HARDING: WEEKLY - Saskatchewan Sustainability

[Oscar]

800 KM WALK HEATS UP NUCLEAR WASTE CONTROVERSY

BY Jim Harding

For Publication in R-Town News - August 5, 2011

Much has happened since the Forum for Truth on Nuclear Waste Storage was held in Beauval June 2nd. Organized in two weeks by the newly-formed Committee for Future Generations, the forum was attended by 200 people, most from ten northern communities. Within a few weeks committee members had organized a second forum, held in Pinehouse July 26th. The next day thirty northerners left Pinehouse to begin a twenty day, 7000 Generations Walk Against Nuclear Waste, which will end up at the Regina Legislature.

The 800 km walk will pass through twelve communities, with rallies in Prince Albert on August 3nd, Saskatoon on August 8th and Regina August 15th. On August 16th the walk will go down The Green Mile along Albert Street to present petitions to the Wall government. Organizers are encouraging supporters to join in the walk wherever they can and for however long they can. Several carloads are expected to join the walkers at Lumsden the morning of August 15th.

This is no small feat and walkers are bound to be tested by this summer’s extreme weather. First Nations, Métis, environmental and ecumenical networks are providing lodging, food and support along the route. This is an unprecedented event, with northerners calling for southern support to win a nuclear waste ban.

The mainstream media is finally reporting the growing opposition to a nuclear dump in the north. Provincial politics is heating up and the nuclear waste controversy may yet become a fall election issue. The NDP, which has a policy against a nuclear dump, has now indicated it will support the walk. We will see whether this resonates with the voting public or is seen as getting on the band wagon late in the game. Organizers want support from any and all groups that are willing to help; it’s a politically non-partisan action.

NWMO’S RESPONSE

The Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO), which has been promoting a nuclear dump In the north, appears to have changed its approach since the success of the Beauval forum. On July 21st, a week prior to the July 26th Pinehouse forum, NWMO’s Communications Director, Jamie Robinson, contacted the Committee for Future Generations, the Coalition for a Clean Green Saskatchewan and the Saskatchewan Environmental Society (SES). It invited members to come on an all-expense paid tour “to a waste management facility at a nuclear generating station in South Ontario where used nuclear fuel is currently stored on an interim basis.” NWMO said it wanted to “hear their concerns and questions and to provide a briefing about our activities.”

These tours are regularly given to political officials and business groups to try to get them onside. The timing of this invitation to opponents of a nuclear dump is most interesting, for it came after the NWMO declined to send anyone to the Beauval forum. This was the largest, broadest-based discussion of nuclear wastes to occur in the north to date, and would have been an opportune time for them to hear “concerns and questions”. (The forum organizers wanted the industry view presented and when no one turned up they bent over backwards and played two NWMO videos at the beginning of the meeting.)

NWMO’s invitation could have created divisions, but on July 25th the Committee simply responded “we are unable to attend at this time as we are extremely busy with our forum in Pinehouse and our 7000 Generations Walk to the legislature in Regina.” We’ll have to wait and see whether the offer to take people opposed to a nuclear dump here, to Ontario, where the wastes are produced and should be stored, still stands after the summer’s activities.

TRANSPARENCY REQUIRED

The Committee for Future Generations has been calling for more transparency from NWMO; they want to know what money is going into the north as part of its promotions. A July 27th Star Phoenix story sheds some light on this, reporting that “Resources of up to $75,000 per community were made available for expenses incurred at this stage of the selection process…” The story fails, however, to mention the $1,000,000 that went to the FSIN or the $400,000 that went to the Métis Nation.

The Committee has also been asking NWMO what payments have been going to the hand-picked elders that are “advising” it. When pushed on this, NWMO’s Toronto-based spokesman, Michael Krizanc, admitted they received “a per diem that would be several hundred dollars a day”. That means that when NWMO-appointed elder, Jim Sinclair, for example, goes to any community forum to try to convince people to consider a nuclear dump, he is getting paid. Such monetary inducements completely go against the meaning of “duty to consult” and “informed consent”.

