Energy Probe

Colby Cosh
National Post
November 21, 2006

It’s official: The glorious future of abundant free energy has been put on hold. In May, the Alberta Electric System Operator (AESO) announced that the province’s grid could not safely accommodate more than 900 megawatts of wind-power generation, a target that will be met late next year. Proposals for 3,000 more MW of production have been thrown into indefinite limbo at an estimated cost to producers of $6-billion; meanwhile, the province is already spending $1-billion to strengthen the transmission system so that even the 900-MW cap can be reached. In Ontario, meanwhile, the grid operator warned late last month that 5,000 MW – about one-fifth of the province’s current peak consumption – is probably the absolute technological limit. (A total of 1,280 MW of wind capacity is already in operation or being built.)

It is starting to look as though wind cannot meet more than a fraction of our energy demand even if other issues with the technology, like esthetics and wildlife impacts, are ignored. The problem, as engineers skeptical of wind power have been yelping for decades, is that power usage and production constantly have to be balanced in an electrical grid. Adding too much unstable, unpredictable power to the system creates a risk of failure and cascading blackouts. In fact, the EU is investigating the possible role of Germany’s heavy wind-dependence in causing a Nov. 6 blackout that hit 10 million Europeans.

The depressing corollary is that even in reaching the modest limits now being laid down by the grid police, Alberta and Ontario are relying implicitly on the relative sluggishness of their neighbours in adopting wind technology, using interconnections with other provinces and states to off-load excess power and cover shortfalls. So the system operators’ warnings aren’t just a sign that wind has reached a dead end in their home provinces. They also mean that B.C., Saskatchewan and parts of the U.S. Northeast will never be able to get major wind projects off the ground if they are to continue to serve as an energy release-valve for their wind-harnessing neighbours.

The windustry has met the announcements with its usual optimism, pointing out that existing wind installations could be made to co-operate better with the grid if improved region-specific wind forecasting existed. But even assuming such a thing can be wished into existence, predictability is not the same thing as stability. During low-wind, high-demand periods, a drop in output still must be made good by other power sources. Since a nuclear pile can’t be switched on and off like a light bulb, Ontario’s hydroelectric output is already taxed to the limit and Alberta doesn’t have much hydro, guess what technology steps in to fill the void? That’s right – good old Stone Age hydrocarbon burning.

This wouldn’t be such a big deal if wind output were naturally synchronized with patterns of maximum power usage. But a report released last Wednesday by Energy Probe, Ontario’s independent power think tank, confirms another longstanding taunt of the wind skeptics: Wind is often utterly out of sync with human activity.

Energy Probe’s analysis of hour-to-hour capacity factors at Ontario wind farms shows output declining disconcertingly in the morning, just when we greedy energy hogs are getting out of bed, turning on appliances and lights, and going to work. On a month-to-month basis, data from this summer show wind output remaining flattest during the hottest periods. And the AESO has found that in Alberta’s southern wind corridor, the turbines spin like crazy when the chinook is blowing and little electricity is needed; in the still air of serious cold snaps, when loads are high, the turbines grind stubbornly to a stop.

The overall result is that much of the theoretical environmental benefit from wind power cannot be realized, especially since the generators that must remain on standby to provide emergency "ramping" tend to produce more pollution per watt than round-the-clock coal and gas facilities.

But at least it’s still economically free energy, right? Well, maybe. As an internationally observed rule of thumb, wind farms are expected to deliver, on average, 30% of their theoretical maximum power output. On the basis of partial data, Energy Probe expects the three major farms in its study to come in at 24%-27% over a full 12 months. And that’s not even including the showpiece Windshare turbine at Toronto’s CNE, which delivered a mean capacity factor of just 14.7% in its first 42 months of operation.

It must be a harrowing time for those who once thought the cool breeze could save us all from the coming ecocide. The expectations of wind advocates have already had to be minimized as they realize there is nothing inherently virtuous about their pet piece of tech. Alas, like recycling fanatics, they are likely to end up praising wind power as a moral enterprise that "instills good habits" and signals "green consciousness," even if the honest cost-benefit analysis goes against them in the long run.

Zena Olijnyk

February 12, 2007

Out of the mist, a group of workers heads into a coal mine. But this isn’t any ordinary group of miners – the men and women are picture – perfect, their chiselled bodies glistening with sweat as they proceed to their swing tools. At the end of what turns out to be a television commercial for U.S. conglomerate General Electric, a voice-over proclaims: "Harnessing the power of coal is looking more beautiful every day."

OK, so maybe it’s a bit of a stretch for GE, advertising its role in developing environmentally friendly sources of power, to try to make coal mining look sexy – and the commercial generated a fair bit of controversy when it was released in 2005. There’s really no getting around the fact that in this day and age of increasing worries about the environment, coal, for many, is a four-letter word. The United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change raised the level of public concern when it released a report on Feb. 2 concluding scientific evidence shows "warming of the climate system is unequivocal," and it is "very likely" that human activity – including the burning of fossil fuels such as coal, which produces carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas – is the main contributor to rising temperatures over the past 50 years.

