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From the Sept 22, 2009 Issue of Greenhouse Business | |
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| | Rising energy costs as well as concerns about carbon emissions and air quality are enhancing interest in solar energy. In Europe, Asia and now Ontario, governments are providing incentives to encourage the use of solar energy to provide cleaner and more environmentally sustainable sources of electricity. West Carleton, Ontario will be home to one of North America’s largest solar energy installations. A 200 acre farm located just west of Ottawa is about to undergo a $100-million investment by installing 231,000 solar units capable of 23.4 megawatts of power. That’s enough clean energy to serve an average of 7,000 homes when the province’s power demand is highest. It will be Canada’s largest photovoltaic plant that converts sunlight directly into electricity. The firm behind the project is EdF-EN Canada - the Canadian arm of the French-based renewable energy firm EdF-Energie Nouvelles. The solar power project is being developed as two installations under Government of Ontario’s proposed Green Energy and Green Economy Act which promotes moving away from the use of coal-fuelled energy plants by 2014 and moving towards biomass, biogas, solar and wind energy instead. The industry is getting alot of government support. For example, consumers pay five to six cents per kilowatt hour for conventional electricity, but the government is paying solar companies 42 cents a kilowatt hour for their power. As a relatively new technology, the capital costs are hugely expensive, but EdF-EN is undertaking this project under the Ontario Government’s renewable-energy program wherein the provincial government is aiming to spend $5 billion over the next three years. Several groups such as the Ontario Federation of Agriculture, the Canadian Institute for Environmental Law and Policy, and other rural organizations have raised concerns that solar farming would use prime farmland for generating electricity rather than for growing crops. The solar industry argues that such farm land tends to be flat, free of obstruction, inexpensive and close to distribution lines - all factors that improve the economics of their projects. The ground mounted solar panels intend to utilize a tiny percentage of Ontario’s agricultural land. Farmers have the option to lease their land, or a portion of their land, over a period of 20 years, at which point the land is returned to the farmer in arguably better nutritional shape. Ontario farmer Tim Barrie currently grows asparagus and rhubarb and is now prepared to add electricity to that list. Barrie has been approached by Waterloo-based Arise Technologies to install a solar farm in an exhausted asparagus field. Barrie has moved asparagus out of the proposed solar field beside his house stating that a crop can only grow in one spot for 25 years before disease moves in; therefore ‘growing’ electricity in that vacant field only makes sense. Another farmer who traded in some of his pigs for solar energy panels claims his new venture is merely adapting to an economic cycle. While already popular in Europe and fairly extensive in the US, the solar energy generation is just now taking off in Canada, with Ontario as the leader. While solar energy is expensive to produce now, it is expected that it will be more economical as the industry matures.
Sources:
Ottawa on track to break trail on green power – Ottawa Citizen
Green energy could mean more green for farmers – Government of Ontario
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For more information about the content of this document, contact Gail Atkinson.
This information published to the web on September 22, 2009.
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