Columnists

Concerned about the rising cost of energy? Worried about the climate change and other environmental impacts of using that energy to heat, cool and power your home or your business? Curious about what technologies are our best options for more efficient, less expensive, lower-carbon-footprint energy?

Pollution Probe, an independent Canadian environmental organization, today released a comprehensive primer on Canada’s energy sources and offers detailed explanations of better technologies for our homes and beyond. The primer offers a very thorough look at where our energy currently comes from, showcases plenty of helpful energy options in an easy to understand manner and provides case studies as well.

To read the document, click here to download it from the Pollution Probe site.

Dad's cookies, now with renewable energy!

Can big manufacturing facilities really go green? While I’m a fan of small-scale production, I think that when a large-scale company decides to get its energy from renewable sources, it can make an enormous difference in the fight against climate change. Yesterday I had the opportunity to visit the Kraft bakeries in Scarborough, Ont., and, after donning a lab coat, hair net, earplugs and other safety gear, I got to see the Dad’s Cookies operation in full swing, powered by renewable energy.

Tom Heintzman, President, Bullfrog Power (left) and Chris Bell, Kraft Canada Vice President of Snacks

Dad’s Cookies are a Canadian favourite, with 4 per cent of the Canadian cookie market and over 16 million packages of cookies sold in Canada each year. From now on, those cookies, made in Kraft’s Scarborough and Lakeshore bakeries, will be made with renewable energy. Kraft has partnered with Bullfrog Power to not only buy its electricity from by renewable sources (hydro, wind and solar), they will be the first customer to use Bullfrog’ Power’s new offering: green natural gas.

This effort is just the latest initiative in Kraft’s sustainability plan; in the past three years they’ve created zero waste facilities, reduced their energy use by 25 per cent and cut their water use by 15 per cent as well.

So what is green natural gas?
While conventional natural gas is a fossil fuel from non-renewable sources, Bullfrog Power is collecting, processing and distributing gases from the decaying matter in landfill, starting with an operation in Quebec.

When your food waste and other landfill garbage decomposes, it releases gases, particularly methane. Those go into the atmosphere from most Canadian landfills, a harmful source of greenhouse gas emissions. A few landfills capture their energy-rich gases now, converting them into useable energy, but much of it is wasted in the process. But if those gases are instead captured, processed and delivered to your home or business, you can burn them in your typically 94 per cent efficient furnace to heat your home, your hot water and power some of your appliances, wasting very little of the energy. True, you’ll still emit carbon dioxide, but it’s 20 times less as potent a greenhouse gas as methane, according to the US Climate Change Science Program.

How does Bullfrog Power deliver the green natural gas?
Just as Bullfrog Power does now with electricity, they’ll replace the amount of natural gas its customers use from the main gas line with green natural gas. As their customer base grows, Bullfrog will expand its operations to ensure they have sufficient capacity. Green natural gas will be available in a few of months to customers beyond initial pilot projects such as Kraft’s.

As Tom Heintzman, President of Bullfrog Power told me yesterday, “You have an environmental choice in everything you use. Energy arguably has the biggest environmental impact of everything you use.” And since have lots of opportunities to create energy from our waste, it’s great to know that we have ways of reducing climate change impacts while doing great things such as making cookies in the process.

Are you more keen to buy a product if you know it’s made with renewable energy?

Solar panels are a big investment. But they could do a lot to reduce your energy costs now — and contain them as energy prices rise in the future. But will it pay off if you put an array on your home?

For those of us working to shrink our carbon footprint and pay less for energy through home renovations, new online tools make it easy to assess the potential payoff of installing a photovoltaic (energy producing) solar array (a grouping of panels). The best sites have southern exposure, uninterrupted by trees and other sources of shade. If you have an area of your roof or a shade structure over your deck that would suit, these tools will help you find out more about the available sunlight (and thus available energy) in your area.

RoofRay.com lets you find your home using a Google Maps module, then lets you literally draw your solar panel on your roof. It provides an estimate of the peak power per square foot your panels could generate, and shows the total power an array of the size you specified would generate under optimum conditions.

Solar Rating Online (solarrating.ca) takes similar information about where you live, and asks for input about shade structures (like trees and other houses) as well. It provides a customized analysis of the available solar energy in your area, and specifically what output you can expect from a solar array mounted in a specific spot.

Some developers are building new homes with solar energy in mind, essentially leasing roof space from the new home owners to capitalize on the premium rates offered for solar energy in Ontario. Click here to read an article about how it works.

Would you like to add a renewable energy option to your home, such as solar thermal hot water, a photovoltaic solar array, or wind power?

