Crikey journalist Amber Jamieson recently reported that the National Health and Medical Research Council is examining whether anti-wind farm campaigner Sarah Laurie has breached ethical codes of research conduct.
The NHMRC and the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency were recently sent a dossier raising questions about the work of Laurie, CEO of the Waubra Foundation (an anti-wind farm activist group).
The dossier, whose author/s are not named, was forwarded to these agencies by the Public Health Association of Australia. It documents statements by Laurie about conducting interviews and other forms of research.
The Waubra Foundation has since put out a statement calling for ICAC or a Royal Commission to investigate the “anonymous and malicious” dossier.
“The Board of the Foundation considers that what has transpired, plus the contemporaneous and coordinated press campaign prominently featuring chronic critics of the Foundation’s works, is properly the subject of a referral to an ICAC or a Royal Commission,” the statement says. “To ignore the documented suffering of people, and openly to ridicule them, is not only unethical, it is immoral, if not criminal.”
The Waubra statement does not address the concerns raised by the dossier below. I wonder how long until we hear more on these matters from the NHMRC et al…
The content of the dossier is reproduced in full below
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
Sarah Laurie to testify at the Prince Edward County ERT...why?
Ms. Laurie has no reputation outside of anti-wind circles. She is on Australia's Quack Watch site for her continued spreading of disinformation. She is nominated for the Australian Skeptic Associations Bent Spoon Award for 2013 due to her devotion to pseudo-science. Here are links which prove this:
The relationships between the Waubra Foundation and fossil fuel and global warming denialist organizations are well documented and accepted into evidence in Australian Parliament:
Ms. Laurie is under investigation for medical ethics breaches.
Ms. Laurie admitted under oath that she is not qualified to provide testimony about wind energy and health at an Environment, Resources and Development hearing in Australia: http://reneweconomy.com.au/2012/bad-day-in-court-for-anti-wind-campaigner-sarah-laurie
And further, the unethically obtained evidence she tried to bring into evidence related to wind farms and health symptoms was both shown to be completely misinterpreted -- people's reported symptoms were actually greater when wind farms where shut down than when working -- but was also dismissed completely by the presiding judge: http://theballaratindependent.com.au/news/article/wind-turbines-good-for-health
Where are the body bags?
If wind turbines were as “bad” for you as windbaggers in the US would like you to believe, there should be a lot of body bags piling up in places like Germany, Denmark, and, well, Iowa – places that have large penetration by wind generated electricity. Or at least, one would think, there’d be an increased incidence in the headaches-to leukemia-to-herpes complex of symptoms that the loony right has identified as part of “wind turbine syndrome”. But of course, there is not.
Why?
The answer of course, is, that Germany does not have the highly funded, focused and professional anti-wind disinformation machine that has been launched here in the US.
We know who they are, we have their memos and strategy.
Guardian:
Why?
The answer of course, is, that Germany does not have the highly funded, focused and professional anti-wind disinformation machine that has been launched here in the US.
We know who they are, we have their memos and strategy.
Guardian:
A network of ultra-conservative groups is ramping up an offensive on multiple fronts to turn the American public against wind farms and Barack Obama‘s energy agenda.Among the action items included in the memo:
A number of right wing organisations, including Americans for Prosperity, which is funded by the billionaire Koch brothers, are attacking Obama for his support for solar and wind power. The American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec), which also has financial links to the Kochs, has drafted bills to overturn state laws promoting wind energy.
Now a confidential strategy memo seen by the Guardian advises using “subversion” to build a national movement of wind farm protesters.
The strategy proposal was prepared by a fellow of the American Tradition Institute (ATI) – although the think tank has formally disavowed the project.
The proposal was discussed at a meeting of self-styled ‘wind warriors’ from across the country in Washington DC last February.
Cause subversion in message of industry so that it effectively becomes so bad no one wants to admit in public they are for it (much like wind has done to coal, by turning green to black and clean to dirty)So, next time you see or hear about one of these “grassroots” groups “concerned” about the effects of wind energy, remember that the template for this “movement” was created in right wing think tanks fueled by the Koch brothers and other fossil fuel friendly funders. A small, elite group of right wing operatives control the message and the strategy, while many if not most of the of those who are active locally may well be simply paranoid-and-misinformed-but-otherwise innocent tea party loons who are so far down the chain, they don’t even know who is writing their script.
Setup a dummy business that will go into communities considering wind development, proposing to build 400 foot billboards.
The message is also repeated in Wash Times, WSJ, Fox and other sources.
Public opinion must begin to change in what should appear as a “groundswell” among grass roots.
"No additional coal plants in Germany"
In a PDF published last month, consultants from Pöyry tell the UK's Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) not to expect any more coal plant projects after the current ones are completed.
A new study finds that German "coal and lignite" (essentially, hard coal and brown coal) capacity will shrink by two thirds over roughly the next 25 years.
Pöyry
In their presentation to the UK government (PDF), researchers at Pöyry say there are three main reasons for the "apparent surge" in new coal plant construction, which is "due to highly unusual historic reasons": a favorable market environment in 2007/2008; excess carbon allowances; and an "inability or reluctance of developers to cancel projects" when circumstances changed.
I had already written about the first two and am pleased to hear someone argue the third point. But going forward, the researchers say "there will be no major new unabated coal or date night projects in Germany for the foreseeable future beyond those currently under construction."
Canada: Wainfleet’s Anti-Wind Turbine By-Law Invalid
Article by Jackie Campbell and Dianne Saxe
In Wainfleet Wind Energy Inc. v. Township of Wainfleet (2013 ONSC 2194), Ontario's Superior Court of Justice found the Township's anti-wind by-law invalid for vagueness and uncertainty. Wainfleet Wind Energy (WWE) applied to the MOE for approval of its 5-turbine wind farm project in the Township. The province requires wind turbines (IWT) to be set back at least 550 metres from noise receptors and sets a maximum for noise of 40 dBA at the nearest noise receptor.
Under the Municipal Act, 2001, a municipality may pass by-laws concerning the health, safety and well-being of persons. As well, it can prohibit and regulate matters that are or could become or cause public nuisances, and prohibit or regulate noise or vibration. The Township passed a by-law requiring a minimum 2 kilometre setback from any "property" (as defined in that by-law) for turbines, with a 32 dB maximum noise at the nearest property. If enforceable, the by-law would have blocked WWE's project. WWE sought a declaration that the by-law be quashed or does not apply to the project.
The by-law defined "property" as property line, vacant land, dwelling or structure and their inhabitants of all species used for private or business or public purposes.
Judge Reid noted that none of these definitions were clear: how vacant land was defined; who was an inhabitant, and whether an inhabitant could live on the vacant land, or only in a dwelling or structure. Also, he pondered whether an "inhabitant" would include animals, birds, insects, and plants...and what about migratory birds?
Finally, he concluded: [40]
... The definition is unintelligible. No developer could reasonably measure its risk in building an IWT on any particular site. There is simply no logical and reasoned way that a court can grasp the definition sufficiently to perform its required interpretive function.
He therefore ruled the bylaw invalid:
Summary:
[58] For the reasons noted above, by-law 013–2012 enacted by the Council of the Corporation of the Township of Wainfleet is invalid and without force and effect as a result of vagueness and uncertainty. This determination arises from the definition of "property" contained in the by-law and on the agreement of the parties that the indemnification provisions of the by-law were an invalid exercise of municipal power.
[59] If the by-law was otherwise valid, and if the applicant is successful in securing approval for its wind power generating facility on terms that are in conflict with the by-law, the by-law would be without effect pursuant to subsection 14(1) of the Municipal Act, 2001.
[60] If the by-law was otherwise valid, there would have been a conflict between the by-law and provincial legislation if evidence established that the effect of the by-law was to prohibit IWT development anywhere within the Township. In that event, the by-law would be without effect pursuant to subsection 14(2) of the Municipal Act, 2001.
[61] The enactment of the by-law was not outside the Township's municipal authority.
The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.
[58] For the reasons noted above, by-law 013–2012 enacted by the Council of the Corporation of the Township of Wainfleet is invalid and without force and effect as a result of vagueness and uncertainty. This determination arises from the definition of "property" contained in the by-law and on the agreement of the parties that the indemnification provisions of the by-law were an invalid exercise of municipal power.
[59] If the by-law was otherwise valid, and if the applicant is successful in securing approval for its wind power generating facility on terms that are in conflict with the by-law, the by-law would be without effect pursuant to subsection 14(1) of the Municipal Act, 2001.
[60] If the by-law was otherwise valid, there would have been a conflict between the by-law and provincial legislation if evidence established that the effect of the by-law was to prohibit IWT development anywhere within the Township. In that event, the by-law would be without effect pursuant to subsection 14(2) of the Municipal Act, 2001.
[61] The enactment of the by-law was not outside the Township's municipal authority.
Monday, May 13, 2013
Renewable Germany: The very model of a new energy order
By Amory Lovins on 18 April 2013
Germany has doubled the renewable share of its total electricity consumption in the past six years to 23% in 2012. It forecasts nearly a redoubling by 2025, well ahead of the 50% target for 2030, and closing in on official goals of 65% in 2040 and 80% in 2050. Some areas are moving faster: in 2010, four German states were 43–52% windpowered for the whole year. And at times in spring 2012, half of all German electricity was renewable, nearing Spain’s 61% record set in April 2012.
Efficiency and Renewables Bolster Post-Fukushima Germany
To underscore the remarkable German case, let’s review what happened in 2011, right after Fukushima. The Bundestag—led by the most conservative and pro-nuclear party, with no party dissenting—overwhelmingly voted to close eight of the country’s nuclear plants immediately and the other nine by 2022. (In a double U-turn, a nuclear phase-out agreed in 2000 was first slowed and then reinstated; nuclear output has actually been falling since 2006.) Skeptics said this abrupt shutdown of 41% of nuclear output would make the lights go out, the economy crash, carbon emissions and electricity prices soar, and Germany need to import nuclear power from France. But none of that happened.
In fact, in 2011 the German economy grew three percent and remained Europe’s strongest, buoyed by a world-class renewables industry with 382,000 jobs (about 222,000 of them added since 2004, with net employment and net stimulus both positive). Chancellor Merkel won her bet that it would be smarter to spend energy money on German engineers, manufacturers, and installers than to send it to the Russian natural gas behemoth Gazprom. Germany’s lights stayed on. The nuclear shutdown was entirely displaced by year-end, three-fifths due to renewable growth. Do the math: simply repeating 2011’s renewable installations for three additional years, through 2014, would thus displace Germany’s entire pre-Fukushima nuclear output. Meanwhile, efficiency gains—plus a mild winter—cut total German energy use by 5.3%, electricity consumption by 1.4%, and carbon emissions by 2.8%. Wholesale electricity prices fell 10–15%. Germany remained a net exporter of electricity, and during a February 2012 cold snap, even exported nearly 3 GW to power-starved France, which remains a net importer of German electricity.
Was this just a flash in the pan? No. In 2012 vs. 2011, official data show that these trends broadly persisted.
Germany generated 617 TWh of electricity in 2012, up 0.3% from 2011. Nuclear generation fell below 100 TWh, the lowest in at least two decades. Gas prices spiked above coal, so gas-fired generation fell 13 TWh while coal-fired generation ticked up 14 TWh or 5%—still near modern lows, but boosted by a record 23 TWh of profitable power exports. Renewables added 15 TWh: they rose from 20% of electricity consumption in 2011 to 23% in 2012, passing every rival except brown coal (lignite, expected to recede in 2013). Renewable output has risen by one-third just in the past two years. And though Germany’s mix of solar, wind, biomass, hydro, etc. wouldn’t all run at the same time, its total end-of-2012 renewable generating capacity impressively rivaled the country’s 82 GW peak demand. Driven by renewables’ competition, wholesale electricity prices continued to plummet. Germany’s grid remained the most reliable in Europe. And while real GDP, damped by the Euro crisis, grew just 0.7%, electricity consumption fell 1.3%. Total carbon emissions rose 1.6%, boosted by an unusually cold winter, but emissions from industry plus power stations stayed constant, and weather-adjusted total emissions probably fell.
