[bornagainbiking]

Several yrs ago an innovative Canadian solar panel company was lured from the KW area to Germany with incentives and encouragment (was on W5).
Is there a movement afloat for HYDRO to undermine new initiatives.
I hear every barn is pastered with panels yet some guy in the Eastern Ontario gets roadblocks put up to stop him to the tune of thousands.



FREIBURG, Germany -- Germany is not necessarily known as the sunniest spot in Europe. But nowhere else do so many people climb on their roofs to install solar panels.

Since the introduction of the Renewable Energies Laws (EEG) in April last year, Germany has been experiencing a remarkable boom in solar energy.

"When my cab driver gives me a lecture about solar technologies, I know I am back home," raved Rian van Staden, executive director of the International Solar Energy Society (ISES) about Freiburg, the sunniest city in Germany and host to the InterSolar conference July 6-8.

The little university town in southwest Germany, about 40 miles away from the French and Swiss borders, is Germany's "Solar Valley."


A gigantic solar panel at the train station greets visitors to Freiburg. The city also boasts the new Zero Emissions Hotel Victoria, which is the first European hotel to run completely on alternative energy sources. Even Freiburg's premier league soccer stadium is solar powered.

More than 450 environmentally oriented companies and institutions take advantage of the favorable weather, research, networking opportunities and progressive political climate in Freiburg, which makes even Berkeley -- its soul mate in the San Francisco Bay Area -- look comparatively conservative.

The German solar industry has exploded in the last two years. DFS (Deutscher Fachverband Solarenergie), the German Association for Solar Energies, recently reported a 50 percent rise in solar panel orders during 2000.

German solar companies sold 75,000 solar systems in 2000 in addition to 360,000 solar systems installed previously, and photovoltaic installations increased fourfold from 1999.

Solar power means big business in Germany: Solar companies generated revenues of $435 million in 2000. According to DFS, Germany -- with its 54 percent market share -- is by far the European leader in produced solar collectors.

The trade show floors at InterSolar also demonstrate the increasing maturity of the industry. While a few years ago so-called "Ökos" (German shorthand for ecologically minded types) or "Müslies" (Musli eaters) in Birkenstock sandals and "suspiciously long" hair flocked to the conferences.

This time, the Ökos are swept aside by determined-looking business people in blue suits, Palm Pilots in hand, who squeeze into the conference's three halls, already packed to the gills with 240 exhibitors and more than 13,000 visitors in three days.

It was not fear of power outages, high gas prices or tripled power bills, but economic incentives that jump-started the solar revolution in Germany.

Last year in April, the Social-Democratic/Green German government introduced the Renewable Energy Act (EEG) to boost the planned switch to renewable energy sources. Producers of renewable energy get 43 cents for each kWh (kilowatt per hour) of solar power generated and 7 cents per kWh of wind energy generated.

Since June, even producers of biomass energy -- usually "waste products" from farms like grass and wood -- are allowed to sell up to 9 cents per kWh of generated energy.

"The beauty of this law is that costs of these incentives are not tied to any budget, but distributed and added to regular power prices," explained Uwe Hartmann, vice president of DGS, the German section of the International Solar Energy Society (ISES).

"Consumers feel such an increase of maybe a tenth of a cent at most as white noise, but it really helped to start the boom," added Hartmann.

Another program, initiated by the German government is also gaining momentum: the "100,000 roofs" initiative. Consumers get low-interest credits to finance solar panels for their roofs. By 2003, Germany intends to have given subsidies to more than 100,000 private homes with photovoltaic systems.

The initiative had a slow start, but not due to any lack of interest on the part of consumers.

"More than 10,000 customers already registered before the start of the initiative. The government was completely overwhelmed by this response and had to stop the initiative for about three months," said Hartmann. In 2001 alone, solar systems with a total power capacity of 65 megawatts will be subsidized.

Excited by recent developments, some are even looking beyond 2003: "We should start discussing a one-million-roof initiative," urged Philippe de Renzy-Martin with Shell Solar BV at a competing solar conference in Berlin in early June.

Producers of solar panels are desperately trying to meet demands.

"We are completely sold out. We grow about 50 percent each year, but even such an expansion is not enough to meet such a demand," said Jörn Jürgens, product manager with AstroPower in Newark, Delaware, the only U.S. company present at InterSolar.