As concerns about global warming rise – and the role that current methods for generating power plays in the heating up of the planet – new ways of using coal in a more environmentally friendly fashion are beginning to get a closer look. The fact that both Canada’s governing Conservative party and the Liberal Opposition are embracing research and investment into so-called clean coal technology is one sign that the tide of public opinion against coal – long written off as a 19th-century technology – may be gradually shifting. In January, federal Environment Minister John Baird and Natural Resources Minister Gary Lunn announced a $230-million investment in environmentally cleaner technologies, including clean coal research. New federal Liberal leader and former Environment Minister Stéphane Dion, known for his commitment to green issues, also believes clean coal technology has the potential to meet Canada’s energy needs and limit our greenhouse emissions. "I think there are cleaner coal possibilities," Dion told a Bay Street crowd in January.

Tom Adams, executive director of Energy Probe, a consumer and environment-oriented watchdog based in Toronto, is a major advocate of clean coal technologies. He says it’s high time politicians started to address both the growing demand for energy and public concern about global warming. Sure, it’s important to encourage energy conservation and efficiency, as well as develop renewable wind, solar and hydro energy. But coal, for all its current faults, Adams insists, can’t be easily replaced by nuclear energy or natural gas.

It’s a lesson Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty learned the hard way when he had to admit last November that he couldn’t keep an election promise to close all of the province’s coal plants by 2007. The earliest date McGuinty now gives for the last coal plant shutdown is 2014. Adams says that wind, sun, hydro and nuclear options either don’t provide a reliable power supply, or can’t be easily turned on or off based on demand. Only natural-gas-fired power plants have the same flexible characteristics as coal for meeting peak and base load demand, he says. But natural gas prices are volatile, and generally headed upward, so Adams says it’s not a power source we want to rely on. The answer is cost-effective, environmentally friendly, power from coal.

Canada has vast coal deposits (mainly out west) that could provide hundreds of years of energy. And realistically, with coal currently generating a quarter of Canada’s power – between 60% and 70% in Alberta, Saskatchwan and Nova Scotia – Adams says the resource is not going away anytime soon.

The confusion surrounding "clean coal" partly stems from the fact that the term is used interchangeably to describe methods that are cutting edge and those that simply involve "cleaner" coal. Coal power has come a long way in removing or reducing harmful pollutants, like mercury, sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxide, thanks to better filters, scrubbers and burners. But it takes more than that to conquer greenhouse-gas carbon dioxide emissions.

The traditional method for producing electricity from coal is to burn pulverized coal to heat water for steam. This generates electricity, but also creates carbon dioxide. No techniques exist for burning coal without creating carbon dioxide; the best we can do is capture it and store the gas. There are three clean coal technologies available for separating out carbon dioxide to make it available for capture: the so-called integrated gasification combined cycle method, which turns coal into a synthetic gas (syngas) that can be used either as a fuel to generate electricity or for a variety of other purposes; post-combustion removal of carbon dioxide using scrubbers; and what is known as the oxyfuel method, which removes nitrogen at the beginning of the coal-burning process. The last method captures a higher percentage of the CO¸ than the other two – 95% or more compared with just over 90%.

The solution to finding both a clean method for generating coal, then storing the carbon dioxide, could come out of important, world-class research now being headed by Malcolm Wilson, director of CO¸ management with the Energy Innovation Network, a research group sponsored by various government, corporate and university bodies, including the University of Regina, where Wilson is based. He says the technologies needed to develop clean coal power are readily available; it’s a matter of combining them in a commercially viable way at a cost that society is willing to accept. Much of the work of Wilson and others at the university – home to the International Test Centre for CO¸ Capture, one of only four major research centres in the world devoted to developing such technologies – centres on a pilot project at Boundary Dam Power Station, near Estevan, about a two-hour drive southeast of Regina. There, they are looking for cost-effective ways for generating electricity with clean coal methods, including the capture of carbon dioxide.

The Boundary Dam project uses the post-combustion process. It is slightly less effective than the oxyfuel method for separating CO¸, but one (continued on page 49) (continued from page 46) advantage it does have is that it can be added on to existing coal-fired plants currently using traditional "dirty" technology. Oxyfuel and coal gasification technology can only be considered if building a new plant is an option.

Wilson says the Boundary Dam project captures about four tonnes of carbon dioxide each day – admittedly only a tiny percentage of the 6,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emitted daily by the power plant. However, he adds that the initiative has shown good results in reducing the cost of clean coal power while capturing carbon dioxide. Right now, Wilson says the cost of producing clean coal electricity with post-combustion methods is about 40% to 50% higher than conventional methods. "What we need now is the next step," Wilson says, noting the technology needs testing on a far larger scale.

According to Wilson, research that has already been done indicates that with the right geological conditions, carbon dioxide can be safely stored underground. Used oilfields in Western Canada are ideal for this purpose, he notes, since fossil fuels had been trapped underground there for millions of years. But on top of that, putting captured carbon dioxide to some commercial use would go a long way to making clean coal economically viable.

So far, the best commercial use for large amounts of captured carbon dioxide is to inject the gas into existing oil-well fields to help increase the amount of oil that can be taken out of the ground. The carbon dioxide, when liquefied and pumped into oil-rich rock, acts as a kind of solvent, helping to free up oil so more can be taken out of the ground in comparison to traditional drilling methods alone.

