Ontario Renewable Energy Policy Breakthrough Hailed

[jpak]

http://www.renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/news/story?id=44408

Ontario, Canada The Ontario government today unveiled a vast, new renewable energy incentive program experts predict will accelerate the use of renewable energy in the province and create a regional market with implications for the global renewable energy industries. The plan is based on a long-term Standard Offer Contract, or feed-in-laws, as they are commonly called in Europe. It's essentially the same landmark policy platform that has made European countries like Germany and Spain beacons for renewable energy use. "This is the most progressive renewable energy policy in North America in over two decades."-- Paul Gipe, Renewable Energy Consultant

Ontario's Standard Offer program will offer $0.11/kWh (kilowatt-hour) to producers of wind, biomass and small hydro energy. It will offer $0.42/kWh for solar photovoltaic energy. The term of the contracts will be 20 years, and there will be an inflation adjustment. The residential retail price for electricity in Ontario is under $0.06/kWh (all figures in Canadian currency).

There is no limit to the number of projects that may apply for a contract, but the size of each project is capped at 10 MW. For comparison, the proposed Duke Point power plant on Vancouver Island (a medium-sized gas-fired power plant) would have been 260 MW in size. Ten MW of capacity is approximately sufficient to serve 10,000 homes.

The contracts are available to anyone, including homeowners, businesses and commercial energy producers. The electricity produced would be fed into the electricity grid. The contracts are expected to be available by June 2006. Many details for the implementation of the Standard Offer program will be worked out by the Ontario Power Authority and the Ontario Electricity

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[Rabbit of Caerbannog]

1. Right on! Now if only

we could get ANYTHING going here in the U.S. in general (and, selfishly, Virginia in particular...) we could really get the train rolling.

TVA, love'em or hate'em, has a fairly progressive program called their Green Power Switch. It pays producers or solar and wind (including residential customers) up to $.15/kWh that they generate on site.

Unfortunately here in the states we rely on assorted state-by-state incentives, if any, that do nothing to help grow a sustainable market for renewable technologies. New Jersey is hot right now, as is CT, CA, NW, and a couple others - but until we get serious nationally - the renewable manufacturers (especially solar PV) will continue shipping their U.S. manufactured product off shore to Europe, and Japan will continur to kick our asses growing their manufacturing for their own use.

[ladjf]

4. U.S. is the stupidest Country of all industrialized Countries.

We are too dumb to initiate such an intelligent program as the Canadian plan.

[phantom power]

2. Curious, the PV rate is nearly 4x the rate for wind.

I wonder why they think it's worth that much extra to promote PV, as opposed to wind. I don't follow the economics of that.

[Rabbit of Caerbannog]

3. Because PV is

more valuable on the renewable energy market. Sales of "green tags" or "green credits" value the environmental attributes of solar more highly than wind, small hydro, large hydro, bio fuels (typically in that order) because of their respective environmental impact. In states that have renewable portfolio standards, where utilities are required to provide a certain percantage ofg their power from rebnewables, they typically set up a tiered system, with Tier 1 being the most clean/environmentally friendly, i.e. solar and usually wind, tier II stuff like run-of-river hydro and closed-loop biomass, tier III being stuff like landfill gas, municipal solid waste, open-loop biomass etc. Probably more info than you wanted... :boring:

[jpak]

5. I buy Green Tags

My utility doesn't have a Green Electricity program, so I buy Green Tags to cover my annual electrical consumption...

[phantom power]

7. where do you buy green tags?

when you buy them, can you do anything with them?

[jpak]

8. Here's some info on Green Tags

http://www.greentagsusa.org/GreenTags/

http://www.epa.gov/greeningepa/greenpower.htm

They cost ~$20 per 1000 kWh...

I buy them through Maine Interfaith Power and Light...

http://www.meipl.org/

:)

[phantom power]

6. That's good to know. But then it begs the question...

why is PV considered to have lower environmental impact than wind? Based on my understanding, wind has lower externalized cost than PV, and it also has lower internalized cost too. It's cheaper per kilowatt-hour delivered. If I were a government deciding how to allocate subsidies, I wouldn't favor PV by a factor of 4. I would subsidize at the same rate as wind, or maybe less.

[Dead_Parrot]

9. For one thing, it's sexy and hi-tech...

But also PV is more predictable than wind. I can say, with some certainty, that 600 hours from now the PV arrays in CA will be running at, or near, capacity: I wouldn't like to make the same claim for a Danish windfarm.

And they tend to work during the day, so good for peak loads: Just a pity they're too damn expensive for most people.

[Rabbit of Caerbannog]

10. Solar can

be installed almost anywhere with zero environmental zero NIMBY impact. Imagine covering every rooftop with solar PV in lieu of conventional roofing materials (building integrated PV). Wind - especially utility-scale, while minimal impact, requires some level of disruption to the land, often clearing of trees, viewshed issues (beuty in the eye of the beholder...), and the ever-overblown but debunked "condor quisinart" argument (yes - bats may be an issue here in the east). As such - much comes down to public perception of environmental friendliness. And before the issue comes up - No. Photovoltaic panels that use thin film technologies like cadmium teluride, etc - do not pollute the environment.

On the issue of subsidies, solar also tends to get higher subsidies exactly becuse first cost is higher than wind, and there's a move to drive the cost down by developing sustainable markets. Utility-scale wind can benefit from the federal production tax credit, and you won'r be seeing multi-megawatt utility-scale solar farms (at least not out east). Solar is much more of a distributed energy technology - and there are compelling reasons in this alone, that should encourage broader government support...

The Japanese model is very compelling. Very high subsidies in the earlier years, decreasing over time as the cost of product comes down. PV costs there have dropped from about $29/watt in the early 90s to under $5/watt today - that coupled with ungodly electric costs = no-brainer.