Well, it’s Friday, and we all need some good news to counteract this week’s bad news for the environment. And there are lots of great stories out there. Here’s are a good news story that proves that green economy projects are underway.

The Philadephia Eagles football team are taking their stadium, the Lincoln Financial Field, off grid. And not just figuratively – they’ve teamed up with Solar Blue, a renewable energy company, to install wind and solar infrastructure as well as a biofuel and natural gas co-generation engine that will supply at least 8.6 megawatts of electricity, enough power to supply the stadium’s game-day draw of 7 megawatts. Extra power will be sold into the power grid. The equipment should be operational by next September.

In a media release you can find here, team owner and chief executive officer, Jeffrey Lurie says, “The Philadelphia Eagles are proud to take this vital step towards energy independence from fossil fuels by powering Lincoln Financial Field with wind, solar and dual-fuel energy sources. This commitment builds upon our comprehensive environmental sustainability program, which includes energy and water conservation, waste reduction, recycling, composting, toxic chemical avoidance and reforestation. It underscores our strong belief that environmentally sensitive policies are consistent with sound business practices.”

The move makes excellent business sense: the team saves $60 million in electricity costs over 20 years, creates 50 permanent jobs and hundreds of other time-limited and supplier-related jobs. Oh, and helps the stadium reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.

Now that’s good news! Have you heard about any green good news stories lately?

Powered by recycling. Literally!

We’ve figured out how to turn trash into treasure. Not the wooden chest of gold coins-type treasure, but treasure for our modern world: clean energy. The evidence: my city, the city of Toronto, has a new garbage truck with an engine (a Cummins Westport ISL G) that’s capable of running on compressed natural gas, including biogas. And where are they planning to get that source of biogas? From composting operations that handle the green bin waste (kitchen waste) removed from Toronto curbsides by… Toronto garbage trucks.

“Our two green bin processing facilities have the potential to produce enough natural gas to take our entire fleet of 300 waste trucks off diesel,” says Geoff Rathbone, the City of Toronto’s General Manager of Solid Waste Management Services. “Creating natural gas from kitchen waste will be the first operation of its kind in North America.”

Replacing diesel trucks with lower-emission biogas trucks is all a pilot project at this point, but the city is motivated: its Green Fleet Plan calls for new medium and heavy-duty trucks in order to reduce fuel consumption, fuel costs, smog and greenhouse-gas pollutants. For more information on the plan, click here.

Next, let’s hope that Toronto and other municipalities tackle incineration to deal with all that garbage waste that cannot be composted or recycled. Burning this material generates energy as well, and the processes can be controlled in a way that doesn’t contaminate the environment (read about it here). That would save us a heck of a lot of money (and, of course, climate-impacting CO2) compared to trucking garbage to landfills. C’mon Canada, Japan is doing it, Denmark is doing it… we can do it!

According to a poll released yesterday by Bullfrog Power, “Nearly 100 per cent of Ontarians say they have reduced their household electricity use over the past five years, but 40 per cent of respondents say they do not plan to do more than they are doing now in the future.” The poll of 1,000 Canadians was conducted by Harris/Decima.

Here is what Ontarians are doing to reduce their electricity consumption, according to the poll results:
· 96 per cent of Ontarians turn off lights to save energy
· 78 per cent have purchased CFL light bulbs, and an additional 76 per cent have purchased energy efficient appliances
· 53 per cent of Ontarians unplug appliances when not in use; 33 per cent use appliance timers-both steps reduce electricity consumed by devices when not in use
· 57 per cent of Ontarians hang their laundry to dry
· Only one per cent of Ontarians report they are taking no actions to reduce electricity consumption

The poll results come on the eve of Bullfrog Power’s fifth anniversary. The company offers 100 per cent renewable energy, such as wind power and low-impact hydro – a logical next step in reducing the carbon footprint of one’s household (my personal nest has been Bullfrog Powered since 2005). Now more than 8,000 homes and 1,200 businesses in British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario and the Maritimes are using 100 per cent green electricity with Bullfrog Power.

In Ontario, conventional power companies offer electricity from a range of sources, including nuclear (which creates radioactive waste that must be handled… forever), coal, oil and gas (chief sources of air pollution, related watershed pollution and greenhouse gas emissions); and large hydro (which can involve problematic dams) – only a small amount of renewable energy is in the mix.