The injection of carbon dioxide into the ground, which might one day increase oil production at existing wells, is the focus of research now being done by the Weyburn-Midale CO¸ Monitoring and Storage Project in Saskatchewan. It is funded through various government agencies, international bodies and oil producers, including EnCana, and is being co-ordinated by the Petroleum Technology Research Centre (PTRC) located at the University of Regina, which is also a sponsor. Since 2000, as part of the research, carbon dioxide that otherwise would have ended up in the atmosphere has been injected into porous rock under farmers’ fields south of Weyburn, about 100 kilometres southeast of Regina. About 5,000 tonnes a day is stored at the Weyburn site; about 1,400 tonnes a day at the nearby Midale site.

Ray Knudsen, PTRC’s director for the project, says injecting carbon dioxide into the Weyburn well, in production since the 1950s, has resulted in an incremental daily output of 18,000 barrels, with total daily production now close to 30,000 barrels. The venture is also cost-effective, he says, with enhanced production offsetting the cost of carbon dioxide capture.

The carbon dioxide used at Weyburn is piped in 320 kilometres from the Dakota Gasification Co. plant in Beulah, N.D. Since the start of the Weyburn-Midale project, over seven million tonnes of carbon dioxide that otherwise would have spewed into the atmosphere has been diverted underground to help boost oil production. As for the syngas produced at the Beulah plant, it’s burned to generate electricity.

But using syngas to create power is just one potential use for coal gasification technology. Energy Probe’s Adams points to a recently proposed project in Alberta that could have "huge implications" for cutting greenhouse-gas emissions coming from the province’s oilsands. In January, Sherritt International Corp. – a publicly traded coal miner based in Toronto – filed a public disclosure document saying that it intends to build Canada’s first coal-gasification plant on a site about 80 kilometres southeast of Edmonton. What’s interesting about the Dodds-Roundhill Coal Gasification Project, says Adams, is that it would process coal into syngas, which could then be turned into high-purity hydrogen. Hydrogen is required to process crude oil in Alberta’s booming oilsands industry. Carbon dioxide would be a byproduct of this process. Currently, the oilsands draw the hydrogen they need from natural gas, so the use of syngas to create hydrogen would preserve natural gas reserves for domestic consumption or export.

Adams acknowledges the Sherritt proposal is an "interim" step in developing clean coal technology; its hydrogen output would be used for creating another fossil fuel and is not an end source of clean power. But it’s an important step, he says, since the plant would have the capacity to capture up to 12,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide each day. And, with an estimated 33.6 billion tonnes of coal in Alberta, about 70% of Canada’s total known coal reserves, it’s a huge source of untapped energy potential.

Still, the ultimate goal for those who are looking at ways of unleashing the power of coal in its cleanest form, is the construction of a commercial-scale "zero-emissions" power plant. Again, it is Saskatchewan that could lead the way in coming up with a solution. By this summer, SaskPower, the Crown corporation responsible for the province’s power needs, will make a decision on whether it will build a $1.5-billion power station that will use the oxyfuel process for generating electricity. The project would also capture and store carbon dioxide. The site has already been chosen – it’s next to the existing Shand Power Plant, which, like the Boundary Dam, is close to Estevan. SaskPower chose oxyfuel over post-combustion and gasification methods mainly for its potential to capture the most carbon dioxide.

If built by its projected completion date of 2011, SaskPower’s oxyfuel power plant could produce up to 300 megawatts of electricity and capture 8,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide daily. It would be the first plant of its kind on such a large scale. Max Ball, the manager of SaskPower’s clean coal project, admits that the oxyfuel option would have to compete with traditional methods for increasing the province’s power supply, including conventional coal-generation technology and importing electricity. While Ball says he is confident the numbers will show that oxyfuel can compete with the other options, if it is found to be the more expensive, it will provide a "real test" of public will to support greener ways of generating power. "Notionally, society says it is prepared to pay more," he says. "What nobody knows is how much society is prepared to pay."

So far, the SaskPower oxyfuel plant is just a dream. But the fact that Canada is getting very close to developing commercial examples of world-class clean coal technology is impressive. And, as the GE "sexy coal" ad points out, maybe it’s time we acknowledge that the potential of clean coal is looking pretty good.

Tom Adams
National Source
February 22, 2007

Last month, the Conservative government joined the long line of governments around the world subsidizing the production of wind power. Meanwhile, new information about wind power from Europe raises the spectre of unexpected blackout risks, high costs, unreliable production and even questionable environmental benefits.

Concerns over wind power used to focus on whether enough wind would blow to keep wind generators busy and electric power grids supplied. Now, after a major power blackout in Europe in November that left 15 million households in the dark, concerns over wind power come from an entirely opposite direction – fear that wind power can unpredictably produce more power than a system can handle.

The blackout started late on a Saturday night during a spell of warm fall weather. Although consumer demand was low, wind-power production in northern Germany was very high, supplying about 14% of the total and flooding the northeast region of the European grid with unexpected volumes of power. Meanwhile, most coal- and gas-fired generators, which can act to moderate erratic production elsewhere on a system, were either out of service or operating at a reduced output.

Grid operators then miscalculated the consequences of a routine grid manoeuvre: They disconnected a high-voltage line to let a ship pass though a canal. Overloaded power lines automatically disconnected, causing the blackout to sweep across Europe and forcing massive amounts of generation to automatically disconnect from the grid.

As operators attempted to restart the grid, wind generators, which are out of the direct control of the grid operators, automatically reconnected to the grid. They injected unwanted power and caused further disruption, extending the blackout in the areas with the most wind power.