Germany’s Electricity Rates and Feed-in Tariff
German renewables’ dual trajectories of declining costs and rising installation rates are sending big ripples through the electricity system. Rating agencies are downgrading major European utilities because renewables—now over one-third of Europe’s generating capacity—have almost zero running cost. They can thus underbid fossil and nuclear plants, making them run fewer hours and earn lower prices, and thus slashing their profits. For example, German wholesale power prices have fallen about 30% just in the past two years to near eight-year lows, putting big utilities that underinvested in renewables under severe profit pressure.
Even so, Germans pay a lot for their household electricity, about $0.34/kWh in 2012. The household tariff includes a “renewables surcharge,” expected to amount to roughly $249 per three-person household this year. That’d be three-fifths smaller if households weren’t subsidizing many businesses, mainly large ones—exempted from nearly the whole renewables charge, allegedly to boost German competitiveness—by 3–4 billion Euros a year. Yet German industry enjoys the lower spot prices that renewables create, so it pays about the same for electricity as it did in 1978, and less than French industry pays today. This cross-subsidy from households to industry, and the size of the resulting household surcharge, have generated lively debate about how much Germans pay for their electricity and why.
The German Renewable Energy Act introduced two key policies in 2000: 1) a fixed 20-year power purchase contract (i.e. feed-in tariff) offered to most renewables, such as rooftop solar PV, which also gain priority access to the grid, and 2) a stipulation that such power purchases not draw on Germany’s public purse. That second piece is notable, because German utilities—required to pay the feed-in tariff for each kind of renewable energy fed into the grid by any producer—recover those payments via the renewables surcharge.
At the beginning of 2013, that surcharge jumped 47%, but only one-ninth of that increase was for renewables; the rest came from calculational quirks, chiefly the generous industrial exemptions. The household surcharge has been rising rapidly because home photovoltaic generation has quadrupled in four years, with 1.3 million rooftop systems producing 28 TWh in 2012—adding at least 1 GW more in 2012 than the government intended. In a German national election year, this prompted calls from various members of government to postpone or reduce payments (even retroactively) or spread the fee to more customers. Those proposals were promptly scuttled. With Germany’s firm commitment to an energy future grounded in renewables, and with clean technologies such as solar rapidly taking off, the renewables surcharge will probably remain widely supported, controversial, misrepresented, and widely misunderstood.
The Truth Behind Germany’s FiT and Electricity Rates
Some critics have thus blamed renewables and the surcharge for Germany’s high household electricity prices, but such claims are little more than smoke and mirrors.
Many coal and nuclear subsidies came for decades from tax revenues as they still do in the U.S.; if transparently self-financed the way the German renewable surcharge is now, they’d raise German household prices about twice as much as renewables now do. But Germany stopped subsidizing photovoltaics nine years ago and has adopted a far more rigorous, egalitarian, effective, and transparent system of buying the power mix it wants and paying for it through an electric-bill line-item. This is no more a subsidy than the standard U.S. practice of charging customers for the cost of any power plant the utility regulator has approved: society simply chooses and buys the kinds of power it wants.
But in Germany those renewable charges present a key choice: you can earn them back—and more—by choosing to invest in renewables personally or through a co-op or community, the way 65% of Germany’s renewable capacity is now owned. In other words, you pay the surcharge like most German citizens, but you can also reap the feed-in tariff for your renewable generation. Such level-playing-field investment opportunities are rare in America, where corporations, usually large ones, own about 98% of non-hydro renewable capacity.
Even for customers who choose not to invest in their own renewables, the surcharge is a tiny drop in the bucket. Of the steep average German household electricity price, only 56% bought electricity and its delivery and sale; the rest was taxes. Less than a third of those taxes was the 13.6% for the renewables surcharge—after its roughly 150% enlargement by not fairly spreading the cost to all customers.
From 2000 to 2012, only two-fifths of the increase in the household electricity price was due to the renewable surcharge. The 2012 renewable surcharge cost the average German three-person household about ten euros a month. That’s about 3% of the household’s total energy costs, or 0.3% of its total expenditures, or less than 0.2% counting its offsetting cost reductions. You need a magnifying glass to see it—as the Environment Ministry thoughtfully illustrated.
Further, renewables also directly reduce several costs, such as wholesale electricity price and an electricity tax (effectively a carbon tax). These declines offset nearly half of the increased renewables surcharge—and decrease customers’ risk from volatile fossil-fuel prices. (German’s electric bills rose 70% during 2000–12, while heating oil and gasoline prices rose 86% to a total nearly three times higher. Heating oil alone rose 119% since 2000.) In fact, as renewables keep getting cheaper and fossil fuels probably costlier, the surcharge should turn into a large public dividend—as happened in France in 2008—in about a decade, and should total over a trillion dollars during 2030–50; so far, this shift from investment to return is outpacing expectations.
Germany’s Efficiency Reigns: Economic Growth with Less Energy
The broad consensus behind Germany’s energy turnaround rests on foundations laid long ago. During 1990–2011, German coal-fired generation fell 14% and nuclear generation fell 30%, while renewable generation grew by 614%. Moreover, and often overlooked, German energy productivity advanced across all sectors. Indeed, Germany is rapidly becoming the world’s most energy-efficient country. Since 1990—the base year for Kyoto carbon accounting (and also the year Germany reunified)—the country’s weather-adjusted primary energy use fell 11% and its carbon emissions fell 25.5%, while its real GDP rose 37%.
Thus the economic productivity of its carbon combustion, reflecting big gains in every sector, rose by 84% in 22 years. This powerful trend is just getting started: Germany intends by 2050 to cut its absolute greenhouse gas emissions by 80–95% below the 1990 level, double its overall energy productivity from the 2020 level, and supply 60% of its total final energy renewably. Applying Reinventing Fire’s integrative design approach could probably far outdo the 20% electricity savings projected during 2008–2050. This could shrink the projected need for renewables and transmission.
While coal and nuclear shares of electricity generation decreased, Germany’s renewable share exceeded 1.5 times the nuclear share by mid-2012 (as also occurred worldwide in 2011). Germany is installing 8 GW of solar power each year (more in the past three years than the U.S. added in the last 30), and added 3 GW just during December 2011—more than the U.S. added all year. The feed-in tariff, now below $0.19/kWh for small photovoltaic systems, falls monthly. Thus as liberalized power markets in Europe and the phase-out of German coal subsidies both gain traction, renewable costs and subsidies are falling, and Germany’s relatively stable policy has built a world-leading clean-energy industrial base.
So the world’s largest economy (the U.S.) hangs suspended between the old and new energy worlds, while #2 China, #3 Japan, #4 Germany, and #10 India are consolidating their energy vision around transformation. So are many others, as surveyed annually at REN21. But in particular, Germany’s methodical and determined energy turnaround offers proof that a heavily industrialized, world-class, politically pluralistic market economy can run well on a self-financing combination of efficiency and renewables. The losers in the German market are those who assumed the energy turnaround couldn’t work. The winners are those who applied their capital and skills to make it happen.
The author gratefully acknowledges helpful data and comments by Craig Morris in Freiburg, whose blog is an exceptionally valuable source on Germany’s energy shift, and by US renewables expert Paul Gipe. Graphs of German electricity generation and renewables mix courtesy of Paul Gipe. Composition of German electricity price graph developed with data from the German Association of Energy and Water Industries and based on a similar Creative Commons version here.
This article was originally published on the Rocky Mountain Institute blog RMI Outlet. Reproduced with permission
While the examples of Japan, China, and India show the promise of rapidly emerging energy economies built on efficiency and renewables, Germany—the world’s number four economy and Europe’s number one—has lately provided an impressive model of what a well-organized industrial society can achieve. To be sure, it’s not yet the world champion among countries with limited hydroelectricity: Denmark passed 40% renewable electricity in 2011 en route to a target of 100% by 2050, and Portugal, albeit with more hydropower, raised its renewable electricity fraction from 17% to 45% just during 2005–10 (while the U.S., though backed by a legacy of big hydro, crawled from 9% to 10%), reaching 70% in the rainy and windy first quarter of 2013. But these economies are not industrial giants like Germany, which remains the best disproof of claims that highly industrialized countries, let alone cold and cloudy ones, can do little with renewables.
Germany has doubled the renewable share of its total electricity consumption in the past six years to 23% in 2012. It forecasts nearly a redoubling by 2025, well ahead of the 50% target for 2030, and closing in on official goals of 65% in 2040 and 80% in 2050. Some areas are moving faster: in 2010, four German states were 43–52% windpowered for the whole year. And at times in spring 2012, half of all German electricity was renewable, nearing Spain’s 61% record set in April 2012.
Efficiency and Renewables Bolster Post-Fukushima Germany
To underscore the remarkable German case, let’s review what happened in 2011, right after Fukushima. The Bundestag—led by the most conservative and pro-nuclear party, with no party dissenting—overwhelmingly voted to close eight of the country’s nuclear plants immediately and the other nine by 2022. (In a double U-turn, a nuclear phase-out agreed in 2000 was first slowed and then reinstated; nuclear output has actually been falling since 2006.) Skeptics said this abrupt shutdown of 41% of nuclear output would make the lights go out, the economy crash, carbon emissions and electricity prices soar, and Germany need to import nuclear power from France. But none of that happened.
In fact, in 2011 the German economy grew three percent and remained Europe’s strongest, buoyed by a world-class renewables industry with 382,000 jobs (about 222,000 of them added since 2004, with net employment and net stimulus both positive). Chancellor Merkel won her bet that it would be smarter to spend energy money on German engineers, manufacturers, and installers than to send it to the Russian natural gas behemoth Gazprom. Germany’s lights stayed on. The nuclear shutdown was entirely displaced by year-end, three-fifths due to renewable growth. Do the math: simply repeating 2011’s renewable installations for three additional years, through 2014, would thus displace Germany’s entire pre-Fukushima nuclear output. Meanwhile, efficiency gains—plus a mild winter—cut total German energy use by 5.3%, electricity consumption by 1.4%, and carbon emissions by 2.8%. Wholesale electricity prices fell 10–15%. Germany remained a net exporter of electricity, and during a February 2012 cold snap, even exported nearly 3 GW to power-starved France, which remains a net importer of German electricity.
Was this just a flash in the pan? No. In 2012 vs. 2011, official data show that these trends broadly persisted.
Germany generated 617 TWh of electricity in 2012, up 0.3% from 2011. Nuclear generation fell below 100 TWh, the lowest in at least two decades. Gas prices spiked above coal, so gas-fired generation fell 13 TWh while coal-fired generation ticked up 14 TWh or 5%—still near modern lows, but boosted by a record 23 TWh of profitable power exports. Renewables added 15 TWh: they rose from 20% of electricity consumption in 2011 to 23% in 2012, passing every rival except brown coal (lignite, expected to recede in 2013). Renewable output has risen by one-third just in the past two years. And though Germany’s mix of solar, wind, biomass, hydro, etc. wouldn’t all run at the same time, its total end-of-2012 renewable generating capacity impressively rivaled the country’s 82 GW peak demand. Driven by renewables’ competition, wholesale electricity prices continued to plummet. Germany’s grid remained the most reliable in Europe. And while real GDP, damped by the Euro crisis, grew just 0.7%, electricity consumption fell 1.3%. Total carbon emissions rose 1.6%, boosted by an unusually cold winter, but emissions from industry plus power stations stayed constant, and weather-adjusted total emissions probably fell.
Germany’s Electricity Rates and Feed-in Tariff
German renewables’ dual trajectories of declining costs and rising installation rates are sending big ripples through the electricity system. Rating agencies are downgrading major European utilities because renewables—now over one-third of Europe’s generating capacity—have almost zero running cost. They can thus underbid fossil and nuclear plants, making them run fewer hours and earn lower prices, and thus slashing their profits. For example, German wholesale power prices have fallen about 30% just in the past two years to near eight-year lows, putting big utilities that underinvested in renewables under severe profit pressure.
