. The Yello Strom energy meter, which Howes helped develop for the German market, is a small wall-mounted box with a curvy bright yellow shell and a simple-to-read meter that could easily have been plucked from an Apple store window. It sends out tweets about your energy consumption and gives consumers direct access to Google’s energy management tool, PowerMeter. A phone app is sure to follow.

The attitude that we can wean ourselves off oil by finding more attractive alternatives may have ironically been best summed up by the man who was Saudi Arabia’s oil minister during the 1973 oil embargo. “The Stone Age did not end for lack of stone,” sheik Ahmed Zaki Yamani said recently, “and the Oil Age will end long before the world runs out of oil.”

“We know that the greatest obstacles to technological progress are organizational, cultural, sociological,” says Anita McGahan, a professor who teaches “The End of Oil” [PDF] at the University of Toronto. “They’re not technical. We have the technology.”

Now we need the political leadership.

Ashburnum Garden, a community garden run by Transition Peterborough. Photo via the group's website.

With any legitimate climate work being continually ignored by government, Canadians are growing weary. In tandem with our American friends, we’ve for years been witnessing the leadership void at the federal level being filled by some provincial, state and municipal governments, universities and businesses.

With Earth Hour showing that widespread participation in environmental initiatives is possible, some think the deeper work that needs to be done to meet climate goals will be met by new thinking beginning at the community level.

On Saturday I had the opportunity to hear a presentation from Transition Barrie, one of the latest communities to found a grassroots group dedicated to guiding its town to follow the light at the end of the tunnel of climate crisis, peak oil and economic downturn.

Transition Towns is a new community-based global movement founded in Ireland and England when teacher Rob Hopkins led his students to develop an “Energy Descent Action Plan” for their town. A student brought it to Kinsale, Ireland’s city council, and a plan for energy independence was adopted.

Thirteen communities in Canada now host transition groups, with usual enviro-suspects including Peterborough, Salt Spring Island, Nelson and Guelph. But with citizens of sprawling cities like Barrie and London also getting involved, the movement may have widespread appeal.

Inspired by concepts of permaculture, a system of gardening that designs a permanent, sustainable agriculture, Transition groups are led to relocalize needs and resources while drastically reducing their energy dependence. Filled with peakniks, these groups follow the Transition Towns Handbook’s twelve step program to community organizing, while “backcasting” to imagine the future they want, and determining what they’ll need to get them there.

Although the beginning of the group’s PowerPoint looks the same as any environmental/economic doomsday scenario, it quickly becomes evident that these are positive folks, ready to take on a challenge with their neighbours to create more meaningful, equitable and sustainable livelihoods.

The opposite approach of sometimes aggressive activism by environmentalists or anti-renewable energy folks, Transitionites host town host “unleashings” (rather than group launches), have “heart and soul” subcommittees, and let their organizational goals go with the flow of their members. They want to work with local governments, knowing that fighting complex issues at the community level won’t get them far as inspiring positive change.

The group has a resemblance to the Canadian-based Otesha Project, which has recently been exported to England, perhaps a trade for Transition Towns. Otesha is a youth-based organization which has recently announced that its environmental outreach and better living advice, done through cycling and theatre, has reached 100,000 Canadians over the last few years.

The work being achieved throughout Canadian communities by these organizers leaves Canadians to wonder why Parliament can’t look like this. Why can’t government even for a week not resemble a model of co-operation that strikes the heart of transformational issues faced by the globe?

Let’s hope that Transitionites and Otesha youth become more politicized, while keeping their methods positive—and if it rubs off on our politicians, all the better.

York University economist Peter Victor: "We're in serious trouble right now." Photo by Molly Crealock

How can we escape our current economic mess while simultaneously avoiding the looming triple threats of peak oil, climate change, and species extinction? York University ecological economist Peter Victor has the answer: significantly slow the nation’s economic growth. According to him, it’s the best way to bring us into balance with the biosphere while fixing our battered finances.

Explains Victor: “The economic growth we have had in Canada in the past 30 years has not resulted in full employment, elimination of poverty, or the reduction of greenhouse-gas emissions.” But, he says, “with the right policies, we could achieve all these without relying on economic growth.”

Those policies, which are outlined in his book Managing Without Growth: Slower by Design, Not Disaster, include a rapid transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy, targeted programs to tackle poverty rather than relying on trickle-down economics and a shorter work week balanced with less consumption.

Managing Without Growth was released last November, but its vision is particularly timely, given the recession. “We’re in very serious trouble right now, because the recession was really started by failed economic policies and by failed supervision of financial institutions,” comments Frank Muller, a professor of economics at Concordia University in Montreal. Victor’s approach, he points out, is an alternative, “a different economic system, with different policies,” that would see us having to “live within the constraints of the natural system.”

While Victor’s ideas have been praised by David Suzuki and Toronto mayor David Miller, the federal government isn’t interested. But this doesn’t surprise Victor, who believes it’s up to the public to push forward the idea of zero growth: “Policy changes must be wanted and demanded by the public because they understand that there will be a better future for themselves, their children, and the children of others if we turn away from the pursuit of unconstrained economic growth.”