To prevent a reoccurrence, the European agency responsible for power-grid reliability, the Union for the Co-ordination of Transmission of Electricity (UCTE), studied the blackout and recommended several remedies.

One recommendation would require upgrades to wind-power systems to allow grid operators to directly control these generators. This measure will increase the cost of connecting wind generators to the grid, but another recommendation – massive investments in the transmission grid – would hit harder. Much of Europe’s power grid was originally designed primarily for local generators serving mostly local customers. Now, moving large amounts of wind power vast distances during periods of high wind generation, which exceeds the needs of local customers, has overstretched the system. New high-voltage power lines that will be both controversial and costly are now in the cards.

Across the English Channel, the wind blows cold for other reasons. Although the U.K. has the highest wind-power productivity of any major wind-power country in Europe, its production falls short of the generally accepted minimum threshold for viability. A case in point can be seen in the U.K. government’s five-year anniversary review of its renewable energy subsidization program, called Renewables Obligation (RO), which disproportionately supports wind power. Tellingly, it has heard from the Office of Gas and Electricity Markets (Ofgem), the regulator mandated to protect consumers with respect to rates and reliability. Ofgem has major concerns.

The Renewables Obligation was intended to promote technology, but the regulator observes that "there is little evidence so far that the RO is encouraging technological development." As a result, consumers have been jolted. "The cost of the scheme to both business and domestic electricity customers has been very high – over $1.7-billion [$3.8-billion] to date," Ofgem states. Taking into account that the rate impact is growing rapidly from a relatively small initial cost, the regulator goes on to estimate that the ultimate cost may balloon to over $30-billion.

As for environmental benefits, the regulator observes that "there are currently much cheaper ways of reducing carbon emissions from the electricity sector than the RO scheme."

Some environmental organizations are raising substantive concerns, too. Two engineering analyses of the wind-power experience in the U.K., commissioned by a prominent environmental organization called the Renewable Energy Foundation and released before Christmas, turned up problems producing practical electricity supplies from the wind.

The engineers found that wind power production is a mismatch to power needs – in winter at times of low temperatures, when the U.K. needs power more, wind speeds tend to be low; when temperatures are high and it needs less power, in contrast, wind speeds are high. Across Europe, the output of wind power facilities is generally lagging the originally forecasted output.

Canada’s experience in wind production shows the same patterns. Worryingly, detailed production data from Ontario’s largest wind farms in November, December and January also shows the same mismatch between the availability of wind power and our need for it.

Canada’s experience with wind power has likewise been disappointing. Of the 14 wind farms receiving federal subsidies that have operated long enough to reveal a clear picture of their productivity, 12 have failed to achieve their forecasted production. Two of the federally supported wind farms have failed to match half of their forecasted production. Overall, the 14 wind farms have produced 18% less power than expected. Likewise, provincially subsidized windmills have also been failures.

Yet wind also has had successes. When sited properly, they can be contributors to the country’s grid system, and with more knowledge about how the wind works, we doubtless will one day see wind systems that are both economical and reliable. Until then, the answers are blowing in the wind.

Related article:

Wind wars
by Robert Hornung and John Constable, National Post, March 6, 2007
Wind-power advocates square off over the pros and cons of wind as a major source of renewable energy.
www.energyprobe.org/energyprobe/index.cfm?DSP=content&ContentID=17183

Responses

Comment:

You bring attention to some very serious growing pains. We will never get to your last couple of lines without investing and, in my opinion, subsidizing. The conventional oil, gas and nucs are so heavily subsidized the little drops that new innovations are getting are not at all in the same league. Nor are they there for the same perverse reasons. That magical hand of the free market is so far from a reality that subsidies in a constructive direction are essential.

Tom Adams:

Wind power needs better science in areas such as meteorology, wind mapping, electrical connection design, and smarter grid management tools before wind can realize its potential as a source for consumers. In my piece, I quote from the UK electricity regulator who observes that expending billions on subsidies to produce inefficient wind power has not driven technology improvement. By subsidizing generators, governments have their priorities backwards and are giving wind power a bad name. There is a significant backlash developing against wind power by people who see that the benefits of industrial wind development are not outweighing the costs. The idea that because other energy sources are subsidized therefore wind power should be subsidized is like saying because my neighbour leaves his air conditioner running hard while he is on vacation, there is no need for me to turn off unneeded lights.

Comment:

Admittedly I am no expert on power generation, but it would seem your critique of wind power, citing the German blackout example, points more so to a poor grid and transmission network than it does to a fundamental problem with wind power. That’s like blaming the Northeastern blackout from a few years ago on, say, a Nuclear plant, as opposed to an outdated transmission system, no?

Tom Adams:

The choice of generation technology drives grid requirements. As highlighted by the UCTE, the November 4th shows that the existing German grid is not suited for massive wind power development. Making the grid fit for wind power will require significant incremental expense. This incremental expense should be recognized as part of the cost of wind energy.

On your second point, excess generation is as dangerous to the grid as insufficient generation. Either of these can cause blackouts and equipment damage to customers, transmission equipment, and generators. It is also worth noting that grid reliability is a nuclear safety issue, since grid failure exposes nuclear power stations to extra stresses and accident risks that do not exist when grid conditions are maintained within required parameters.