Even so, Germans pay a lot for their household electricity, about $0.34/kWh in 2012. The household tariff includes a “renewables surcharge,” expected to amount to roughly $249 per three-person household this year. That’d be three-fifths smaller if households weren’t subsidizing many businesses, mainly large ones—exempted from nearly the whole renewables charge, allegedly to boost German competitiveness—by 3–4 billion Euros a year. Yet German industry enjoys the lower spot prices that renewables create, so it pays about the same for electricity as it did in 1978, and less than French industry pays today. This cross-subsidy from households to industry, and the size of the resulting household surcharge, have generated lively debate about how much Germans pay for their electricity and why.
The German Renewable Energy Act introduced two key policies in 2000: 1) a fixed 20-year power purchase contract (i.e. feed-in tariff) offered to most renewables, such as rooftop solar PV, which also gain priority access to the grid, and 2) a stipulation that such power purchases not draw on Germany’s public purse. That second piece is notable, because German utilities—required to pay the feed-in tariff for each kind of renewable energy fed into the grid by any producer—recover those payments via the renewables surcharge.
At the beginning of 2013, that surcharge jumped 47%, but only one-ninth of that increase was for renewables; the rest came from calculational quirks, chiefly the generous industrial exemptions. The household surcharge has been rising rapidly because home photovoltaic generation has quadrupled in four years, with 1.3 million rooftop systems producing 28 TWh in 2012—adding at least 1 GW more in 2012 than the government intended. In a German national election year, this prompted calls from various members of government to postpone or reduce payments (even retroactively) or spread the fee to more customers. Those proposals were promptly scuttled. With Germany’s firm commitment to an energy future grounded in renewables, and with clean technologies such as solar rapidly taking off, the renewables surcharge will probably remain widely supported, controversial, misrepresented, and widely misunderstood.
The Truth Behind Germany’s FiT and Electricity Rates
Some critics have thus blamed renewables and the surcharge for Germany’s high household electricity prices, but such claims are little more than smoke and mirrors.
Many coal and nuclear subsidies came for decades from tax revenues as they still do in the U.S.; if transparently self-financed the way the German renewable surcharge is now, they’d raise German household prices about twice as much as renewables now do. But Germany stopped subsidizing photovoltaics nine years ago and has adopted a far more rigorous, egalitarian, effective, and transparent system of buying the power mix it wants and paying for it through an electric-bill line-item. This is no more a subsidy than the standard U.S. practice of charging customers for the cost of any power plant the utility regulator has approved: society simply chooses and buys the kinds of power it wants.
But in Germany those renewable charges present a key choice: you can earn them back—and more—by choosing to invest in renewables personally or through a co-op or community, the way 65% of Germany’s renewable capacity is now owned. In other words, you pay the surcharge like most German citizens, but you can also reap the feed-in tariff for your renewable generation. Such level-playing-field investment opportunities are rare in America, where corporations, usually large ones, own about 98% of non-hydro renewable capacity.
Even for customers who choose not to invest in their own renewables, the surcharge is a tiny drop in the bucket. Of the steep average German household electricity price, only 56% bought electricity and its delivery and sale; the rest was taxes. Less than a third of those taxes was the 13.6% for the renewables surcharge—after its roughly 150% enlargement by not fairly spreading the cost to all customers.
From 2000 to 2012, only two-fifths of the increase in the household electricity price was due to the renewable surcharge. The 2012 renewable surcharge cost the average German three-person household about ten euros a month. That’s about 3% of the household’s total energy costs, or 0.3% of its total expenditures, or less than 0.2% counting its offsetting cost reductions. You need a magnifying glass to see it—as the Environment Ministry thoughtfully illustrated.
Further, renewables also directly reduce several costs, such as wholesale electricity price and an electricity tax (effectively a carbon tax). These declines offset nearly half of the increased renewables surcharge—and decrease customers’ risk from volatile fossil-fuel prices. (German’s electric bills rose 70% during 2000–12, while heating oil and gasoline prices rose 86% to a total nearly three times higher. Heating oil alone rose 119% since 2000.) In fact, as renewables keep getting cheaper and fossil fuels probably costlier, the surcharge should turn into a large public dividend—as happened in France in 2008—in about a decade, and should total over a trillion dollars during 2030–50; so far, this shift from investment to return is outpacing expectations.
Germany’s Efficiency Reigns: Economic Growth with Less Energy
The broad consensus behind Germany’s energy turnaround rests on foundations laid long ago. During 1990–2011, German coal-fired generation fell 14% and nuclear generation fell 30%, while renewable generation grew by 614%. Moreover, and often overlooked, German energy productivity advanced across all sectors. Indeed, Germany is rapidly becoming the world’s most energy-efficient country. Since 1990—the base year for Kyoto carbon accounting (and also the year Germany reunified)—the country’s weather-adjusted primary energy use fell 11% and its carbon emissions fell 25.5%, while its real GDP rose 37%.
Thus the economic productivity of its carbon combustion, reflecting big gains in every sector, rose by 84% in 22 years. This powerful trend is just getting started: Germany intends by 2050 to cut its absolute greenhouse gas emissions by 80–95% below the 1990 level, double its overall energy productivity from the 2020 level, and supply 60% of its total final energy renewably. Applying Reinventing Fire’s integrative design approach could probably far outdo the 20% electricity savings projected during 2008–2050. This could shrink the projected need for renewables and transmission.
While coal and nuclear shares of electricity generation decreased, Germany’s renewable share exceeded 1.5 times the nuclear share by mid-2012 (as also occurred worldwide in 2011). Germany is installing 8 GW of solar power each year (more in the past three years than the U.S. added in the last 30), and added 3 GW just during December 2011—more than the U.S. added all year. The feed-in tariff, now below $0.19/kWh for small photovoltaic systems, falls monthly. Thus as liberalized power markets in Europe and the phase-out of German coal subsidies both gain traction, renewable costs and subsidies are falling, and Germany’s relatively stable policy has built a world-leading clean-energy industrial base.
So the world’s largest economy (the U.S.) hangs suspended between the old and new energy worlds, while #2 China, #3 Japan, #4 Germany, and #10 India are consolidating their energy vision around transformation. So are many others, as surveyed annually at REN21. But in particular, Germany’s methodical and determined energy turnaround offers proof that a heavily industrialized, world-class, politically pluralistic market economy can run well on a self-financing combination of efficiency and renewables. The losers in the German market are those who assumed the energy turnaround couldn’t work. The winners are those who applied their capital and skills to make it happen.
The author gratefully acknowledges helpful data and comments by Craig Morris in Freiburg, whose blog is an exceptionally valuable source on Germany’s energy shift, and by US renewables expert Paul Gipe. Graphs of German electricity generation and renewables mix courtesy of Paul Gipe. Composition of German electricity price graph developed with data from the German Association of Energy and Water Industries and based on a similar Creative Commons version here.
This article was originally published on the Rocky Mountain Institute blog RMI Outlet. Reproduced with permission
Sunday, May 12, 2013
Health effects of wind towers hyped by media
Slate Magazine is not generally thought of as a medical journal, but in its recent issue it seems to have confronted, and clarified, a massive medical myth about wind power, conceived in northern New York by a pediatrician and nurtured in Maine by a radiologist, with potentially negative worldwide consequences.
Claims of negative health effects from wind turbines may have begun in England, but a New York pediatrician, Nina Pierpont, M.D., seems to have taken them up, full force, but without much thought or evidence. She self-published "Wind Turbine Syndrome," a book now out of print, that was seized upon by the anti-wind factions.
Claimed to have been "peer reviewed," it was, instead, reviewed by selected associates. Pierpont has since spoken extensively to the New York legislature and as far away as the Australian Parliament with various claims of harm related to wind. Strangely, a Maine radiologist from Fort Kent, Michael Nissenbaum M.D., enthusiastically took up the cause.
His "research" consisted of interviews with 15 families in Mars Hill, all anecdotal reports, which he parlayed into what he claimed was possible publication in the New England Journal. (That never happened.)
Nonetheless, Dr. Nissenbaum remains undeterred, and has given legislative testimony in Vermont, and been quoted extensively — notably, not in any medical publications — though in several news media outlets.
To correct the misinformation flooding the media, in December, 2009, "Wind Turbine Sound and Health Effects, An Expert Panel Review," was prepared for the American and Canadian Wind Energy Associations, refuting the false claims and suggesting the "nocebo effect" (the psychological fear of being harmed) as a likely cause.
Finally, now, Keith Kloor has taken the further step of providing the press with a clear explanation, which is summed up quite succinctly here:
"Several recent studies might explain what's going on here. One of them, published in Health Psychology, found that the power of suggestion can induce symptoms associated with wind turbine syndrome.
"Researchers exposed 60 participants to 10 minutes of infrasound, (vibrations too low in frequency to hear) and sham infrasound (silence). Before the listening sessions, half the group was shown television footage of people who lived near wind farms recounting the harmful effects they said were caused by noise from the spinning blades. Within this group, the people who scored high on a test of anxiety became symptomatic whether they were exposed to low-frequency noise, or sham infrasound."
While, in time, we usually can prove that something does happen, (i.e. side effects from a treatment or a medication), it is not possible to prove that something will not happen. There is always some degree of risk.
Further study, as demanded by opponents of wind, will appropriately continue, and will take time. Given, however, the well-documented and peer-reviewed evidence thus far, there is no medical contraindication to wind power and, given the crisis of our unstable climate, there is no time for further delay.
Richard Jennings, M.D., is a member of the Maine Medical Association and a past member of the MMA Public Health Committee. A retired psychiatrist, he lives in Brunswick.
Saturday, May 11, 2013
Ontario Goes Coal-Free in a Decade
By the end of 2013, one year ahead of its goal, the province of Ontario will be virtually coal-free—a first for a North American jurisdiction. How did the most populous part of Canada go from 25% to 0% coal-fired generation in just a decade, and what does this phaseout mean for the rest of the world?
A decade ago, the Canadian province of Ontario supplied one-quarter of its electricity from coal-fired power. In early January this year, the province announced that it would meet its goal of phasing out coal-fired generation a year early. By the end of 2013, coal-fired generation will be less than 1%, and 17 of the 19 units that existed in 2003 will be shut down; the remainder (backup units) will be eliminated by the end of 2014 (Table 1). The province’s Ministry of Energy calls the phaseout the “single largest greenhouse gas reduction measure being undertaken in North America.”
Rather than compromising the province’s power supply, decisions over the past decade regarding everything from supply to conservation to grid enhancements have resulted in an installed capacity that exceeds the province’s peak demand. According to numbers provided to POWER by the Ontario Power Authority (OPA), peak demand (July 13) in 2005 was 26,160 MW, while capacity stood at 30,662 MW. In 2012, peak demand dropped, to 24,636 (July 17), while capacity increased to 35,736 MW, giving the province an enviable surplus. That “healthy and stable supply is in contrast to 2003, when Ontario paid $900 million importing power to meet the electricity demand of residents and businesses,” said OPA spokesperson Tim Butters. (All currency is in Canadian dollars unless the reference is to U.S. prices. U.S. and Canadian dollars were near parity in early 2013.)
Pressure from the OCAA is seen as having been instrumental in nudging politicians to consider a coal-free diet. (It should be noted that although the group’s name focuses on clean air, the OCAA also calls for a phaseout of nuclear power and emphasizes the opportunities for efficiency, renewables, importing hydropower from Quebec, and small-scale gas-fueled combined heat and power projects.)
Then, in August 2003, the eastern North American blackout got everyone paying attention to the grid. Ontario’s response included creating an Electricity Conservation and Supply Task Force (ECSTF), which recommended developing a long-term plan for generation and conservation. That fall, the provincial government followed ECSTF recommendations and enacted the Ontario Electricity Restructuring Act, which, in part, created the Ontario Power Authority, whose responsibilities include addressing power system planning issues.
Divesting the province of coal was seen as a way to meet multiple goals: fight climate change by reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, reduce smog and mercury and other emissions to protect human health, and develop more renewable/free-fuel generation sources. The relative emphasis given to each of these rationales depended on which group was making the pitch.
Fuel prices and availability played a less-critical role. Most of the coal for power generation had been imported from the U.S., whereas gas for power generation comes from western Canada.