A couple of years ago, all German "Solarfabriks" (solar factories) closed their doors. But now they are back. More than seven solar panel-producing companies have opened, and German British Petrol and BP Solar have just announced they will build another Solarfabrik with an annual capacity of 20 megawatts.

Van Staden summarized the current atmosphere in Germany: "Solar is hip in Germany. People are not just in it to save money, they really believe in alternative energies with their hearts and are willing to jump in head first."

At least in Freiburg this way of thinking is prevalent. After all, what other city has a Solar Café?

[bornagainbiking]

Get on the band wagon. Remember when electricity was cheap and people heated their homes with it.

SAINT JOHN, N.B. — New England governors and eastern Canadian premiers are pledging greater co-operation to meet the region's future energy needs, but a leading environmentalist says unless they take real action, it's just rhetoric.

David Coon of the New Brunswick Conservation Council says the leaders need to consider forming an Atlantic renewable energy corporation to tap the energy potential of the region.

"We need a strategic approach that would be able to plan it out to take advantage of what we've got and to gain the environmental advantages," Coon said Tuesday as the premiers and governors ended their conference in Saint John, N.B.

"The only way I can see that happening is if they act on the rhetoric around co-operation and create something like a regional renewable energy corporation."

The leaders spent the day hearing from officials in the energy sector and about the prospects for greater production of green power to meet each other's energy demands for the future.

"We are at one of those axis moments in history for energy in the region," said Rhode Island Gov. Donald Carcieri. "We need to put everything we possibly can into getting this thing pulled together."

For years, the region's premiers and governors have acknowledged the need for a co-ordinated plan, but have yet to consider an agency such as Coon has suggested.

Quebec Premier Jean Charest said the leaders should be looking at regional self-sufficiency as an objective.

"We view ourselves more and more as a region ecologically, economically and one that needs to sustain itself, and it makes sense that we work together in supplying each other in terms of energy," Charest told the conference.

Charest used the opportunity to promote a new 1,200 megawatt power line to carry hydroelectric power from his province into New Hampshire.

He didn't get into the accusations of economic protectionism recently levelled against Hydro-Quebec by Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams.

Earlier this month, Williams said the Quebec utility is trying to block the Lower Churchill project in Labrador to protect its own interests.

On Tuesday, Williams said the governors and premiers must find a regional solution on energy before one is imposed by their two federal governments.

"We need to assess what we have. I think we need to assess what we need and then we need to collectively assess how do we get there," he said.

But Kenneth Irving, president of Fort Reliance, formerly Irving Oil, warned the meeting about putting too much emphasis on just one energy source.

He said it's good to create an energy corridor into New England, but it should be able to handle power lines, natural gas and other energy supplies, depending on future demand.

"We should have strategies that are flexible enough to respond to the future as it reveals itself," Irving said.

In the meantime, New Brunswick Premier Shawn Graham said the leaders are taking real action by promoting things like the liquefied natural gas plant in Saint John, a solar panel manufacturing plant in Miramichi, N.B., and new wind and tidal projects across the region.

He's pitching his province as the energy hub once the leaders eventually settle on a plan for the future.

[vid]

Much of Northern Ontario is an energy generation orange or red zone, which means that so much energy is produced here and there are so few customers that adding any more generation capacity will overload the system, so almost all energy projects are not approved. (Two large projects, a solar farm and wind farm, are in limbo in Thunder Bay, and Dryden has three solar farms proposed as well.) Atikokan's plant is operating off the grid while it tests biofuel and wood pellets for generation, and Thunder Bay's plant is at a tiny fraction of its capacity while it is repaired and upgraded yet we still have an energy surplus that makes adding green energy projects very difficult.

[bornagainbiking]

We need a return to electric heat and electric fire places. Even the old light bulbs use 90% of their power to generate heat (so use 100 watt bulbs in the winter only). If we have so much up north pimp it and offer it cheap. Wouldn't this cut down on our fossil fuel dependancy and have a homegrown solution. There have been improvments (ceramic heater, electric fireplaces with fans and heat dishes) and so many more innovative will follow.
Hydro ain't goin nowhere and will be around a long time. It is just harnassing nature.
Gas is nice and a propane back-up would get you thru the winter.
Ontario has the natural resources.
Jobs and project for here not saudi or off shore.:banana:

[vid]

Our energy isn't cheap. It is inflated several times its actual cost to subsidize the nuclear generators in the south and Ontario Hydro's massive debt.