What do you think, have you hit a wall when it comes to conserving energy at home? What next step would you like to take?

i-MiEV from Mitsubishi Motors

Another new player in the electric car market, the Mitsubishi i-MiEV, is on tour across Canada.
In partership with Bullfrog power, the 2010 Clean Across Canada tour involves the i-MiEV hopping across Canada, stopping at Bullfrog Power customers’ homes so it can be recharged with renewable energy – and so people can have a look at it and try it out. Shown here is Jason Sauernheimer and his family with the i-MiEV. Sauernheimer is a Toronto firefighter, Bullfrog customer and supporter of solar thermal water heating.

Here’s what I know about the i-MiEV (which is simply what’s available online here):
- It’s range is 120 km
- It’s top speed is 130 km/h
- It seats four, with room for luggage
- It’s rear-wheel drive
- Its lithium-ion batteries supply 16 kWh
- You can charge it at home overnight, or fast-charge it at a charging station in half an hour
- You’ll never need to buy gas again!

I love that new models of electric cars are hitting our highways. I just hope they’ll be available to buy sometime soon as well, and for a reasonable price! For my guess on the first EV to market, click here to read my earlier post.

Reading through the paper last weekend, I noticed two ads for suburb developments that got me thinking. Which is a good thing, because usually the ads for “Pine Woods” and “Elm Lanes” just get me upset, because they mean that a place that formerly had trees has been razed to the ground, stripped of valuable top soil and *poof*, one more piece of habitat has left the face of the earth forever (or for a really, really, really long time anyway).

But one of the ads I saw was for a new construction development that will be entirely heated and cooled through geothermal systems. (To me this just makes sense! Just install a larger system while the ground is ripped up anyway. The energy efficiency of each home will be very high while the utility costs for each home will be very low. Who wouldn’t want that?) The other ad noted that suburb homeowners could opt to have solar panels mounted on the roof of their new home for no extra charge, and they could then buy electricity at a reduced rate. (A renewable energy supplier is essentially leasing real estate for their panels from new home buyers and panel installation is just part of home construction. Brilliant!)

As a conservationist, I irrationally hate the idea that people need to (choose to!) live in new housing developments beyond current borders. That is totally not fair, I know, but I find myself applauding those who renovate older homes, or buy into loft conversions and new condo developments within existing cities or towns.

But, grudgingly, I recognize that new construction has to happen as our population increases. I think sites should be chosen that are not prime habitat for native wildlife, nor a popular corridor for their travels between prime areas. And new housing should be mixed together with parks, municipal service buildings and small retail stores. And they should be connected to public transit and sprinkled with bike lanes. I’d like to see them become new communities of their own, really, not some bump on the outer reaches of a municipal planning map!

Yes, it’s a long wish list! Given all that, and the smart use of highly efficient and renewable energy sources, perhaps I can live with some new housing development. Can you?

So apparently the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico cannot be cleaned up with robots, it cannot be contained by booms and the 159,000 litres a day it is spewing into the Gulf have contaminated the water are about to destroy ecological sensitive habitat across 37 kilometres of Louisiana coastline.

No, it really couldn’t get much worse. Oh wait, did I mention that they’re setting fire to it? It can’t be contained, so to try to mitigate the effects on that coastline we’ll burn that oil, releasing a tanker load of CO2 into the atmosphere (not to mention black, sooty smoke). Super. The best of bad options, I suppose.

But we are hooked on oil, over 80 million litres of it a day, so in spite of the terrible environmental and health effects of sourcing it, transporting it, burning it and making it into endless amounts of stuff, we’re looking for more places to drill. Going beyond off-shore drilling platforms such as the one that blew up on April 20, we’re looking at places we’d previously passed over. Like our Arctic, a fragile place that’s not as closely monitored as, say, Miami. This, in spite of the fact that, according to this interview on CBC’s The Current, typical oil spill clean-up methods don’t work in cold temperatures.

Could this awful technology make renewable energy look any better? I hope that companies and NGOs and community groups and municipalities all use this horrific, dirty opportunity to push for renewable energy projects. We have a clear, heart-breaking example of what happens when the blueprint for sucking oil from the earth doesn’t go as planned, and we have lots of great renewable energy technology. And yes, applied robustly and distributed near where it’s needed (power lines lose electricity over distance), renewable energy can power our world.

Before the price of grid energy gets prohibitively expensive, we need to build our way to affordable energy in the future with installations big and small, from offshore wind farm projects to municipal laws requiring green roofs with solar and wind collection depending on location to incentives for homeowners to install solar voltaic, solar hot-water and other technologies on our property.

For those who think that wind turbines and solar panels are an eyesore, please turn your eye to the black smoke over the Gulf of Mexico for a moment. Maybe I’ve lost my mind, but I think they’re just symbols of progress.

What do you think, do renewables have a chance? What will make it possible for us to rely on them?