As a 2012 paper by University of Toronto authors explains, the shift away from coal was in part initiated late last century, when the province’s electricity sector went through liberalization and moved to an open market system under the Progressive Conservative government led by then-premier Michael Harris.
In “The Coal Industry and Electricity Policy,” Jodi Lea Adams, Douglas MacDonald, and David Houle explain that “Before Ontario Hydro was dismantled [1998] though, environmental regulations for stationary combustion turbines and regulations on nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide emission had already come into place, the former applying to all new generators installed after November 1994 and the later [sic] applying to corporate sources of emissions in manufacturing and energy, including Ontario Hydro from 1994 onward.... Thus a regulatory framework that was discouraging conventional thermal coal was already taking shape as the decade came to a close.”
The authors also note that government’s ownership of coal plants, the absence of long-term power purchase agreements, the age of existing coal plants, and the lack of coal mining in the province all eased opposition to the phaseout.
However, getting from 25% to 0% didn’t happen as quickly as originally planned. Nanticoke Generating Station, for example, was repeatedly scheduled for closure by Ontario Power Generation. Though originally slated for retirement in 2009, that plan was dropped in 2006 when OPG was unable to develop replacement power sources.
Major legislative developments spanned nearly a decade:
An Effective (but Expensive) FIT. It’s one thing to declare that you want more renewable power. It’s quite another to make those resources materialize. An important element in renewables development for Ontario has been its feed-in tariff program, introduced as part of the 2009 Green Energy Act. Ontario’s FIT, administered by the OPA, is recognized as the first and most comprehensive in North America. In fact, Ontario’s FIT was one of the most generous worldwide, offering up to 80.2¢ per kWh.
The FIT program’s two-year review, conducted in October 2011, concluded that “the FIT Program has been key to making Ontario a leader in clean energy production and manufacturing. The more than 2,500 small and large FIT projects approved to date will produce enough electricity to power 1.2 million homes. FIT has also attracted more than $27 billion in private sector investment, welcomed more than 30 clean energy companies to the province, created more than 20,000 jobs and is on track to create 50,000 jobs.”
Among the recommendations were that, to reflect lower costs, FIT prices for solar should be reduced more than 20%, on average, and by approximately 15% for wind. Prices for other sources are to remain the same. The review report shows the following original and new FIT prices, in cents/kWh:
However, as with many accelerated renewables plans worldwide, Ontario’s hasn’t always run smoothly. A December 2012 story in the Toronto Globe and Mail reported that “in Ontario’s rush to develop renewable energy, a significant obstacle emerged for many small power producers, particularly in Southwestern Ontario: There wasn’t enough capacity on the aging grid to accommodate all of their built projects.” Stranded solar and wind projects—many of them small, privately owned ones—have been the result. The OPA has offered owners of such projects various options that include relocating the solar panels, combining with other projects to create larger ones, and entering into an agreement for someone else to take over the project.
Other FIT-related growing pains have included the government’s inability to keep up with renewable project applications, localized opposition to wind farms, some short-lived solar-parts manufacturers, questions about oversight of renewables contracts, and, most recently, a December 2012 World Trade Organization ruling (under appeal as of this writing), in a dispute brought initially by Japan, that Ontario was giving preferential treatment and subsidies to renewable generation equipment originating in the province. The government’s FIT-linked obligations have also been partially blamed for Ontario’s budget deficit (close to $12 billion for the fiscal year that began April 2012, according to Finance Minister Dwight Duncan in late January).
As with most other FIT programs, the bottom line seems to be that they do spur development (which is their primary goal), but they always have unanticipated consequences.
Conservation and Smart Grid Efforts. Conservation is the cheapest energy resource, and Ontario has shifted from having no conservation plan in 2003 to generating over 1,700 MW of peak demand savings over the past five years, according to the Ministry of Energy. Conservation measures include updated building codes, building energy audits and retrofits, and demand-side management (DSM) programs enabled by the roll-out of smart meters and time-of-use (TOU) pricing. Earlier this year, the OPA released results showing that in 2011, OPA and local distribution company programs resulted in 645 MW of demand reduction and 717 GWh of energy savings.
It should be noted that, because electricity prices in Ontario are relatively low, there is less built-in incentive to reduce consumption than there might be in a locale like Hawaii or Germany, where retail prices are comparatively higher.
Ontario is a North American smart grid leader and has installed smart meters in a majority of homes and small businesses, which has enabled it to introduce automatic TOU rates that encourage peak load-shifting. (Residential and small business customers also have the option of fixed rate contracts by purchasing electricity from licensed energy retailers.) Both large and small customers can participate in DSM programs; large customers can participate in both voluntary and contractual demand response programs.
The goal is to reduce peak demand 6,300 MW by 2025 and 7,100 MW by 2030, and the province says it is on target to hit those numbers. It also claims that “Over the next 20 years, Ontario’s conservation targets and initiatives are projected to save about $27 billion in ratepayer costs on the basis of a $12 billion investment.” When asked about the amount of last year’s peak load reduction made possible by smart meters and TOU rates, the OEB responded that those numbers were not yet available.
Fuel-Switching. A primary concern of any grid operator is the availability of dispatchable generation, so it’s no surprise that rather than simply shutter all coal plants within a decade, Ontario has explored fuel-switching.
In October 2012, work began on converting the Atikokan Generating Station from a coal-burning plant to a 200-MW one equipped to burn 100% biomass—the first in North America. That project is scheduled for completion in 2014.
The province’s Long-Term Energy Plan calls for converting two units at the Thunder Bay Generating Station to natural gas to ensure system reliability in northwestern Ontario, “particularly during periods of low hydroelectricity generation and until the proposed enhancement to the East-West tie enters operation.” The plan also considers conversion of some units at Nanticoke and Lambton to natural gas, “if necessary for system reliability.” As of this writing, no decision had been made to begin these conversions.
Swift Solar Development. Despite the red tape and interconnection difficulties encountered by several privately owned micro-generation projects, Ontario has managed to substantially increase the amount of new non-hydro renewables.
Among the solar power projects developed since the decision to phase out coal is the 80-MW Sarnia Photovoltaic Plant, which was the world’s largest when it went online in 2010. (This plant was a POWER Top Plant Award winner in the renewables category in 2011. See “Sarnia Solar Project” in our December 2011 issue.) An October 2012 government statement noted that the province is home to the 25 largest solar projects in the country and has more than 550 MW of solar photovoltaic (PV) capacity online and more than 1,800 MW of additional solar PV capacity under contract.
Even with these new developments, solar (in the “Other” category) is practically invisible in the chart of energy output by fuel source in 2012 (Figure 1).
Increasing Wind Generation. According to the Ministry of Energy, Ontario’s grid-connected wind capacity was 15 MW in 2003. At the end of 2012 it was over 1,500 MW. Some stories earlier this year trumpeted the role of wind power in making the coal phaseout achievable, noting that in 2012, wind generated more power (3%) than coal (2.8%). Given that the province had 25% coal generation in 2002, when the IESO market opened, and that wind at the end of 2012 supplied 3% of Ontario’s generation (roughly the same as wind power’s contribution in the U.S. overall), such claims seem overstated.
As in other places, wind power has its vocal opponents in Ontario, some of whom did more than voice opposition to a turbine under construction at the 124-MW Summerhaven project in mid-January, when they painted graffiti on a disassembled tower and blades, and damaged a turbine that was set on fire, according to news reports citing a release by the Ontario Provincial Police. Earlier protests had occurred because an as-yet-unoccupied eagle nest had been removed to enable building of an access road.
Holding Hydro Steady. Hydroelectric generation supplies roughly 26% of Ontario’s power. (Neighboring provinces Manitoba and Quebec are almost totally hydropowered.) Hydro capacity increases have been marginal, growing from a total of 8,100 MW in 2005 to 8,400 MW in 2012 and 8,900 MW (projected) by 2015, according to the OPA.
Powering Up Nuclear. Nuclear power supplies more than 50% of Ontario’s electricity. OPG owns and operates the Pickering and Darlington Nuclear Power Stations, which have a combined generating capacity of about 6,600 MW. (See the story on p. 54 in this issue about plans for new units at Darlington.) OPA also owns the Bruce Nuclear Generating Station, which Bruce Power operates under a lease agreement. The Bruce station, the largest nuclear facility in the world, has eight operating units totaling 6,300 MW and supplies roughly a quarter of the province’s power.
OPA data show nuclear supplying 79 TWh in 2005, 85 TWh in 2012, and 93 TWh (projected) in 2015. Interestingly, the Long-Term Energy Plan projects nuclear power, which supplied 56% of all generation in 2012, supplying only 46% of total generation by 2030.
Filling the Narrowing Gaps with Gas. Ontario has limited natural gas reserves, so it imports most of the fuel from Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia. Despite the availability of Canadian gas, and in contrast to projections of increasing gas-fired generation south of the border, OPA actually projects that gas-fired generation will drop in the next few years. Though gas-fired generation supplied 12 TWh in 2005 and 22 TWh in 2012, it is expected to supply only 9 TWh in 2015. The drop in gas generation is expected to be offset by increases in nuclear, hydro, and the nonhydro renewables mentioned above.
To date, the grid has suffered no ill effects and, in fact, has a healthy reserve margin and has been a net power exporter.
In November 2012, the IESO projected a yearly reserve margin of 20.2% for 2013 and reserve margins at or above 18% through 2017—easily meeting the resource adequacy criterion for the next five years “assuming all new resources and transmission development projects are delivered on time.” Ontario’s required reserve margin averages approximately 18.7% without reliance on emergency operating procedures or imports. Note that in the modeling for Ontario’s most recent projection, 13% of installed wind capacity was assumed to be available at the time of summer peak, and 33% at the winter peak.
The IESO says that the province has the capacity to import or export “approximately 4,800 MW at any one time, depending on system conditions.” Its high-voltage transmission grid is connected to Manitoba, Quebec, New York, Michigan, and Minnesota. Net imports or exports have varied from year to year since 1997, when net imports were –2.6 TWh, followed by 3 TWh in 1998. In 2003, net imports were 4.1 TWh, followed by 0.3 TWh in 2004. Ontario has been posting higher net exports ever since, with a high of 10.9 TWh exported in 2008 and 9.9 TWh most recently, in 2012.
As for managing increased variable resources on the grid, that hasn’t posed insurmountable problems. In a January Toronto Star piece, Tyler Hamilton, energy and technology columnist, quoted Bruce Campbell, vice-president of resource integration at the IESO, as saying that the province hasn’t yet had to increase back-up reserves because of the amount of wind power on the grid. Hamilton notes, “If we were to stick with our coal phase-out strategy without wind, we would need to burn more natural gas. The reality is that when the wind blows it gives us the opportunity to burn less natural gas when it’s being used to displace coal. This is partially why greenhouse-gas emissions associated with electricity generation in Ontario have fallen by two-thirds since 2003.”
On Retail Prices. Just as in the U.S., there has been considerable debate about how cutting coal and adding variable renewable capacity will affect retail electric rates. Even the provincial government has acknowledged that rates will increase, saying, “Over the past 20 years, the price of water, fuel oil and cable TV have outpaced the price of electricity. Over the next 20 years, Ontario can expect stable prices that also reflect the true cost of electricity.” About 40% of the province’s generation is subject to price regulation, “contributing significantly to predictable prices for Ontario consumers,” the government says.
As of January 2013, with less than 3% coal-fired capacity, the IESO had posted the following rates: Under the regulated rate plan, consumption of up to and including 1,000 kWh/month: 7.4¢/kWh; more than 1,000 kWh/month: 8.7¢/kWh. TOU rates varied from 6.3¢/kWh to 11.8¢. Residential customers with smart meters (the majority) have three different TOU rates: 6.3¢/kWh for off-peak, 9.9¢/kWh for mid-peak, and 11.8¢/kWh for on-peak. TOU prices are reviewed every May 1 and November 1 by the OEB.
It’s always difficult to compare rates and plans across different regulatory regimes and nations, but given the virtual parity of the U.S. and Canadian dollars in early 2013, it’s worth comparing Ontario’s rates with those in Illinois.
