Wind Blog

The Meteor that was reported over Russia today reportedly did not hit any of the nuclear plants in the area. Read the rest of this entry »

The Globe and Mail reports that the US ambassador to Canada, David Jacobson, says that Canada’s policies on climate change are linked to American purchases of oil from the tar sands. Read the rest of this entry »

The numbers are in, and they show a dramatic shift away from conventional fossil and nuclear electricity generation and towards generation from renewable sources. The information is from the Office of Energy Projects of FERC, the US federal electricity sector regulator, and from Sourcewatch.org, a watchdog group that tracks US coal plants.
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A recent poll on renewable energy found that support for renewable energy was strong in two swing states in particular, Colorado, and Iowa. Read the rest of this entry »

The National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration reports that the world temperatures have been above average 337 months in a row. If you were born after April 1985, you have never experienced a colder than average month. Read the rest of this entry »

A new study from the University of Alberta says that as many as 22 million birds are killed per year in Canada by flying into windows.
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A new study published by the American Bird Observatory used “kitty cams” to determine how many animals outdoor house cats kill. The conclusion was that housecats kill more birds than previously thought. They estimate that house cats kill 500 million birds per year in North America.
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Nuclear proponents like to talk about how affordable the power is from nuclear plants. But we all know that someday, we will need to safely decommission the plants, and that is going to cost a lot. After all, it is tricky business dealing with highly toxic materials. You can’t just use a wrecking ball. And it is has never been done before with Candu reactors used in Ontario. We will have to invent a way to safely do it. The Vancouver Sun has published an article that estimates the cost to decommission the Gentilly reactor in Quebec at $1.6 billion.
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Ontario has some electricity surpluses at times, which the IESO calls “Surplus Baseload Generation”, or SBG. What is it? Is it bad or good? Why do we have it? What solutions are available to solve it? You will no doubt hear more about this, as the Conservatives and anti wind people are sure to twist this into something it is not. The Star has written an article on it. Read the rest of this entry »

Some of the opponents of green energy have been saying that Ontario’s residential electricity prices are the second highest in North America. This was repeated as recently as last week by Gwyn Morgan in a column in the Globe and Mail. Gwyn Morgan is the former CEO of the natural gas producer, Encana, and currently chair of SNC Lavalin. It surprised me to hear that Ontario’s electricity prices were the second highest in North America (after PEI), so I decided to do some research.
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