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Archive for November 5th, 2012

Nov 5

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Revitalized Bruce Power site good news for Ontario ratepayers

Duncan Hawthorne  (Bruce President and CEO) — Bruce Nuclear — November 5, 2012

This week, Bruce Power was pleased to announce the completion of our investment program that returned Units 1 and 2 to operation, after they had been out of service since the mid-1990s. With these two reactors now in service, combined with our ongoing revitalization program, the Bruce Power site has achieved its full operating potential for the first time in 20 years, doubling the number of operating units from four to eight since Bruce Power took over the site in 2001.

Achieving this milestone is also good news for Ontario ratepayers. Bruce Power is a reliable source of low-cost electricity for over a quarter of our homes, schools, hospitals and businesses. Our economy relies on stable, low-cost power every day and that is the role we play in the province today – and plan to for decades to come. That’s why many leaders throughout the province welcomed the news of more low-cost power from our site, including the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters.

This milestone is also good news for our environment. Ontario plans to phase-out all of our electricity generated from coal by the end of 2014 – an ambitious goal, considering just over 10 years ago the province relied on coal for over a quarter of its electricity. Read more

Nov 5

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Lorrie Goldstein talks about the new health study with Charles Adler

Click the following link to listen to 5 minute radio podcast

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Nov 5

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Australia — Wind farms are a monstrous blight on the landscape

Opinions — The Australian — November 6, 2012

Farms they are not. They are factories placed in the countryside.

Put into proper perspective, they are akin to the blight an open-cut coal mine would be on such a place. They produce the same product, energy,

albeit at a higher price to the consumer. Moreover, these monstrous turbines attract money from the federal government. I say monstrous with good reason: dozens of the them looming 150m above the hills and ridges on which they are situated spoil the landscape. And loom they do.

More research is needed before our country is dotted with them all over the bush.

Lee Stephenson, Kerrisdale, Vic

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I HAVE experienced the disturbing effects of wind farms. It is hard to explain the distress that one feels. The vibration runs right through one’s body — your heart pounds and your pulse races. Your head feels as if it’s under pressure and your ears ring constantly.

Yes, you can hear the noise outside, but inside the house it is different. It is a sinister presence that you can’t hear or see, just feel.

I have made two formal complaints and I must say the response was feeble. I was told that there were no other complaints. I spoke to another local who also suffered from the vibrations and she was told the same thing. I don’t want to be forced to leave my home of over 30 years. I find it hard to comprehend that we have been abandoned for those who want to make profits.

Jan Hetherington, Hamilton, Vic

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GRAHAM Lloyd’s article was spot-on and so full of facts that have been ignored by those pushing the barrow of wind as a reliable and viable source of renewable energy. Thank you for publishing the truth.

When will governments face the evidence that there is an urgent need for independent studies into the adverse effects on humans and animals who are forced to live too close to turbines? These studies are already well overdue. It is a denial of natural justice for rural residents, just as it was with the asbestos industry.

Angela Kearns, Ballan, Vic

 

Nov 5

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Environmentally Correct Europe Turns to Coal

Stanley Reed — New York Times — November 5, 2012

LONDON — You may think that coal is fading away as a fuel, but it isn’t. It’s booming. As I write in my latest Green Column, last year coal as a proportion of world energy was at its highest since the 1960s. A lot of the growth in coal use is happening in Asia, particularly China. But coal — the largest CO2 emitter among fossil fuels — is also in demand in Europe, including in ultra-green Germany.

One reason: The U.S. shale gas boom has encouraged American power plants to switch from coal to gas, cutting energy-related CO2 emissions in the U.S. to their lowest in 20 years. American coal producers are shipping their coal to Europe, bringing down prices on the Continent.

Much of Europe hates the idea of shale gas, preferring to rely on much more expensive imports from Russia and elsewhere. With no low-cost domestic gas supplies, coal is much cheaper than gas in Europe for utilities. In fact, they lose money burning gas.

Nov 5

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McGuinty Liberals’ dream of renewable energy has not come to pass

Scott Stinson — National Post — November 4, 2012

The absolute best face that the Ontario Liberals can put on the decisions to cancel gas-fired power plants in Oakville and Mississauga, at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars to taxpayers, is that the government was “responding to local concerns.”

That is indeed one way to put it. One man’s “crass political opportunism” can be someone else’s “listening to residents.”

The irony, though, is that the gas-plant affair takes place against the backdrop of an energy-planning strategy, and the Liberals’ signature Green Energy Act, which was specifically designed to override local concerns about generation facilities. It also put far too much reliance on the feasibility of renewable energy projects, completely disregarded the impact on consumers, and imagined a world in which coal-fired plants, long a staple of Ontario’s energy system, could be replaced by sunshine and the breeze.

That scenario has simply not come to pass. And while outrage over the Green Energy Act has long been felt in rural Ontario, where local concerns over new projects have been largely ignored, the greater Toronto gas-plant cancellations have produced a political fallout felt right in the Liberal heartland. It is Dalton McGuinty’s green energy chickens coming home to roost.

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