There’s a lot of twisting of words in this controversy. Pinehouse official Glen McCallum suggests that the community is “just interested in gathering information”, yet village officials haven’t contacted people outside the industry, and it took forming the Committee for Future Generations to get an open public forum in the community. It’s hard to accept that “there is no coercion” going on behind the scene. Industry spokesperson Krizanc says NWMO wants an “informed and willing” community to display its willingness in a “compelling” way, but then adds “we haven’t defined what a compelling way is yet”. What is compelling is the growing opposition to a nuclear dump!

MANIPULATION EXPOSED

Those working behind the scene may be getting nervous. Pinehouse spokesperson, Vince Natomagan, had an op ed in the July 28th Star Phoenix, just the day after the 7000 Generations Walk left his community. He attacked the June 2nd Beauval forum as sending a “fear-based, short-sighted message”, while failing to say anything about the opposition to a nuclear dump expressed at the July 26th Pinehouse forum . Natomagan tried to make the SES sound like it supported his position, without mentioning that the SES supports a ban on nuclear wastes in Saskatchewan. Natomagan supported Jim Sinclair, who was heckled at the Beauval forum, without mentioning that Sinclair was actually applauded when he started his speech by opposing a nuclear dump. Sinclair then flip-flopped and ended up supporting a dump as if that was the way to help the next generation avoid addiction, suicide and prison. Many present were aghast!

Such manipulation of the deep concern about the social crisis in the north may be backfiring. One of the founders of the Committee for Future Generations, retired RCMP officer, Max Morin, told the Star Phoenix he “was invited to be part of an elder’s summit focused on problems of death and addiction among the community’s youth. Two hours in, the meeting turned out to be a presentation on nuclear waste storage set up by those working with NWMO.”

Northern Saskatchewan remains the second poorest region in all of Canada in spite of the uranium mining “boom”, and bringing 20,000 truckloads of highly radioactive nuclear wastes to the north will not change the highly inequitable pattern of mal-development. A new, sustainable path will need to be charted. Natomagan talks rhetorically about “standing up straight and making an informed decision”. The northerners walking from Pinehouse to Regina are not only standing up for the future of the north but for the future of the whole province.

Other articles:

http://jimharding.brinkster.net

[Oscar]

MOVING SASKATCHEWAN FORWARD…TO A TOXIC ECONOMY

By Jim Harding

Published in R-Town News September 2, 2011

The Wall government is ramping up for the fall election with the slogan “Moving Saskatchewan Forward!” But is the direction it is taking us really forward at all? The recent announcement of a $10 million deal with GE-Hitachi to research “small” nuclear reactors and nuclear wastes won’t take Saskatchewan towards sustainability. Rather it will ensure a toxic future for our children’s, children’s, children.

GE-HITACHI ORIGINS

The companies that build nuclear reactors continue to decline. France’s Areva is still in the business but its huge cost-overruns and cumulating debt make it vulnerable. And Canada’s AECL, now privatized by Harper, will have increasing trouble justifying multi-billion taxpayer subsidies to build Candus. To try to enhance their competitiveness, the U.S.’s General Electric (GE) and Japan’s Hitachi formed a global nuclear alliance in June 2007. However this was premised on Japan and the U.S. continuing to build large nuclear plants, which is highly unlikely after the Fukushima catastrophe. So GE-Hitachi is now desperate for new markets to survive. Enter Saskatchewan, stage right!

UPDATE FUKUSHIMA

Before Fukushima the nuclear industry was regulated by the Trade Ministry, which promoted nuclear energy. Since Fukushima the Japanese government passed strong renewable energy legislation requiring utilities to buy any domestically-produced renewable energy regardless of cost. This is a green light for off-shore wind, geo-thermal plants in the earthquake-prone mountains and an expansion of photovoltaic (PV) electricity. (Japan along with China is already a world leader in PV technology.) This jump-starts the phase-out of nuclear power and puts an end to GE-Hitachi plans to build 20 more Japanese plants, so where does GE-Hitachi go? Apparently they are coming here, where the government is so irrationally-pro-nuclear that it won’t allow itself to face hard economic or ecological facts.