Robert Hornung/John Constable
National Post
March 6, 2007

Tom Adams‘s oped on wind power (Blown Over, Feb. 22) tries to argue that wind energy raises the spectre of unexpected blackout risks, high costs, and unreliable production. Real world experience with wind energy does not support this view.

Wind energy is now the fastest growing source of electricity in the world and is widely recognized as a critical component of any strategy to address climate change and air pollution. In the year 2006 alone, global wind energy capacity grew by 32% – representing a global investment of US$23-billion – and as a result wind energy now provides enough energy worldwide to meet the annual electricity consumption of 22.5 million homes.

Mr. Adams’ piece also leaves out some important facts that must be brought to light. First, he references a November, 2006, blackout in Europe as "evidence" for the risks associated with wind energy, but, as he himself notes, the cause of the blackout was completely unrelated to wind energy production.

Second, Mr. Adams argues that integrating wind energy into the grid requires costly new investments in transmission infrastructure and interconnections. What he does not say is that many jurisdictions require such investments anyway to meet rising electricity demand and the need to connect any form of new electricity generation to the grid.

Third, Mr. Adams argues that wind energy production in Canada is unreliable, although the overwhelming majority of studies and experience worldwide indicate that wind energy can be reliably integrated into the electricity grid at much higher penetrations than is the case in Canada today, at low cost and in ways that enhance grid stability. The wind energy industry is now working with electricity system operators across Canada to design policies that maximize potential wind energy integration (and its environmental and economic benefits) while maintaining or improving system reliability.

Fourth, Mr. Adams notes that some of Canada’s wind farms have not met expected production levels, but fails to point out that such projected production levels are 10-year averages and many Canadian wind farms have only been in operation for one to three years.

Canada’s installed wind energy capacity more than doubled in 2006 and provincial governments and utilities have adopted targets that would see wind energy production in Canada increase by a minimum 700% in the next decade. This will allow Canada to finally start capitalizing on its massive wind-energy potential and move to begin to catch up to the world’s leading producers and users of this clean and renewable energy resource.

Robert Hornung is president of the Canadian Wind Energy Association.

Hard to run a reliable grid

by John Constable, National Post, March 6, 2007

Robert Hornung of the Canadian Wind Energy Association, a trade lobby, takes issue with Tom Adams’ thoughtful and very well-informed article on various problems now emerging in relation to European wind power. A few further comments may assist those interested in this complex topic to come to a reasoned conclusion.

Mr. Adams rightly refers to the strongly negative contribution made by wind energy during attempts to re-establish the European grid after the Nov 4 disturbance. Mr Hornung seems to grant this, but insists that wind had no role in causing the problem in the first place. In a narrow technical sense this is true, since the disturbance was caused by human error.

However, the grid area affected, the E.ON Netz control zone, has for some years now been pointing out that a very large wind fleet in its system has rendered it much more difficult to operate a reliable grid (see its wind reports on www.eon-netz.com).

Careful study of the UCTE report leads to the conclusion that large quantities of uncontrollable generation leads to fragile systems. Mitigating this is a considerable economic and technical challenge.

The cost of grid expansion to accommodate wind energy is also correctly remarked upon by Mr. Adams. This is very obvious at present in the United Kingdom, where expected wind growth in Scotland is driving a proposed 130-mile grid expansion project between Beauly and Denny. Similar grid expansion projects are well known elsewhere.

By 2020, E.ON Netz estimates that, because of growth in wind energy, Germany as a whole will require 2,700 kilometres of new or reinforced grid, of which 1,900 km will need to be on new routes, at a cost of $3-billion ($4.6-billion). These are major costs to the consumer, and Mr. Hornung’s failure to take them seriously is somewhat disappointing.

Mr. Adams remarks on problems with wind variability, and Mr. Hornung responds that there is no real difficulty. However, empirical data from Germany, Denmark, Ireland, and other locations, shows conclusively that managing wind variability is neither straightforward nor cheap.

It helps no one, certainly not the renewable sector, to pretend otherwise. Real world experience and complex meteorological models such as that commissioned by the Renewable Energy Foundation (www.ref.org.uk)suggest that there is a capacity limit for wind on a network, and very careful planning is required to ensure that this limit is not exceeded, and that the viable wind fleet is integrated without unreasonable risk or expense.

In the United Kingdom, we believe that wind will play its part offshore, where high wind resources can be found closer to centres of load, and geographically distributed to achieve some, modest, degree of smoothing.

In conclusion, while wind will have an important role in the global energy portfolio, we need realism with regard to the scale and value of this contribution, not least because over-expenditure in one area will entail a serious opportunity cost, suppressing other low-carbon technologies with higher intrinsic merits, such as tidal systems, biomass, and conventional fossil fuel systems equipped with carbon capture and sequestration.

The importance of this cannot be underestimated. Without a balanced approach, it is very unlikely that countries such as Canada and the United Kingdom can hope to offer the economically compelling example that alone will persuade China and India to do likewise, and without such joint action our climate-change policies will be little more than futile gestures.

John Constable is policy and research director for the Renewable Energy Foundation, London.

Richard Blackwell
Report on Business
September 12, 2007

The rush to promote biofuels such as ethanol and biodiesel is pushing up food prices and actually damaging the environment, a report from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development says.