Illinois has a similar population (12,875,255 for 2012), its major population centers share a similar climate, and it also has substantial nuclear generation. The state, which in 2010 ranked third in recoverable coal reserves at producing mines in the U.S., generated 6,208 GWh from coal, second only to nuclear (7,557 GWh) for power generation as of September 2012 U.S. Energy Information Administration data. The state’s average retail rate year-to-date October 2012 was 11.45¢/kWh residential (8.58¢ for all sectors). That average is higher than all Ontario residential rates except for on-peak TOU pricing. Simply having more coal than variable renewables on your grid doesn’t guarantee lower rates.
The Ontario government anticipates that prices for residential and small business customers will increase about 3.5% annually through 2030. The biggest jump, according to the 2010 Long-Term Energy Plan, will be over the five years following the plan, when “residential electricity prices are expected to rise by about 7.9 per cent annually (or 46 per cent over five years). This increase will help pay for critical improvements to the electricity capacity in nuclear and gas, transmission and distribution (accounting for about 44 per cent of the price increase) and investment in new, clean renewable energy generation (56 per cent of the increase).” A program for eligible low-income consumers provides a benefit equal to 10% of the total cost of electricity.
The rate for industrial users is expected to increase about 2.7% annually through 2030. The province says it is working to mitigate the effects of the increase through efficiency programs.
It may surprise some south of the Canadian border that prices aren’t the only concern for the public. As a blog post by Ontario environmental lawyer Dianne Saxe on June 7, 2010, noted: “Hamilton City Council passed a motion on May 12, 2010, requesting Ontario’s Government to order OPG to put its coal plants on standby and only operate them as a last resort.... Kitchener and Guelph have recently passed similar resolutions.... Such resolutions have no legal force, but who would ever have thought that we’d see municipalities calling for cleaner, more expensive power?”
On GHGs and Other Emissions. Though the province’s greenhouse gas emissions have dropped two-thirds since 2003, then-premier Dalton McGuinty acknowledged in January that Ontario’s coal phaseout wouldn’t stop coal plant development elsewhere in the world. However, local emissions of GHGs will drop, along with other byproducts of coal combustion, thereby improving local air quality and health for Ontarians.
The government’s January announcement said that “The closure of coal plants has already produced significant health and environmental benefits for Ontarians. For example, 2011 sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides emissions were 93 per cent and 85 per cent lower, respectively, than they were in 2003. And in 2011, Ontario’s coal plants emitted 43 kilograms of mercury, the lowest on record in over 45 years.”
Regardless of one’s policy stance, Ontario’s experience demonstrates that even under the most supportive political and economic conditions, accelerated renewables and smart grid programs will encounter unexpected hurdles. To expect zero difficulties would be unrealistic.
It’s also unrealistic to think that others won’t attempt to follow Ontario’s example. A January article in Mother Jones had former Minister of Energy Chris Bentley commenting that, even though the U.S. has its unique challenges in dealing with coal, “he learned one thing from his experience cutting it out that can apply to his US counterparts: ‘There are far more people who are supportive than the critics would like you to believe.’”
The debate about whether or not Ontario’s grand plan to eliminate coal power was worthwhile—in terms of GHG emissions, health effects, grid stability, economic impact, and consumer prices—is bound to continue long past 2014. Though the effects on grid reliability and retail prices to date have been benign, only time will tell if the long-term consequences are any harder to bear than those felt by provinces, states, and nations that defer the development of cleaner generation and modern grids even longer.
One thing that can’t be debated is that when the last Ontario coal-fired plant stops sending power to the grid, naysayers won’t be able to say it can’t be done.
— Gail Reitenbach, PhD is POWER’s managing editor.
A decade ago, the Canadian province of Ontario supplied one-quarter of its electricity from coal-fired power. In early January this year, the province announced that it would meet its goal of phasing out coal-fired generation a year early. By the end of 2013, coal-fired generation will be less than 1%, and 17 of the 19 units that existed in 2003 will be shut down; the remainder (backup units) will be eliminated by the end of 2014 (Table 1). The province’s Ministry of Energy calls the phaseout the “single largest greenhouse gas reduction measure being undertaken in North America.”
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| Table 1. Going, going, gone. This table shows the amount of coal-fired generation in the decade following the first efforts to phase out coal-fired power in Ontario. Schedules for 2013 and 2014 are projected. Atikokan and Thunder Bay Generating Stations are currently operated only as back-up reliability sources. Atikokan is being converted to biomass; the province’s Long-Term Energy Plan calls for converting Thunder Bay to burn natural gas. Note that when all eight units of Nanticoke were operational, it was the largest coal-fired power plant in North America, with a capacity rating of 3,964 MW, as well as the nation’s largest single source of greenhouse gas emissions. Sources: Ontario Ministry of Energy, OPA |
Rather than compromising the province’s power supply, decisions over the past decade regarding everything from supply to conservation to grid enhancements have resulted in an installed capacity that exceeds the province’s peak demand. According to numbers provided to POWER by the Ontario Power Authority (OPA), peak demand (July 13) in 2005 was 26,160 MW, while capacity stood at 30,662 MW. In 2012, peak demand dropped, to 24,636 (July 17), while capacity increased to 35,736 MW, giving the province an enviable surplus. That “healthy and stable supply is in contrast to 2003, when Ontario paid $900 million importing power to meet the electricity demand of residents and businesses,” said OPA spokesperson Tim Butters. (All currency is in Canadian dollars unless the reference is to U.S. prices. U.S. and Canadian dollars were near parity in early 2013.)
Why Eliminate Coal?
Ontario’s population of 13,505,900 (as of July 2012) is 38.7% of Canada’s total. It is close in resident size to the state of Illinois, with which it shares a heavy reliance on nuclear power. Given that it is home to major population and business centers, Ontario cannot afford to be capricious when it comes to electricity supply availability and reliability decisions. So what prompted the major supply shift? Public pressure, legislative action, and fuel availability all played a role.
As in other regions and countries, public pressure for cleaner, renewable energy sources started the ball rolling. The Ontario Clean Air Alliance (OCAA) coalition, established in 1997, was the primary public interest group to bring pressure on politicians and industry to make a shift to cleaner energy. The alliance consists of “approximately 90 organizations (health and environmental organizations, faith communities, municipalities, utilities, unions and corporations) that represent over six million Ontarians.”Pressure from the OCAA is seen as having been instrumental in nudging politicians to consider a coal-free diet. (It should be noted that although the group’s name focuses on clean air, the OCAA also calls for a phaseout of nuclear power and emphasizes the opportunities for efficiency, renewables, importing hydropower from Quebec, and small-scale gas-fueled combined heat and power projects.)
Then, in August 2003, the eastern North American blackout got everyone paying attention to the grid. Ontario’s response included creating an Electricity Conservation and Supply Task Force (ECSTF), which recommended developing a long-term plan for generation and conservation. That fall, the provincial government followed ECSTF recommendations and enacted the Ontario Electricity Restructuring Act, which, in part, created the Ontario Power Authority, whose responsibilities include addressing power system planning issues.
Divesting the province of coal was seen as a way to meet multiple goals: fight climate change by reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, reduce smog and mercury and other emissions to protect human health, and develop more renewable/free-fuel generation sources. The relative emphasis given to each of these rationales depended on which group was making the pitch.
Fuel prices and availability played a less-critical role. Most of the coal for power generation had been imported from the U.S., whereas gas for power generation comes from western Canada.
How Ontario Switched Off 25% of Baseload Generation in a Decade
Eliminating a quarter of dispatchable baseload generation in 10 years is no small feat for any sizable power grid. The short answer to the question of how Ontario has been able to achieve this is that it has had a provincial government responsive to pressure applied by the public, including the OCAA, and a hybrid energy infrastructure ownership and control system that enabled smooth execution of the plan—once it was developed and as it was modified.
Government Backing. The Ontario Ministry of Energy has legislative responsibility for the following entities:- The Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO), the grid operator.
- Hydro One, a provincially owned company that operates the majority of Ontario’s transmission lines and serves as a local distribution company in some areas of the province.
- The Ontario Energy Board (OEB), an independent adjudicative tribunal responsible for regulating Ontario’s natural gas and electricity sectors. Part of the OEB’s mandate is to protect the interests of consumers with respect to prices and the reliability and quality of electricity service.
- The Ontario Power Authority, an independent crown corporation (a hybrid government/private entity that is owned by the government but operates at arm’s length—comparable to “federal government chartered and owned corporations” like Tennessee Valley Authority in the U.S.) that works to develop a reliable, cost-effective, and sustainable electricity system in the province.
- Ontario Power Generation (OPG), a provincially owned electricity generation company whose hydroelectric, nuclear, and fossil fuel stations generate approximately 70% of Ontario’s electricity (the remainder is privately owned). It is also the sole operator of coal-fired plants.
As a 2012 paper by University of Toronto authors explains, the shift away from coal was in part initiated late last century, when the province’s electricity sector went through liberalization and moved to an open market system under the Progressive Conservative government led by then-premier Michael Harris.
In “The Coal Industry and Electricity Policy,” Jodi Lea Adams, Douglas MacDonald, and David Houle explain that “Before Ontario Hydro was dismantled [1998] though, environmental regulations for stationary combustion turbines and regulations on nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide emission had already come into place, the former applying to all new generators installed after November 1994 and the later [sic] applying to corporate sources of emissions in manufacturing and energy, including Ontario Hydro from 1994 onward.... Thus a regulatory framework that was discouraging conventional thermal coal was already taking shape as the decade came to a close.”
The authors also note that government’s ownership of coal plants, the absence of long-term power purchase agreements, the age of existing coal plants, and the lack of coal mining in the province all eased opposition to the phaseout.
However, getting from 25% to 0% didn’t happen as quickly as originally planned. Nanticoke Generating Station, for example, was repeatedly scheduled for closure by Ontario Power Generation. Though originally slated for retirement in 2009, that plan was dropped in 2006 when OPG was unable to develop replacement power sources.
Major legislative developments spanned nearly a decade:
- 2001: Regulation requiring phaseout of coal burning at the Lakeview Generating Station by April 2005.
- 2003: Plan to phase out all coal plants by 2007.
- 2005: Phaseout target pushed to 2009 over reliability concerns.
- 2006: Target 2009 phaseout abandoned.
- 2007: Government issues legally binding regulation requiring complete phaseout of coal burning by Dec. 31, 2014.
- 2009: Green Energy Act passed: major emphasis on renewable generation, energy conservation, clean energy job creation, demand-side management, access to transmission and distribution for renewables, and development of a feed-in-tariff (FIT) program.
An Effective (but Expensive) FIT. It’s one thing to declare that you want more renewable power. It’s quite another to make those resources materialize. An important element in renewables development for Ontario has been its feed-in tariff program, introduced as part of the 2009 Green Energy Act. Ontario’s FIT, administered by the OPA, is recognized as the first and most comprehensive in North America. In fact, Ontario’s FIT was one of the most generous worldwide, offering up to 80.2¢ per kWh.
The FIT program’s two-year review, conducted in October 2011, concluded that “the FIT Program has been key to making Ontario a leader in clean energy production and manufacturing. The more than 2,500 small and large FIT projects approved to date will produce enough electricity to power 1.2 million homes. FIT has also attracted more than $27 billion in private sector investment, welcomed more than 30 clean energy companies to the province, created more than 20,000 jobs and is on track to create 50,000 jobs.”
Among the recommendations were that, to reflect lower costs, FIT prices for solar should be reduced more than 20%, on average, and by approximately 15% for wind. Prices for other sources are to remain the same. The review report shows the following original and new FIT prices, in cents/kWh:
- Solar rooftop (price varies by project size, with higher rates for smaller projects): 53.9 to 80.2, lowered to 48.7 to 54.9.
- Solar groundmount (price varies by project size): 44.3 to 64.2, lowered to 34.7 to 44.5.
- Wind (all sizes): 13.5, lowered to 11.5.