While other countries do a full nuclear phase-out and renewables continue to gain ground globally, our government cancels Sask Power’s net-metering program, which was just a baby step to bring more renewables onto the grid, and makes a nuclear deal with GE-Hitachi. Wall’s government seems totally out of sync with emerging trends. While Minister Norris was finalizing his Memorandums of Understanding with GE-Hitachi, Beyond Nuclear told us that that the situation at Fukushima continued to worsen. The scope of radioactive contamination widens, with high levels of long-lived radioactive cesium now found 62 miles from the plants. Japan’s monitoring agency calculates that the cesium contaminating the country is now 168 times that from the Hiroshima bomb (15,000 tera-becquerels compared to 89.) Both radioactive cesium and strontium are now in Chinese territorial waters, threatening sea life and sea food.

The Wall government not only refused to greet the 20-day walkers who came 820 km from Pinehouse to call for a provincial nuclear waste ban; it has turned its back on what’s continuing to happen to the Japanese people.

MORE SPIN

Always searching for a corporate way to “move Saskatchewan forward”, regardless of cost and risk, the Wall government ignores the role of its new partner-in-arms in building the flawed Fukushima plants. A deal with GE-Hitachi to study nuclear safety, after Fukushima being the second worst nuclear disaster in history, after Chernobyl, is simply unconscionable. There is something Orwellian when the Hitachi-GE head is reported in the August 25th Star Phoenix as saying, “our latest findings from Fukushima will greatly contribute to safety of nuclear power in Canada also”. I suppose it could also be argued that one way to study cancer is to cause more of it.

In spite of its lapse into “populism” to stop the BHP Potash takeover, the Wall government seems to fundamentally embrace the amoral worldview of corporate globalization. There seems little or no concern about GE-Hitachi’s direct involvement in Fukushima; no apparent concern that Cameco was a major supplier to the reactor company Tepco that operated these plants, or that Tepco is a partner in the troublesome Cigar lake uranium mine! As long as it’s about profitable business, apparently anything goes.

WALL’S CORPORATE PARTNER

What else has Wall’s corporate partner been up to? In 2010 GE-Hitachi signed an agreement with Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS) to do research on small modular reactors (SMR) and on new nuclear fuels. Savannah, in South Carolina, is where the U.S. nuclear industry began; it did the refining-enriching for U.S. nuclear weapons. And when Minister Norris says that Saskatchewan is moving forward with a “peaceful, responsible, robust nuclear agenda”, he isn’t going to mention that Savannah, where GE-Hitachi operates, is the only place in the U.S. where tritium continues to be produced for nuclear weapons. Savannah has also been earmarked for a mixed-oxide (MOX) plant which would recover plutonium from nuclear waste spent fuel.

In reality the so-called peaceful and military sectors of the nuclear industry remain tightly interlocked. Semantic spin is also rampant in nuclear promotions. What does GE-Hitachi actually mean by “small reactors”? Do they mean small in comparison to big reactors, which produce up to 1,600 megawatts? The IAEA defines “small” as producing under-300 mega-watts electricity (MWe), and “medium” as producing up to 700 MWe. It’s clear that by “small” GE-Hitachi means fairly big, for in April 2011 they submitted a letter of intent to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to apply for a permit for a 311 MWe “small modular reactor”. Such a reactor, however, has not yet been proposed or approved.

SAVANNAH NORTH

Why hasn’t GE-Hitachi gone to Ontario, which produces most of Canada’s nuclear waste. Why has it come to Saskatchewan? Maybe GE-Hitachi thinks it can build its 311 MWe “small reactor” here more easily than in the U.S. After all, the Wall government seems willing to throw public moneys at waning nuclear companies. Maybe GE-Hitachi thinks Ontario’s, and even the U.S.’s nuclear wastes will someday be here too.

The MOU between the Sask Party government and GE-Hitachi makes us into Savannah North. GE-Hitachi needs a place to launch its “small” reactor industry using nuclear wastes as spent fuel. And the Wall government has welcomed them with open arms. This is what the nuclear industry-dominated UDP recommended in 2008, and in spite of the public consultations showing overwhelming opposition to this toxic vision of “moving Saskatchewan forward”, the Wall government carries on. It apparently can’t take “no!” for an answer.