Governments should stop subsidizing the current generation of biofuels − such as corn-based ethanol − and put more money into researching more advanced technologies, the report said.

"The current push to expand the use of biofuels is creating unsustainable tensions that will disrupt markets without generating significant environmental benefits," says the report, prepared for an international conference under way in Paris.

The OECD is the latest in a chorus of voices questioning expansion of biofuels. Last spring a study from Canada’s Library of Parliament said Ottawa’s investments in biofuel would do little to cut greenhouse gas emissions. In July a report from the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations said high demand for biofuels contributes to inflating food prices.

The OECD report is particularly critical of governments that mandate the proportion of ethanol in automotive fuel − policies now in place in Canada, the United States and many other countries. Any kind of government support for biofuel insulates drivers from the true cost to society of their fuel consumption, it adds.

Because Western countries are subsidizing biofuels, and trade barriers block their importation from tropical regions where they can be produced more efficiently, there are "powerful incentives" to replace forests, wetlands and pasturelands with bio-energy crops, the report says.

And even though burning biofuels may produce lower levels of greenhouse gases than fossil fuel, when fertilizer use and other impacts are taken into account "the overall environmental impacts of ethanol and biodiesel can very easily exceed those of petrol and mineral diesel."

One big problem with government backing of ethanol, the report says, is that it requires major investments in fuel-distribution infrastructure, which then pressures policy makers to continue support over the long term.

The report outlines a number of alternatives to the subsidies and protectionist measures now in place in many Western countries. First, tariffs on imported biofuel should be lifted, to support developing countries where it can be produced more cheaply.

International certification standards for sustainable biofuels should also be set, the OECD report says, so that people know which products help the environment. And more government money should go to new technologies, such as making biofuels from waste products or marginal crops.

Robin Speer, director of public affairs for the Canadian Renewable Fuels Association, a biofuels lobby group, said his group disagrees with many of the OECD report’s views. Canada generates biofuels mainly from surplus grain and oilseeds, he said, citing evidence of "significant environmental benefits" from adding them to traditional gasoline. Ottawa’s support for ethanol helps Canadian farmers, creates rural jobs, and adds to our fuel supply, he said.

At the same time, most current players in the business are investing in new technologies that will eventually see commercialization of ethanol made from waste products that contain cellulose. "Everyone is working in that direction," Mr. Speer said.

Toronto energy watchdog Energy Probe backs the OECD conclusions. "It’s hard to see how ethanol makes sense from just about anyone’s perspective, other than the farmers," said executive director Lawrence Solomon. "It pollutes air, it depletes water, [and] it’s inefficient in terms of energy."

The OECD urged more emphasis on energy conservation and fuel economy.

Dakshana Bascaramurty

July 30, 2007

On the lush land along the north shore of Lake Erie and south shore of Lake Huron the fertile soil returns hundreds of tonnes of corn, barley and wheat, but lately a new kind of farm is sprouting up.

Canada has 77 wind farms but the number is expected to rise to more than 100 over the next five years. Credit: Ted Rhodes CanWest News Service

Alongside the expansive hectares of traditional crops, mammoth steel towers with spinning blades are springing up from concrete roots planted firmly in the soil.

Wind turbines dwarf everything around them – most are equipped with 40-metre blades and stand as high as the Peace Tower on Parliament Hill. The trend is no longer just one or two stray turbines scattered amid farmers’ fields, but rather dozens of them clustered together in major power-generating operations across the countryside.

Canada has 77 wind farms, but that number is expected to rise to more than 100 with all the projects in the development stage or under negotiation for the next five years. Just last week, the first commercial wind project in Newfoundland and Labrador was launched.

Projects are picking up the most speed in Ontario, where the provincial government has embraced wind energy as a symbol of its green friendliness, and municipalities are signing on with a fervour because the province’s above-market prices mean they can reap cash in land sales and tax revenues.

But as Canada experiences a rapid rise in these developments, there is a growing opposition to wind power as a clean energy alternative, with complaints that it is high-cost, energy-inefficient, causes noise pollution and even wreaks havoc on birds’ migratory patterns.

After raising many of these concerns with the Ontario Municipal Board, residents of Wolfe Island, Ont., celebrated a victory this week when plans for an 86-turbine megaproject by Canadian Hydro Developers, Inc. was modified to place the turbines farther away from residential areas and wetlands.

Even Canadian singing icon Anne Murray has come out against wind power projects, complaining about what she regards as a blight on the landscape near her cottage on the Northumberland Strait: "We must do whatever it takes to preserve our precious coastline for generations to come," she wrote in a Halifax newspaper.

New York scientist Jesse Ausubel published the paper "Renewable and Nuclear Heresies" this week, criticizing wind farms – which he calls big industrial facilities – for the same reason

And Energy Probe, the consumer research organization bent on finding better energy alternatives, concedes there does not seem to be much promise in wind power.

Municipal governments have much to gain from the development of wind farms in their jurisdiction because property taxes are collected on wind farms.

The county of Chatham-Kent along the north shore of Lake Erie, for example, will collect about $250,000 each year from Kruger Energy, which is developinga$220-million farm with 44 turbines, said Rob Anderson, the county’s agricultural co-ordinator of economic development. Companies such as Enbridge and Kruger Energy also lease land from landowners to set up their turbines, which means financial benefits for many living in rural areas.