However, as with many accelerated renewables plans worldwide, Ontario’s hasn’t always run smoothly. A December 2012 story in the Toronto Globe and Mail reported that “in Ontario’s rush to develop renewable energy, a significant obstacle emerged for many small power producers, particularly in Southwestern Ontario: There wasn’t enough capacity on the aging grid to accommodate all of their built projects.” Stranded solar and wind projects—many of them small, privately owned ones—have been the result. The OPA has offered owners of such projects various options that include relocating the solar panels, combining with other projects to create larger ones, and entering into an agreement for someone else to take over the project.
Other FIT-related growing pains have included the government’s inability to keep up with renewable project applications, localized opposition to wind farms, some short-lived solar-parts manufacturers, questions about oversight of renewables contracts, and, most recently, a December 2012 World Trade Organization ruling (under appeal as of this writing), in a dispute brought initially by Japan, that Ontario was giving preferential treatment and subsidies to renewable generation equipment originating in the province. The government’s FIT-linked obligations have also been partially blamed for Ontario’s budget deficit (close to $12 billion for the fiscal year that began April 2012, according to Finance Minister Dwight Duncan in late January).
As with most other FIT programs, the bottom line seems to be that they do spur development (which is their primary goal), but they always have unanticipated consequences.
Conservation and Smart Grid Efforts. Conservation is the cheapest energy resource, and Ontario has shifted from having no conservation plan in 2003 to generating over 1,700 MW of peak demand savings over the past five years, according to the Ministry of Energy. Conservation measures include updated building codes, building energy audits and retrofits, and demand-side management (DSM) programs enabled by the roll-out of smart meters and time-of-use (TOU) pricing. Earlier this year, the OPA released results showing that in 2011, OPA and local distribution company programs resulted in 645 MW of demand reduction and 717 GWh of energy savings.
It should be noted that, because electricity prices in Ontario are relatively low, there is less built-in incentive to reduce consumption than there might be in a locale like Hawaii or Germany, where retail prices are comparatively higher.
Ontario is a North American smart grid leader and has installed smart meters in a majority of homes and small businesses, which has enabled it to introduce automatic TOU rates that encourage peak load-shifting. (Residential and small business customers also have the option of fixed rate contracts by purchasing electricity from licensed energy retailers.) Both large and small customers can participate in DSM programs; large customers can participate in both voluntary and contractual demand response programs.
The goal is to reduce peak demand 6,300 MW by 2025 and 7,100 MW by 2030, and the province says it is on target to hit those numbers. It also claims that “Over the next 20 years, Ontario’s conservation targets and initiatives are projected to save about $27 billion in ratepayer costs on the basis of a $12 billion investment.” When asked about the amount of last year’s peak load reduction made possible by smart meters and TOU rates, the OEB responded that those numbers were not yet available.
Fuel-Switching. A primary concern of any grid operator is the availability of dispatchable generation, so it’s no surprise that rather than simply shutter all coal plants within a decade, Ontario has explored fuel-switching.
In October 2012, work began on converting the Atikokan Generating Station from a coal-burning plant to a 200-MW one equipped to burn 100% biomass—the first in North America. That project is scheduled for completion in 2014.
The province’s Long-Term Energy Plan calls for converting two units at the Thunder Bay Generating Station to natural gas to ensure system reliability in northwestern Ontario, “particularly during periods of low hydroelectricity generation and until the proposed enhancement to the East-West tie enters operation.” The plan also considers conversion of some units at Nanticoke and Lambton to natural gas, “if necessary for system reliability.” As of this writing, no decision had been made to begin these conversions.
Swift Solar Development. Despite the red tape and interconnection difficulties encountered by several privately owned micro-generation projects, Ontario has managed to substantially increase the amount of new non-hydro renewables.
Among the solar power projects developed since the decision to phase out coal is the 80-MW Sarnia Photovoltaic Plant, which was the world’s largest when it went online in 2010. (This plant was a POWER Top Plant Award winner in the renewables category in 2011. See “Sarnia Solar Project” in our December 2011 issue.) An October 2012 government statement noted that the province is home to the 25 largest solar projects in the country and has more than 550 MW of solar photovoltaic (PV) capacity online and more than 1,800 MW of additional solar PV capacity under contract.
Even with these new developments, solar (in the “Other” category) is practically invisible in the chart of energy output by fuel source in 2012 (Figure 1).
 |
| 1. Energy output by fuel type, 2012. For the first time in the province’s history, wind generation exceeded coal generation in 2012. Source: IESO |
Increasing Wind Generation. According to the Ministry of Energy, Ontario’s grid-connected wind capacity was 15 MW in 2003. At the end of 2012 it was over 1,500 MW. Some stories earlier this year trumpeted the role of wind power in making the coal phaseout achievable, noting that in 2012, wind generated more power (3%) than coal (2.8%). Given that the province had 25% coal generation in 2002, when the IESO market opened, and that wind at the end of 2012 supplied 3% of Ontario’s generation (roughly the same as wind power’s contribution in the U.S. overall), such claims seem overstated.
As in other places, wind power has its vocal opponents in Ontario, some of whom did more than voice opposition to a turbine under construction at the 124-MW Summerhaven project in mid-January, when they painted graffiti on a disassembled tower and blades, and damaged a turbine that was set on fire, according to news reports citing a release by the Ontario Provincial Police. Earlier protests had occurred because an as-yet-unoccupied eagle nest had been removed to enable building of an access road.
Holding Hydro Steady. Hydroelectric generation supplies roughly 26% of Ontario’s power. (Neighboring provinces Manitoba and Quebec are almost totally hydropowered.) Hydro capacity increases have been marginal, growing from a total of 8,100 MW in 2005 to 8,400 MW in 2012 and 8,900 MW (projected) by 2015, according to the OPA.
Powering Up Nuclear. Nuclear power supplies more than 50% of Ontario’s electricity. OPG owns and operates the Pickering and Darlington Nuclear Power Stations, which have a combined generating capacity of about 6,600 MW. (See the story on p. 54 in this issue about plans for new units at Darlington.) OPA also owns the Bruce Nuclear Generating Station, which Bruce Power operates under a lease agreement. The Bruce station, the largest nuclear facility in the world, has eight operating units totaling 6,300 MW and supplies roughly a quarter of the province’s power.
OPA data show nuclear supplying 79 TWh in 2005, 85 TWh in 2012, and 93 TWh (projected) in 2015. Interestingly, the Long-Term Energy Plan projects nuclear power, which supplied 56% of all generation in 2012, supplying only 46% of total generation by 2030.
Filling the Narrowing Gaps with Gas. Ontario has limited natural gas reserves, so it imports most of the fuel from Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia. Despite the availability of Canadian gas, and in contrast to projections of increasing gas-fired generation south of the border, OPA actually projects that gas-fired generation will drop in the next few years. Though gas-fired generation supplied 12 TWh in 2005 and 22 TWh in 2012, it is expected to supply only 9 TWh in 2015. The drop in gas generation is expected to be offset by increases in nuclear, hydro, and the nonhydro renewables mentioned above.
Early Results from a Coal-Free Grid
Although the province isn’t 100% coal-free yet, it’s close enough to make some preliminary assessments of the results. The government’s January 2013 announcement noted that, according to a 2005 independent study, “Cost Benefit Analysis: Replacing Ontario’s Coal-Fired Electricity Generation,” phasing out coal-fired generation is expected to save the province “approximately $4.4 billion annually when health and environmental costs are taken into consideration.” Though such assessments may be open to debate, it is possible to evaluate other early results more squarely.
On the Grid and Fuel Mix. In September 2012, the IESO said the supply outlook was good at least through 2014: “Over the next 18 months, more than 3,000 megawatts (MW) of capacity will be added to the grid, comprising approximately 1,500 MW of nuclear generation and 1,500 MW of grid-connected renewable generation. By February 2014, total wind and solar generation connected to the transmission and distribution systems in Ontario will reach approximately 4,800 MW.” Over the longer term, a combination of renewables and conservation is expected to meet additional demand (Table 2). |
| Table 2. Historic and projected capacity, by fuel. Projections were made in the 2010 “Ontario’s Long-Term Energy Plan.” Sources: Ministry of Energy (projections), IESO (2012) |
To date, the grid has suffered no ill effects and, in fact, has a healthy reserve margin and has been a net power exporter.
In November 2012, the IESO projected a yearly reserve margin of 20.2% for 2013 and reserve margins at or above 18% through 2017—easily meeting the resource adequacy criterion for the next five years “assuming all new resources and transmission development projects are delivered on time.” Ontario’s required reserve margin averages approximately 18.7% without reliance on emergency operating procedures or imports. Note that in the modeling for Ontario’s most recent projection, 13% of installed wind capacity was assumed to be available at the time of summer peak, and 33% at the winter peak.
The IESO says that the province has the capacity to import or export “approximately 4,800 MW at any one time, depending on system conditions.” Its high-voltage transmission grid is connected to Manitoba, Quebec, New York, Michigan, and Minnesota. Net imports or exports have varied from year to year since 1997, when net imports were –2.6 TWh, followed by 3 TWh in 1998. In 2003, net imports were 4.1 TWh, followed by 0.3 TWh in 2004. Ontario has been posting higher net exports ever since, with a high of 10.9 TWh exported in 2008 and 9.9 TWh most recently, in 2012.
As for managing increased variable resources on the grid, that hasn’t posed insurmountable problems. In a January Toronto Star piece, Tyler Hamilton, energy and technology columnist, quoted Bruce Campbell, vice-president of resource integration at the IESO, as saying that the province hasn’t yet had to increase back-up reserves because of the amount of wind power on the grid. Hamilton notes, “If we were to stick with our coal phase-out strategy without wind, we would need to burn more natural gas. The reality is that when the wind blows it gives us the opportunity to burn less natural gas when it’s being used to displace coal. This is partially why greenhouse-gas emissions associated with electricity generation in Ontario have fallen by two-thirds since 2003.”
On Retail Prices. Just as in the U.S., there has been considerable debate about how cutting coal and adding variable renewable capacity will affect retail electric rates. Even the provincial government has acknowledged that rates will increase, saying, “Over the past 20 years, the price of water, fuel oil and cable TV have outpaced the price of electricity. Over the next 20 years, Ontario can expect stable prices that also reflect the true cost of electricity.” About 40% of the province’s generation is subject to price regulation, “contributing significantly to predictable prices for Ontario consumers,” the government says.
As of January 2013, with less than 3% coal-fired capacity, the IESO had posted the following rates: Under the regulated rate plan, consumption of up to and including 1,000 kWh/month: 7.4¢/kWh; more than 1,000 kWh/month: 8.7¢/kWh. TOU rates varied from 6.3¢/kWh to 11.8¢. Residential customers with smart meters (the majority) have three different TOU rates: 6.3¢/kWh for off-peak, 9.9¢/kWh for mid-peak, and 11.8¢/kWh for on-peak. TOU prices are reviewed every May 1 and November 1 by the OEB.
It’s always difficult to compare rates and plans across different regulatory regimes and nations, but given the virtual parity of the U.S. and Canadian dollars in early 2013, it’s worth comparing Ontario’s rates with those in Illinois.
Illinois has a similar population (12,875,255 for 2012), its major population centers share a similar climate, and it also has substantial nuclear generation. The state, which in 2010 ranked third in recoverable coal reserves at producing mines in the U.S., generated 6,208 GWh from coal, second only to nuclear (7,557 GWh) for power generation as of September 2012 U.S. Energy Information Administration data. The state’s average retail rate year-to-date October 2012 was 11.45¢/kWh residential (8.58¢ for all sectors). That average is higher than all Ontario residential rates except for on-peak TOU pricing. Simply having more coal than variable renewables on your grid doesn’t guarantee lower rates.
The Ontario government anticipates that prices for residential and small business customers will increase about 3.5% annually through 2030. The biggest jump, according to the 2010 Long-Term Energy Plan, will be over the five years following the plan, when “residential electricity prices are expected to rise by about 7.9 per cent annually (or 46 per cent over five years). This increase will help pay for critical improvements to the electricity capacity in nuclear and gas, transmission and distribution (accounting for about 44 per cent of the price increase) and investment in new, clean renewable energy generation (56 per cent of the increase).” A program for eligible low-income consumers provides a benefit equal to 10% of the total cost of electricity.