NUCLEAR DUMP STILL ON

So take it with a big grain of salt when Premier Wall says he’s not sure whether we should have a nuclear waste dump in the north, because it is a Saskatchewan-wide issue, and there’s not much support. (He’s right about this!) He’s only begging time. He’s operating the same as the industry-based Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) when it tries to buy its way into a northern community like Pinehouse, with the rest of us not really knowing what is happening or the implications for our future.

The University of Saskatchewan, in this regards, is a little like Pinehouse, with a few people willing to be part of the nuclear agenda, if there is something in it for them. In the north NWMO tries to piggy-back its agenda on the crisis of youth; in Saskatoon GE-Hitachi tries to do this piggy-backing nuclear medicine. In neither case are they related. Economic impoverishment has remained in the north in spite of the uranium mining “boom”; and a nuclear dump would only aggravate the situation. And research on using the U of S synchrotron for producing medical isotopes has nothing to do with “small” reactors or nuclear wastes. In fact, it would make nuclear reactors even more obsolete.

To truly move Saskatchewan forward we are going to have to cut through the growing pile of nuclear spin! We can only hope this will start to happen in the fall election.

Jim Harding is a retired professor of environmental and justice studies. Other writings on sustainability, nuclear, renewable, etc. at: http://jimharding.brinkster.net

[Oscar]

SHOULD THE NDP APOLOGIZE . . .?

BY Jim Harding

For publication in R-Town News September 23, 2011

The northern-based Committee for Future Generations recently wrote all NDP MLAs and candidates asking for support for legislation banning nuclear wastes in Saskatchewan. (This is quite close to NDP policy). They gave compelling information about the steady, worldwide shift towards renewable energy accelerating since Japan’s nuclear melt-downs.

But then the Committee asked for an apology from the NDP for taking us down the nuclear road. This reverberated right to the Office of the Leader of the Opposition, and wasn’t wholeheartedly embraced by everyone working with the Committee. It was too big a leap for many in the inner NDP; there was some support from a few people who left the NDP but would consider returning if there was any sign of sincere policy reevaluation.

SHOULD TOMMY APOLOGIZE?

My response as an activist-researcher is to assemble relevant historical information. In my last discussion with Tommy Douglas, in the late 1980s at a University of Regina conference at Fort San, Tommy told me, regrettably, that Uranium City’s role in nuclear weapons during the 1950s and 1960s was “mostly a secret”. He told me a few Cabinet Ministers knew of the weapons connection, but that they were sworn to secrecy under the War Measures Act (WMA).

I found the WMA came into play over Canada’s role in supplying uranium to the U.S. Manhattan Project which built the first A-bombs. In 1942 the Canadian government insisted that Eldorado Mines re-open its Port Radium mine in the NWT and send uranium to Port Hope, Ontario for refining before going south. This uranium was used in the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. In 1944 the federal government used the WMA to expropriate Eldorado Mines which became the crown corporation Eldorado Nuclear. Until 1971 it had a monopoly selling uranium for weapons to the U.S. and UK.

The Saskatchewan CCF government’s role was secondary. In 1952 the CCF created the infrastructure of Uranium City to support uranium mining. The CCF also tried but failed to get a seat on the federal nuclear regulatory body, the Atomic Energy Control Board.

Tommy gratefully accepted an invitation to key-note the 1959 Rally for Nuclear Disarmament at the legislature, and he must have known that many of the weapons he supported banning were using uranium from the north. Tommy also campaigned for the Blakeney NDP in 1981 which was promoting uranium joint ventures and was about to lose to Grant Devine. If Tommy were alive perhaps he’d owe us an apology for his secrecy, but nothing more.

SHOULD BLAKENEY APOLOGIZE?

What about the Blakeney NDP hitching its wagon to the uranium industry in the 1970s? Lots happened before the NDP announced its uranium joint ventures. Many NDPers thought the policy was created to ensure more provincial resource benefits. But in 1974 the uranium industry, led by Uranerz of Germany, came to Blakeney proposing joint-ventures. In retrospect this isn’t too surprising since the uranium industry everywhere is tied in some way to the state. Arevea, for example, is state-owned.

