Columnists

With Japan’s tragic nuclear power incidents unfolding right now as a result of the earthquake and tsunami, it’s no wonder that a lot of people are asking questions about the safety of nuclear energy. Regardless of how safe the system, if an incident does happen, and radiation exposure becomes an issue, we don’t really have a way to deal with it.

The energy needs of wealthy countries are vast, and critics of renewable energy say that sources such as hydro, solar and wind can never meet all of our needs. But I’m glad that some people are becoming more conservation minded, and that new sources for that renewable energy are coming online.

As I blogged about earlier, Bullfrog Power, a renewable energy supplier that, to date, has offered customers wind, solar and hydro power through the main energy grid in several provinces, is now offering green natural gas, which is being collected from landfill methane sources, capturing it for our use instead of letting it rise into the atmosphere.

A new poll recently conducted for Bullfrog Power shows that more than 68 per cent of Canadians don’t know that the conventional natural gas used in their homes adds to Canada’s overall greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions footprint. According to Statistics Canada, however, natural gas use is a major contributor, releasing at least 32,000 kilotonnes of GHG emissions annually.

I’d like to know: do you think we can power our future with better sources of energy?
To encourage your answers, I have a fabulous prize pack from Bullfrog Power to offer.

The prize pack includes $150 worth of green and energy conservation products:
· Brita pitcher
· Bullfrog T-shirt
· Honeywell programmable thermostat
· RBC Blue Water Project water bottle
· Burt’s Bees lip balm
· Rocky Mountain Soap Company bath salt and soap
· Nature Clean shampoo and conditioner
· The Green Line toilet bowl cleaner
· Nature Clean laundry liquid
· Eco-Jot note pad
· A certificate for up to $50 off the purchase of green electricity and green natural gas

UPDATE: CONTEST CLOSED!. CONGRATULATIONS to Stephanie, winner of the Bullfrog Power prize pack!!

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?

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?

I was pleasantly surprised to see that, in Ontario, wind power was at about 1/4 the power generated as coal in 2009. That’s according to Ontario’s Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO). According to an IESO release, “Wind output from Ontario’s commercial wind farms was 2.3 terawatt hours (TWh) in 2009, equivalent to the consumption of the City of Oshawa for two full years. At the same time, output from Ontario’s coal-fired plants dropped to 9.8 TWh, down dramatically from 23.2 TWh in 2008, and the lowest output in 45 years.” That’s great news.

I don’t like coal for a bunch of reasons. First, we have to mine it. That means stripping habitats bare and putting people’s lives at risk, whether from the dangers of the immediate job or from long-term exposure to a dirty carcinogen. Second, burning coal releases not only carbon dioxide, a key gas that’s causing climate change, but also a bunch of other harmful substances, including mercury. Those pollutants get into our air and water and severely effect our health.

So, what’s the cost of quadrupling our wind-power generation capacity so we can eliminate coal entirely? Well, what’s the health care cost linked to damage by airborne pollutants? I hope that the province starts to put together the numbers across the big picture.

Here’s how we fueled Ontario’s power usage in 2009:
Nuclear: 55.3 per cent
Hydroelectric: 25.5 per cent
Natural gas: 10.3 per cent
Coal: 6.6 per cent
Wind turbines: 1.6 per cent
Biomass, solar, other: 0.8 per cent

I’d love to see us embrace more local sources of electricity, so that we can use more of what we generate and so that we can rely on a lot of small-scale sources, like solar panels on office buildings. So much power is lost between where it’s generated and where it’s used. Hopefully we’ll get a better power grid so this would be possible. In the meantime, I buy my household power from a renewable energy supplier.

Do you think we can close our coal plants?

We call solar and wind energy renewable energy, and sometimes clean energy. I’ve been out sailing for the past week, and it’s become clear to me that clean energy is a good name for it, and I’d go for considerate energy too.

While out moored in the beautiful Thousand Islands, I noted that boats of a size meant for sleeping in are equipped in one of two ways. They either have a mix of solar panels, high-efficiency solar lights, small wind generators and coolers with ice and dinghies with oars OR they have dinghies with outboard motors and they charge their batteries that power the lights, the fridge (and sometimes the stereo system) by running the boat’s engine. Some even have an extra generator on board for even more power. A few people have a mix of these accoutrements, but most seem to be of one school of thought or another.

Let me tell you, nothing shatters the peace of early morning in a beautifully natural island bay like someone’s outboard-powered dingy trip so rover can do his business on the island. Followed closely by the guttural sounds of a diesel engine kicking in, ready to power the coffee maker.       

I just hope that the next generation of boats are made with considerate power in mind. After all, hulls with built–in solar arrays would look neat, LED lighting is plenty bright for the cabin, and then there’s the freedom from the gas dock. For now, we outfit our boats ourselves. My partner has a relatively small but well-made solar panel that provides enough energy to power our phones and recharge our solar light. (We love the Sunnan lamp from IKEA – you take out the solar panel and leave it outdoors. At night its flexible arm provided all the light we needed inside the boat.) At night, conventional solar lights meant for the yard serve as mooring lights, emitting a soft glow from mid-mast and at the stern to ensure we’re visible – without blotting out the stars.

Have you seen clean energy replace an old way of powering things?

Now usually I take public transit to get around Toronto, but once in a while, as I’m waiting for the subway, I dream of driving my electric car (powered by renewable energy) to work, nary an emission along the way. So this week, when Tesla Motors of California released their new Type S electric car, at approx. US$57,000, that dream got a little bit closer. You can order one now, for delivery in a couple of years.

OK, I’m hoping a less expensive electric car will hit the market soon (are you coming, plug-in Prius? Wherefore art thou, electric Mini?), but I’m betting that my next car will be electric. I’ve heard a lot of reasons why electric cars won’t replace gassers (as my partner calls them), and I agree with that — but perhaps EVs (electric vehicles) will become the norm, the gasser the exception.

There are a bunch of arguments against EVs. First, there’s range. For most of us, a car that will go even just 100 kms on one charge is plenty far enough. Yes, we’d need a backup plan for long trips, but most days, 100 kms would be fine. (The basic Tesla model has a 250-km range.)

Next, there’s looks and size. Some people are nervous in small cars. Did you get a look at the Tesla? Does that look like a golf cart to you? Can you imagine anything much sexier?

OK, how about the carbon footprint of the electricity that powers the car? True, if you’re hooking your car up to the grid, and the grid is powered by coal in your area, then it’s not a green car. But if you purchase power from a renewable energy supplier, or your area gets its power from more renewable sources, then that car is looking pretty clean. (And yes, you can plug your Type S into a standard outlet.)

Batteries are often a point of concern. Batteries are nasty! But we have become pretty good at recycling them through reusing the materials, and the batteries companies such as Tesla are using are lithium ion – they pack a lot of energy into a small space, just like laptop and cell phone batteries.

What about speed? True, the top-end speed of the Tesla Type S is only about 210 km/h. Oh wait, that’s crazy fast. The company’s Roadster can go from 0 to 60 mph in 3.9 seconds. Not too shabby.

The most difficult change? Accepting that our deeply worn infrastructure around gas stations and combustion engines will have to evolve. But when I think about the potential for cities and towns to reduce smog through zero emission vehicles, I feel a lot of hope.

How about you, would you consider an electric car, or do you drive a vehicle that seems green enough already?