After receiving many questions from farmers concerned about having their rights infringed on, the Ontario Federation of Agriculture sent a comprehensive notice to its members in April with information about dealing with wind-farm developers, said Gary Struthers, a spokesman for the federation. It recommended farmers settle for no less than $5,000 each year for every 100 acres of land.

Thomas Adams, the executive director of Energy Probe, echoes the federation’s advice: "Lots of [wind farms] have gone bankrupt. The first commercial wind farm in Canada – Le Nordais on the Gaspe in Quebec – was also the first to go bankrupt," he said.

Quebec-based Boralex and Toronto-based Gengrowth announced they are set to open nine farms – each of them with five turbines – in the counties of Essex and Chatham-Kent, in the southern-most part of the country near Windsor, Ont. Each farm is supposed to produce 10 megawatts of energy for a total of 90 megawatts on all farms – enough to power 18,000 homes, said Patricia LeMaire, a spokeswoman for Boralex.

David Lee is a retired engineer in Essex County who considered putting a turbine on his property in the 1980s when interest in the alternate source of energy was beginning to build. Further research convinced him otherwise. "Most people think it’s wind blowing, it’s free, it’s going to reduce our power costs, but it’s actually driven up our power costs," Mr. Lee said.

At 11? per kilowatt hour, compared to the price of hydroelectricity at 6? an hour, Mr. Adams agrees. "The cost of wind power for consumers has been rising as opposed to falling in Ontario. That’s an important red flag," he said.

Even if it were cheaper, the reliability of wind power is questionable.

"How could you possibly take something as unreliable as wind and generate a reliable source of energy from it?" Mr. Lee asked.

David Timm, the Ontario policy manager for the Canadian Wind Energy Association, said the reliability problem is easily solved by spreading farms across the province, so that a windy day in one region offsets a calm day in another.

Mr. Adams pointed out that Canada’s energy needs peak in the summer when air conditioners are humming, but when wind energy production is at its lowest.

He said wind power does very little to maintain grid reliability because it is difficult to forecast wind production even a few hours into the future.

Wind farms in Ontario reached only 21.5% of their capacity in 2006, said Terry Young, a spokesman for the Independent Electricity Systems Operator, which maintains Ontario’s power grid.

While municipal leaders like Robert Bailey, deputy mayor of Amherstburg in Essex County, say wind turbines are appealing because they allow landowners to use their farmland right up to the tower, critics charge that the massive structures can come too close to homes.

Maureen Anderson, a member of the Essex County Wind Action Group, which sprung up in protest of the growing number of proposed developments, said the noise generated by the turbines is disruptive to homeowners, particularly at night.

Even the impact on animal populations is a concern. Conservationists in the Lake Erie region presented a strong enough case about the dangers to sensitive bird populations in Pelee Island that proposals for wind farms on the island have been rejected.

It is a claim being picked up by opponents of the latest spate of developments for the Windsor-Essex area.

"The north shore of Lake Erie is where major migration routes converge, and raptors seem to be most vulnerable to wind turbines," said Ms. Anderson. With bird migration as one of its considerations, Essex County has spent $80,000 on a study to be released this fall of how more wind farms might affect the region.

"It’s very hard to talk to people because it’s almost politically incorrect to come out against wind farms," Ms. Anderson said. "The destruction of the landscape and destruction of the country . . . it’s not worth the price for the piddly amount of power you get from these things."

Sudbury Star editorial
July 6, 2007

Canadian governments are getting on the wind-power bandwagon in a big way, but when it comes to building a wind turbine in the backyard – literally, in some cases – opposition quickly materializes, even among some environmentalists who say they support wind power.

Bottom line – wind hasn’t yet caught on, and may not in the foreseeable future, to the degree that environmentalists originally hoped.

Wind power proponents see it as an environmentally friendly way to provide steady power at a fixed cost, and it reduces the reliance on fossil fuels, which are never environmentally friendly. Opponents say the giant turbines kill birds, are unsightly and noisy and they are not energy efficient. Add to that: even if wind power is good, having to actually look at wind turbines is unacceptable.

The federal government is subsidizing wind power, and so is the province. The Ministry of Natural Resources’ goal is to boost energy from renewable resources – which includes wind power – by 10 per cent by 2010. It is no coincidence that the governing Liberals want to close the province’s coal-fired power plants by 2014.

The ministry says wind energy is the fastest growing form of energy in the world.

So what’s the problem? Why are some people on Wolfe Island, near Kingston, opposed to a major wind power project? And why is uber-environmentalist Robert Kennedy Jr. opposed to a major wind project off Cape Cod, even though other highfalutin types – such Theodore Roosevelt IV – support it? Even Canadian songbird Anne Murray complained about a wind power project on the Northumberland Strait, where she has a cottage.

The answer – it’s in their backyards. And when that happens, all those warm and fuzzy green ideals fade to black.

Kennedy, for example, argues the wind project off Cape Cod – where the family’s Hyannisport compound is located – will be noisy and unsightly, it will kill birds and hurt recreational shipping so much that tourism will lose $1 billion in revenues.

Wind farms, like mines, are not built where they’re convenient. They are built where the resources are, so you put wind turbines where the wind blows. In Ontario, the MNR has determined that is the northern and eastern shores of the Great Lakes, Hudson Bay and James Bay.