The rate for industrial users is expected to increase about 2.7% annually through 2030. The province says it is working to mitigate the effects of the increase through efficiency programs.
It may surprise some south of the Canadian border that prices aren’t the only concern for the public. As a blog post by Ontario environmental lawyer Dianne Saxe on June 7, 2010, noted: “Hamilton City Council passed a motion on May 12, 2010, requesting Ontario’s Government to order OPG to put its coal plants on standby and only operate them as a last resort.... Kitchener and Guelph have recently passed similar resolutions.... Such resolutions have no legal force, but who would ever have thought that we’d see municipalities calling for cleaner, more expensive power?”
On GHGs and Other Emissions. Though the province’s greenhouse gas emissions have dropped two-thirds since 2003, then-premier Dalton McGuinty acknowledged in January that Ontario’s coal phaseout wouldn’t stop coal plant development elsewhere in the world. However, local emissions of GHGs will drop, along with other byproducts of coal combustion, thereby improving local air quality and health for Ontarians.
The government’s January announcement said that “The closure of coal plants has already produced significant health and environmental benefits for Ontarians. For example, 2011 sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides emissions were 93 per cent and 85 per cent lower, respectively, than they were in 2003. And in 2011, Ontario’s coal plants emitted 43 kilograms of mercury, the lowest on record in over 45 years.”
Model Program or Isolated Case?
So what does Ontario’s coal phaseout mean for the rest of Canada, other developed nations, and the developing world? The availability and price of fuels—whether they be fossil-derived or renewable ones—will continue to play a powerful role in the short term. But global power industry incumbents may be setting themselves up for unwelcome surprise if they fail to realize the power of example.
Whether you think Ontario’s energy policy is a good one or not may depend on where you stand on energy policies generally and what role you play in the global energy industry. If you are a vendor to just the North American coal-fired generation sector, you won’t like the fact that Ontario has proven a large geographic area with a substantial population can—at least under supportive policy—go coal-free. If you serve a global client base, you’ll see developing nations, which plan to build considerable coal capacity, as more promising markets. On the other hand, if you are looking for examples of decreasing a carbon footprint by way of generation portfolio adjustments and grid upgrades, you’ll see Ontario’s experience as a model.Regardless of one’s policy stance, Ontario’s experience demonstrates that even under the most supportive political and economic conditions, accelerated renewables and smart grid programs will encounter unexpected hurdles. To expect zero difficulties would be unrealistic.
It’s also unrealistic to think that others won’t attempt to follow Ontario’s example. A January article in Mother Jones had former Minister of Energy Chris Bentley commenting that, even though the U.S. has its unique challenges in dealing with coal, “he learned one thing from his experience cutting it out that can apply to his US counterparts: ‘There are far more people who are supportive than the critics would like you to believe.’”
The debate about whether or not Ontario’s grand plan to eliminate coal power was worthwhile—in terms of GHG emissions, health effects, grid stability, economic impact, and consumer prices—is bound to continue long past 2014. Though the effects on grid reliability and retail prices to date have been benign, only time will tell if the long-term consequences are any harder to bear than those felt by provinces, states, and nations that defer the development of cleaner generation and modern grids even longer.
One thing that can’t be debated is that when the last Ontario coal-fired plant stops sending power to the grid, naysayers won’t be able to say it can’t be done.
— Gail Reitenbach, PhD is POWER’s managing editor.
Tuesday, May 7, 2013
Wind farm sickness: anedcotes versus evidence
A family's experience of illness they attribute to a local wind farm is
concerning, but is no substitute for medical research and hard evidence.
- Michelle Bachman, Fox News Interview, September 2011
- Australia DLP Senator John Madigan, Booroowa District Landscape Guardians Meeting, May 2012
Fear spreads better with a dash of human tears. As you visualise a weeping mother, her voice wavering as she speaks, the impact is instantaneous and potent. Millions of years of natural selection breathe life into the visceral salience of human suffering. Our ancestors, dwelling on the savannah, knew that the cost of ignoring a potential threat could be very, very high.
The anti-vaccination lobby have capitalised on this feature of our thinking with astonishing skill and speed. Recently, Lateline reported on the fallout from Andrew Wakefield's MMR fraud - a health scare boosted by duplicitous research into vaccination. They interviewed Jackie Eckton, a mother deeply convinced that her son contracted autism from the MMR vaccine: "I can only tell them what I've seen with my own eyes. I'm not a doctor, I'm not a scientist. I can only look back on what happened to us."
That statement ought to disqualify her from being considered an authority on complex medical issues. Remarkably, it empowers her. The anti-vaccination lobby are not alone in using this paradoxical absurdity to spread mistrust and fear.
Anti-wind lobby groups (such as the Waubra Foundation, headed by ex-GP Sarah Laurie) travel to communities facing wind farm developments, and present direct testimony from individuals attributing a range of symptoms to the presence of wind turbines. Anecdotal evidence is their key instrument in spreading fear of wind energy.
This is stated explicitly by Peter Quinn, a South Australian barrister who regularly represents anti-wind lobby groups:
The implication is quite clear - anecdotal reports and emotional recitations are powerful tools in the fight against wind farm developments. Consequently, a large number of claimed health impacts, attributed to wind turbines, exist in the public domain.
Chapman began compiling these symptoms in early 2012. His list grew rapidly - it currently numbers 216, and features a bewildering array of symptoms, involving adults, children, cattle, sheep, chicken, dogs, peacocks, cats, pigs, earthworms, crabs, goats, crickets and horses (pdf).
These symptoms are collectively referred to as "Wind Turbine Syndrome" (WTS), originally coined by Nina Pierpont (a paediatrician married to an anti-wind activist). It has become the fundamental claim of groups working to stifle the development of renewables in Australia.
The 'disease' is not recognised by any medical authority in the world. It is purportedly caused by infrasonic (less than 20 Hz) noise from wind turbines. The South Australian Environmental Protection Agency recently measured levels of infrasound near wind farms (pdf), and compared them to rural and urban environments. Wind farms had some of the lowest recorded levels in their study. Some of the highest levels of infrasound were recorded inside the EPA's office in Adelaide.
Importantly, research conducted by Professor Simon Chapman of Sydney University seems to show that complaints of ill-health seem to cluster around wind farms that have been subject to the presence of anti-wind lobbyists.
Anti-wind groups happily embrace the improbable claims that surround wind energy. In a submission to the NSW Planning Minister, Laurie wrote that "rapid fluctuations in barometric pressure" can "perceptibly rock stationary cars even further than a kilometre from the nearest turbine". No source is given for the information.
Under oath in the Environment, Resources and Development Court, she claimed that wind turbines can cause "lip vibration" 10 kilometres away. The source was anedoctes from local people who believe themselves to be suffering 'wind turbine syndrome'.
These are not diagnoses borne of scientific rigour. The grandiosity of the purported impacts of wind turbines are a consequence of over-reliance on personal testimony, combined with an apparent aversion to objective analysis.
Anti-wind groups and others hostile to
renewable technology wish to deem anecdotal evidence inscrutable
Sadly, Laurie has also claimed that residents adjacent to wind farms are forming "suicide pacts" (pdf), due to the presence of wind turbines. The gravity of implying that wind farms are driving people to self-harm seems lost in Laurie's limitless fervour. The very last thing a suicidal individual needs is to be told that a nearby technology is threatening, when there is no good evidence that it is.
In addition to the immediate salience of personal testimony, stories of suffering are instantaneously rendered immune to rational scrutiny. Doubt cast on causal relationships is deemed insensitive and inhumane, as evidenced by Graham Lloyd, environment editor at The Australian, who stated that Chapman has "ridiculed complaints".
Anti-wind groups and others hostile to renewable technology wish to deem anecdotal evidence inscrutable - consequently, they must accept all claims of health effects, no matter how improbable. If those professing this fallacy were bound by a scientific framework, this attitude would be indefensible.
Beyond the scientific failings of the anti-wind movement, a more immediate threat emerges from unfounded health fears. Many symptoms reported in the vicinity of wind turbines are real, but are unlikely to be caused by wind farms. Most would necessitate treatment by registered medical professionals - Laurie's 'suicide pacts' are a disquieting example. Yet, sufferers may be misled into attributing their malaise to a nearby wind farm - an assertion for which there is no evidence.
Some portion of those individuals might forego professional medical advice, believing simply that a cure lies in physically moving away from wind turbines. As anti-wind lobby groups continue to spread health fears around renewable technology, the risk of an individual attributing the symptoms of a real illness to 'wind turbine syndrome' grows larger. It may have happened already.
In Wales, a new measles outbreak has been linked to the machinations of the anti-vaccination lobby. Anecdotally-fuelled health fears about vaccination have already caused serious, irreversible harm. Empowered by a vast disconnect from scientific methodology, the anti-wind lobby is poised to follow in their path.
"Well, I will tell you that I had a mother last night come up to me here in Tampa, Florida, after the debate. She told me that her little daughter took that vaccine, that injection, and she suffered from mental retardation thereafter. It can have very dangerous side effects."
- Michelle Bachman, Fox News Interview, September 2011
"I know this lady and her husband, as I've said, I've known them the majority of my life, and, this woman looks twenty years older than her husband now......This woman is absolutely tormented by the things, and she's got two of them, near her. There's only two turbines."
- Australia DLP Senator John Madigan, Booroowa District Landscape Guardians Meeting, May 2012
Fear spreads better with a dash of human tears. As you visualise a weeping mother, her voice wavering as she speaks, the impact is instantaneous and potent. Millions of years of natural selection breathe life into the visceral salience of human suffering. Our ancestors, dwelling on the savannah, knew that the cost of ignoring a potential threat could be very, very high.
The anti-vaccination lobby have capitalised on this feature of our thinking with astonishing skill and speed. Recently, Lateline reported on the fallout from Andrew Wakefield's MMR fraud - a health scare boosted by duplicitous research into vaccination. They interviewed Jackie Eckton, a mother deeply convinced that her son contracted autism from the MMR vaccine: "I can only tell them what I've seen with my own eyes. I'm not a doctor, I'm not a scientist. I can only look back on what happened to us."
That statement ought to disqualify her from being considered an authority on complex medical issues. Remarkably, it empowers her. The anti-vaccination lobby are not alone in using this paradoxical absurdity to spread mistrust and fear.
Anti-wind lobby groups (such as the Waubra Foundation, headed by ex-GP Sarah Laurie) travel to communities facing wind farm developments, and present direct testimony from individuals attributing a range of symptoms to the presence of wind turbines. Anecdotal evidence is their key instrument in spreading fear of wind energy.
This is stated explicitly by Peter Quinn, a South Australian barrister who regularly represents anti-wind lobby groups:
"That experience is in itself, evidence. If you dragged in thirty people from Waubra, twenty from Waterloo and put them in a court room, to talk about the loss and the suffering, it will support a claim to obtain an injunction against any wind farm being proposed"
The implication is quite clear - anecdotal reports and emotional recitations are powerful tools in the fight against wind farm developments. Consequently, a large number of claimed health impacts, attributed to wind turbines, exist in the public domain.
Chapman began compiling these symptoms in early 2012. His list grew rapidly - it currently numbers 216, and features a bewildering array of symptoms, involving adults, children, cattle, sheep, chicken, dogs, peacocks, cats, pigs, earthworms, crabs, goats, crickets and horses (pdf).
These symptoms are collectively referred to as "Wind Turbine Syndrome" (WTS), originally coined by Nina Pierpont (a paediatrician married to an anti-wind activist). It has become the fundamental claim of groups working to stifle the development of renewables in Australia.
The 'disease' is not recognised by any medical authority in the world. It is purportedly caused by infrasonic (less than 20 Hz) noise from wind turbines. The South Australian Environmental Protection Agency recently measured levels of infrasound near wind farms (pdf), and compared them to rural and urban environments. Wind farms had some of the lowest recorded levels in their study. Some of the highest levels of infrasound were recorded inside the EPA's office in Adelaide.
Importantly, research conducted by Professor Simon Chapman of Sydney University seems to show that complaints of ill-health seem to cluster around wind farms that have been subject to the presence of anti-wind lobbyists.
