Kelly Crowe
Sunday Report, transcript
October 15, 2000

ALLISON SMITH (CBC): If an election is indeed called in Ottawa this week you can be sure the rising cost of fuel will become an issue during the campaign. Oil prices have skyrocketed recently, especially with the crisis in the Middle East. And you’ve seen the results, both at the pumps and in your pocket books. Gasoline, diesel fuel and home heating oil are all more expensive. And as Kelly Crowe reports, it’s forcing Canadians to take another look at alternative energy.

KELLY CROWE (Reporter): For Pat Duxbury this wild tangle of grass is the fuel of the future. It can be fermented into ethanol to replace gasoline. Or it can be processed into pellets and burned like wood. For his Montreal company “switchgrass”(?) is an environmentally friendly answer to the high cost of fossil fuel.

PAT DUXBURY (Resource Efficient Agricultural Products): We have the land, we have farmers that are capable of this, so all we need now is the political will and some investment.

CROWE: There’s just one problem. The world is not set up to run on grass. At least not yet.

TOM ADAMS (Energy Probe): It’s probably ten years before we see a real solid alternative to gasoline. And similarly with home heating.

CROWE: So whatever happened to alternative energy? The great hope after the first oil crisis that the world could end its dependence on fossil fuel? A quarter of a century later, with oil and gas prices back at record highs, people are still searching for a better way. There have been a few breakthroughs. This giant pile of garbage is powering 15,000 homes. As the garbage decays methane gas is captured by a nearby plant and converted into electricity. It’s a small scale success for Greg Vogt, but even he is not predicting a surge of energy options like this.

GREG VOGT (Eastern Power): Will there be a fundamental shift in the way that we create alternate energy so that we can do more of it? I’m not prepared to make that type of a prediction.

CROWE: That’s because most alternative energy is complicated and expensive and interest peaks only when the price of oil is high.

ADAMS: The only chance really that that pattern will be changed in any way is because of a greater awareness of… not just the financial cost of energy use, but also the environmental costs.

CROWE: There are promising signs, like the new hybrid car that runs on gas, and has a special engine to generate electricity. And the fuel cell technology is generating both excitement and investment. It could replace conventional vehicle engines one day, but it’s still several years away from any mass market production. Solar energy is useful in small, specific applications and there’s some hope blowing in the Alberta wind where an Alberta utility has just invested in wind power, a response to international pressure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

BOB PAGE (TransAlta Power):We believe that we will be expected to do these kind of things. So we can learn by doing, by getting in very early.

CROWE: In the end analysts say environmental pressure could provide a bigger push toward new forms of energy than the fluctuating price of oil and gas. Kelly Crowe, CBC News, Toronto.

Get the full story at the CBC website: cbc.ca/cgi-bin/templates/view.cgi?/news/2000/10/15/energy001015