The ministry’s site says turbines kill two birds per year and the noise is equivalent to a refrigerator. Energy Management Inc., the company behind the Cape Cod wind project, says the turbines will appear half an inch high on the horizon, so they won’t be unsightly. And shipping won’t be a problem, the company argues, because the turbines will be sufficiently spaced.

On Wolfe Island, it was birds again, and wetlands, and noise, and unsightliness.

There are close to 80 wind farms operating in Canada and that number is expected to top 100 within five years. The potential uses for wind power vary. The Wikwemikong Unceded Indian Reserve is studying the potential for a project at Point Grondine on the shore of Georgian Bay. American Barrick, the world’s largest gold producer, plans to spend $40 million to build a wind farm to provide power to its projects in Chile.

Yet Energy Probe‘s Tom Adams noted that a study of 14 federally subsidized wind farms shows 12 have failed to meet forecasted production. He notes wind production has had some successes, but there is a lot to learn before it becomes economically viable on a grand scale.

And therein lies the issue. A German wind power company recently experienced a power outage that affected 10 million people throughout Europe. A lot has been learned from that little hiccup.

There is a lot to learn about wind power, but without a commitment to projects that will yield operational knowledge, wind power may never really take off.

Which makes one wonder whether the consumption-oriented North American public will ever be willing to give up its comfy, energy-consuming lifestyles to put up with a little hum, a few dead birds and the horrible spectre of churning turbines.

Lawrence Solomon
National Post
August 25, 2002

Alberta is an environmental pariah for its tar sands, which are just about the world’s worst emitters of greenhouse gases, but Alberta’s neighbours to the east – Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario – avidly promote a competing fuel with proportionately much greater emissions.

The federal government also has been promoting this souped-up greenhouse gas generator, ironically touting it as a Future Fuel that can help meet the country’s Kyoto targets. But this competitor can only make matters worse.

This worst-of-all-possible greenhouse fuels is called ethanol. Although it is produced from plentiful renewable crops such as corn and wheat, it is a glutton for our ever-diminishing non-renewable fossil fuels.

The news of the evil of ethanol comes to us from Cornell University, where a study by agricultural scientist David Pimentel found that producing a U.S. gallon of ethanol consumes 131,000 BTUs in planting, growing and harvesting corn, then crushing, fermenting and distilling it. That same gallon contains only 77,000 BTUs. "Put another way, about 70% more energy is required to produce ethanol than the energy that is actually in ethanol," explains Mr. Pimentel, who formerly chaired a U.S. Department of Energy panel that investigated the efficiency of ethanol production, and whose recent ethanol findings have been published in the authoritative Encyclopedia of Physical Sciences and Technology. "Every time you make one gallon of ethanol, there is a net energy loss of 54,000 BTUs."

The more ethanol you produce, the less energy you have, and that applies in spades to Canada, where the yield per acre is typically lower. That makes the fuel – which is blended with gasoline and sold as "gasohol" or "E10" in over 1,000 Canadian gas stations – as much of a gas guzzler as the vehicles it’s pumped into. If ethanol visionaries have their way and government policy vastly increases ethanol production, the upshot will be more tar sands plants to produce the energy needed to feed ethanol’s insatiable maw.

Ethanol consumes so much oil and other fossil fuels because the growers and processors who swear by it can’t afford to burn ethanol to make ethanol – it costs almost twice as much to make as gasoline. Neither would any of us buy this Kyoto killer at gas stations – Sunoco is the country’s leading gasohol marketer – without pumped-up government subsidies that cheapen its cost.

Some, like the National Corn Growers’ Association in the United States, dispute Mr. Pimentel’s study. They say that U.S. corn yields have improved by 10% in the last decade, among other improvements, making ethanol a net producer of energy. Whether ethanol produces any net energy, in fact, depends on a host of factors, such as the amount of petrochemicals required to grow a particular crop, the weather, and the proximity to market. But even if ethanol did eke out a modest net energy gain in some locations at some times, why run so hard to end up at more or less the same spot? Oil fields typically produce 30 to 50 times the energy that they consume, and even tar sands, which are preposterously inefficient, manage two units out for every unit in. Ethanol, which under good conditions may net one-fifth of one unit for every unit in, makes tar sands appear a paragon of efficiency and environmental sense.

Ethanol suffers from other environmental defects, despite its renewable cachet. Corn production erodes soil 12 times faster than it can be reformed, and irrigating corn depletes groundwater 25% faster than its natural recharge rate, apart from being a big-time water polluter because of fertilizers.

The poor also suffer from ethanol, which draws corn away from farmers’ fields that would otherwise produce corn for human or animal consumption. The resulting shortfall raises the cost of feeding chickens and livestock, in turn raising the cost of basic foods such as meat, milk, and eggs.

With losers all round, who backs the government programs that feed ethanol? Not surprisingly, the funding comes from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, a federal department that answers to farmers and food processors, and to no one else.

BACKGROUND SOURCES

Responses

I am advisor to the board of directors of Integrated Grain Processors Cooperative, an Ontario-based farmer-owned cooperative exploring the construction of an ethanol production facility in the province. As someone who has been involved in the fuel ethanol industry for over 20 years, I felt compelled to respond to Mr. Solomon’s article. The article is so riddled with misinformation it is difficult to know where to begin.