Anti-wind groups happily embrace the improbable claims that surround wind energy. In a submission to the NSW Planning Minister, Laurie wrote that "rapid fluctuations in barometric pressure" can "perceptibly rock stationary cars even further than a kilometre from the nearest turbine". No source is given for the information.
Under oath in the Environment, Resources and Development Court, she claimed that wind turbines can cause "lip vibration" 10 kilometres away. The source was anedoctes from local people who believe themselves to be suffering 'wind turbine syndrome'.
These are not diagnoses borne of scientific rigour. The grandiosity of the purported impacts of wind turbines are a consequence of over-reliance on personal testimony, combined with an apparent aversion to objective analysis.
Anti-wind groups and others hostile to
renewable technology wish to deem anecdotal evidence inscrutable
Sadly, Laurie has also claimed that residents adjacent to wind farms are forming "suicide pacts" (pdf), due to the presence of wind turbines. The gravity of implying that wind farms are driving people to self-harm seems lost in Laurie's limitless fervour. The very last thing a suicidal individual needs is to be told that a nearby technology is threatening, when there is no good evidence that it is.
In addition to the immediate salience of personal testimony, stories of suffering are instantaneously rendered immune to rational scrutiny. Doubt cast on causal relationships is deemed insensitive and inhumane, as evidenced by Graham Lloyd, environment editor at The Australian, who stated that Chapman has "ridiculed complaints".
Anti-wind groups and others hostile to renewable technology wish to deem anecdotal evidence inscrutable - consequently, they must accept all claims of health effects, no matter how improbable. If those professing this fallacy were bound by a scientific framework, this attitude would be indefensible.
Beyond the scientific failings of the anti-wind movement, a more immediate threat emerges from unfounded health fears. Many symptoms reported in the vicinity of wind turbines are real, but are unlikely to be caused by wind farms. Most would necessitate treatment by registered medical professionals - Laurie's 'suicide pacts' are a disquieting example. Yet, sufferers may be misled into attributing their malaise to a nearby wind farm - an assertion for which there is no evidence.
Some portion of those individuals might forego professional medical advice, believing simply that a cure lies in physically moving away from wind turbines. As anti-wind lobby groups continue to spread health fears around renewable technology, the risk of an individual attributing the symptoms of a real illness to 'wind turbine syndrome' grows larger. It may have happened already.
In Wales, a new measles outbreak has been linked to the machinations of the anti-vaccination lobby. Anecdotally-fuelled health fears about vaccination have already caused serious, irreversible harm. Empowered by a vast disconnect from scientific methodology, the anti-wind lobby is poised to follow in their path.
Not Infrasound Thats the Problem
ELEANOR HALL: A company that makes wind turbines is urging the Victorian Government to respond to a Health Department report by ending restrictions on wind farms in the state.
The report by the Victorian Health Department dismissed concerns that wind farm noise makes people ill, although it did find that the noise could be annoying.
In Melbourne, Simon Lauder reports.
SIMON LAUDER: Noel Dean moved to Ballarat to get away from Waubra. He says the wind farm there made him sick.
NOEL DEAN: I got severe air pressure problems in the inner ear and I was very ill for a number of weeks.
SIMON LAUDER: And what was the link with the wind turbines?
NOEL DEAN: Well it was the sound pressure or air pressure coming from the turbines was too great for my body to handle.
SIMON LAUDER: The assertion that wind turbines make people sick has been a sticking point for the industry for years. Opponents of turbines say they produce inaudible sound that affects the health of people who live close to them.
Now Victoria's Health Department has produced a report dismissing that claim.
It says if you can't hear a sound then there's no way known that it can affect health, regardless of the frequency. It says the level of noise produced by a wind farm is somewhere between a rural night-time background noise and the sound of a car passing 100 metres away.
STEVE GARNER: Well my first reaction is we've all been thinking this all along but it's really nice to get the evidence from professionals, and to see that now is quite heartening.
SIMON LAUDER: Steve Garner is the general manager of Keppel Prince Engineering, which makes wind turbines.
STEVE GARNER: Look I think it has damaged business, I think it's put a perception out there that they do create bad health.
SIMON LAUDER: Victoria has tough restrictions on wind farms, allowing anyone to veto a new turbine within two kilometres of their home.
The Government has never linked those restrictions with health concerns but Mr Garner says it should now reconsider them anyway.
STEVE GARNER: And a lot of those objections come about from the myth of your health and now that that myth has been taken away, then maybe revisiting those laws is something that ought to be done.
SIMON LAUDER: The Victorian Health Department report follows a recent report by South Australia's Environmental Protection Agency, which also rejected the link between wind farms and sickness.
But the health argument is still a barrier for the wind industry.
Victoria's Civil and Administrative Tribunal has put off its decision on a wind farm project near Seymour, until the National Health and Medical Research Council completes a review of evidence about the health effects.
Jonathan Upson is from the company behind the Cherry Tree wind farm project, Infigen Energy.
JONATHAN UPSON: We found that decision to be unfortunate. We think there was plenty of evidence stated that there wasn't any problems and of course this Victorian Department of Health report further reinforces that argument.
SIMON LAUDER: Is it frustrating that this issue doesn't seem to be going away?
JONATHAN UPSON: It is but I think reports like the Victorian Department of Health when, they are a very independent and credible authority, when they come out and make these reports I think that is, you know hopefully what we're seeing is the science and facts starting to rise to the top of the debate, rather than the more emotional and anecdotal stories that the media, some aspects of the media like to focus on.
SIMON LAUDER: The emotion is still there for Noel Dean. He says the Health Department report is wrong.
NOEL DEAN: Well I don't know what they're talking about. They obviously haven't talked to, spoken, talked or listened to the people who have been harmed. We're the ones with the symptoms and they've got to talk to us.
SIMON LAUDER: The group which has campaigned the hardest for wind farm syndrome to be recognised, the Waubra Foundation, would not be interviewed for this story.
In an email to The World Today the head of the foundation, Sarah Laurie, says the Victorian Health Department refused to investigate health problems properly and its report is nothing but government spin.
The National Health and Medical Research Council's literature review is due for release later this year.
The report by the Victorian Health Department dismissed concerns that wind farm noise makes people ill, although it did find that the noise could be annoying.
In Melbourne, Simon Lauder reports.
SIMON LAUDER: Noel Dean moved to Ballarat to get away from Waubra. He says the wind farm there made him sick.
NOEL DEAN: I got severe air pressure problems in the inner ear and I was very ill for a number of weeks.
SIMON LAUDER: And what was the link with the wind turbines?
NOEL DEAN: Well it was the sound pressure or air pressure coming from the turbines was too great for my body to handle.
SIMON LAUDER: The assertion that wind turbines make people sick has been a sticking point for the industry for years. Opponents of turbines say they produce inaudible sound that affects the health of people who live close to them.
Now Victoria's Health Department has produced a report dismissing that claim.
It says if you can't hear a sound then there's no way known that it can affect health, regardless of the frequency. It says the level of noise produced by a wind farm is somewhere between a rural night-time background noise and the sound of a car passing 100 metres away.
STEVE GARNER: Well my first reaction is we've all been thinking this all along but it's really nice to get the evidence from professionals, and to see that now is quite heartening.
SIMON LAUDER: Steve Garner is the general manager of Keppel Prince Engineering, which makes wind turbines.
STEVE GARNER: Look I think it has damaged business, I think it's put a perception out there that they do create bad health.
SIMON LAUDER: Victoria has tough restrictions on wind farms, allowing anyone to veto a new turbine within two kilometres of their home.
The Government has never linked those restrictions with health concerns but Mr Garner says it should now reconsider them anyway.
STEVE GARNER: And a lot of those objections come about from the myth of your health and now that that myth has been taken away, then maybe revisiting those laws is something that ought to be done.
SIMON LAUDER: The Victorian Health Department report follows a recent report by South Australia's Environmental Protection Agency, which also rejected the link between wind farms and sickness.
But the health argument is still a barrier for the wind industry.
Victoria's Civil and Administrative Tribunal has put off its decision on a wind farm project near Seymour, until the National Health and Medical Research Council completes a review of evidence about the health effects.
Jonathan Upson is from the company behind the Cherry Tree wind farm project, Infigen Energy.
JONATHAN UPSON: We found that decision to be unfortunate. We think there was plenty of evidence stated that there wasn't any problems and of course this Victorian Department of Health report further reinforces that argument.
SIMON LAUDER: Is it frustrating that this issue doesn't seem to be going away?
JONATHAN UPSON: It is but I think reports like the Victorian Department of Health when, they are a very independent and credible authority, when they come out and make these reports I think that is, you know hopefully what we're seeing is the science and facts starting to rise to the top of the debate, rather than the more emotional and anecdotal stories that the media, some aspects of the media like to focus on.
SIMON LAUDER: The emotion is still there for Noel Dean. He says the Health Department report is wrong.
NOEL DEAN: Well I don't know what they're talking about. They obviously haven't talked to, spoken, talked or listened to the people who have been harmed. We're the ones with the symptoms and they've got to talk to us.
SIMON LAUDER: The group which has campaigned the hardest for wind farm syndrome to be recognised, the Waubra Foundation, would not be interviewed for this story.
In an email to The World Today the head of the foundation, Sarah Laurie, says the Victorian Health Department refused to investigate health problems properly and its report is nothing but government spin.
The National Health and Medical Research Council's literature review is due for release later this year.
Health Department - Infrasound Not an Issue
A Health Department report says there is no evidence wind turbine noise has an adverse effect on humans.
HUNDREDS of wind turbines across the south-west are not to blame for health problems, according to the latest health review by the state government.
Inaudible noise known as infrasound has long been the target of activists who claim it causes health problems such as dizziness and nausea.
“There is no evidence that sound which is at inaudible levels can have a physiological effect on the human body,” the report says.
“Physiological effects on humans have only been detected at levels that are easily audible.”
The review — which relies on both domestic and international scientific studies — pinpoints individual responses to noise levels and psychological reasons for being behind the health problems commonly referred to as “wind turbine syndrome”.
The south-west is home to some of Australia’s most organised anti-wind farm campaigners in Penshurst, Macarthur and Waubra near Ballarat which is in the federal seat of Wannon.
Last month a number of them picketed the opening of the Macarthur wind farm, claiming the 140 turbines have led to insomnia and headaches.
Demonstrators also met with South West Coast MP and Premier Denis Napthine at his Liebig Street office, but didn’t get any support for their claims.
She said an independent acoustician had been commissioned by locals to record infrasound levels in the area.
“They haven’t done any independent infrasound testing in Victoria,” Ms Gardner said. “You can’t compare it to being in a car — you aren’t in a car for 365 days a year.”
Sunday, May 5, 2013
This Defies Common Sense
Thank you for supporting the petition to Stop The Great Lakes Nuclear Dump on the shore of Lake Huron in the Great Lakes. We now have over 8,000 signatures!
We hope to raise many more signatures to deliver to Minister Kent before the final decision is made, expected in 9 months, to show him that there is strong opposition to the Ontario Power Generation plan. Today you can help us get to 10,000 signatures by asking 2 friends or family members to sign.
It defies common sense to bury the most toxic waste humans have ever created beside the Great Lakes, drinking water for 40 million people in two countries.
Please visit the web site for more information:
Together we can create an overwhelming wave of opposition to Ontario Power Generation's plan to bury radioactive nuclear waste in an underground dump approximately 400 metres from the Great Lakes and abandon it unmonitored for 100,000 years.
Sincerely,
Stop The Great Lakes Nuclear Dump
Stop The Great Lakes Nuclear Dump Inc. is a non-profit organization comprised of ordinary Canadians who believe that the protection of the Great Lakes from buried radioactive nuclear waste is responsible stewardship, and is of national and international importance.
The Great Lakes were created by an ice age 12,000 years ago.
The Egyptian pyramids were created 4,500 years ago.
Christianity is 2,000 years old.
Some nuclear waste remains radioactive for 100,000 years.
The Great Lakes constitute 21% of the world’s fresh water.
The Great Lakes are the water source supporting 40 million people in 2 countries.
An underground nuclear waste dump approximately 400 metres from Lake Huron defies common sense.
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