The province accepted the offer and that year, well before there was any public discussion, Blakeney created the Saskatchewan Mining and Development Corporation (SMDC); the government uranium company. In 1975 Blakeney proposed a 5% royalty on revenues plus a graduated royalty on profits. The industry rejected this outright and Amok (now Areva) suspended its operations at Cluff Lake, where it had discovered high-grade ore in 1968. The NDP government back peddled, agreed to a 3 % royalty and gave in to company demands for more capital investment exemptions.

In 1976 a uranium moratorium was recommended to the NDP convention, but Cabinet, already creating joint ventures, convinced the party to hold an inquiry which rubber stamped what was already underway.

With the price of uranium so erratic, industry wanted public risk financing of infrastructure and mine-site construction, and to protect its profit line. And it got its way; by the end of the Blakeney government the province had invested more into uranium mining than it got in revenues.

In 1988, when the uranium market was bottoming out due to the lack of new nuclear plants, the Free-Trading Devine and Mulroney governments privatized SMDC and Eldorado Nuclear to become Cameco. The same ideology of “trickle down” persisted, but the government and industry returned to traditional roles as regulator and producer. And, as the main nuclear power countries (U.S., France and Japan) targeted Saskatchewan’s higher-grade, more economically-recoverable uranium, Saskatchewan became the world’s major uranium-producing region. Demand, prices and sales shot up.

URANIUM SALES AND ROYALTIES

By 2000 the value of uranium sales was at $419 million, with royalties only at $39 million. By 2005 the value of sales was $644 million with royalties down to $30 million. In 2009, the last year that figures are available, sales doubled to $1,260,400,000 with royalties of only $105 million.

Royalties averaged around 6% of the value of uranium sales during this period, but have been as low as 2% in 2003. These royalties come from two sources: first, a base royalty which is 4% of revenues after resource credits such as capital write-offs are considered; and second, a graduated royalty based on the uranium price. Royalty figures from 2000-2009 suggest the graduated royalty is low, as there was a uranium bull market with exploding prices and profits until Fukushima.

There are other uranium revenues from a resource surcharge on gross revenue and from corporate taxes, but this is aggregated with all natural resources to protect commercial interests. Efforts to research uranium mining are continually plagued by military or commercial secrecy.

The uranium industry turned into the opposite of what Blakeney had been hoping for during the mid-1970s. Though the value of uranium sales continued to rise, tripling since 2000, the provincial royalties remained pretty flat. While the SMDC gave government added policy tools, such as having a say in production schedules based on demand and price, all economic advantages from the joint ventures were nullified by the province’s heavy investments in the industry. These turned out to be a “public gift” to Cameco.

And, while billions of dollars of uranium wealth has gone out of province and country since the 1980s, northern Saskatchewan remains one of the poorest regions in Canada. Some of the same people who deceptively advanced uranium mining as the economic answer to the north are now advocating a nuclear dump as their latest “development strategy”. This time, many see through the ploy.

SHOULD CAMECO APOLOGIZE?

All political parties played a role in this dead-end. The Thatcher Liberals, the Blakeney, Romano and Calvert NDP, and the Devine and Wall Conservatives all contributed to this toxic economic “strategy”. They should probably all apologize to the Saskatchewan people, particularly northerners, who have ended up with thousands of tonnes of radioactive tailings.

What the Committee for Future Generations was getting at, without laying out the history, is that they think the NDP is more likely than the Sask Party to admit the dead-end and start shifting to a sustainable path. I think the jury is still out, especially as long as Lingenfelter remains leader. Remember that when he worked as an executive in Alberta’s oil patch Lingenfelter supported Saskatchewan building nuclear plants.

Apology, confession and forgiveness are important rituals to help us learn from our experience and find new ways. The CFF has little to apologize for. Since Blakeney however, the NDP has helped take the province on a dead-end path. Someone should probably apologize, especially to the Japanese who face ongoing contamination from Saskatchewan uranium fuel used in Fukushima’s reactors. Maybe half an apology should come from the NDP for their predecessors and half should come from Cameco for what they continue to do.

Jim Harding is a retired professor of environmental and justice studies. Other writings on sustainability, nuclear, renewable, etc. at: http://jimharding.brinkster.net

[Oscar]

HOW DOES SASKATCHEWAN “GRADE” ON RENEWABLE ENERGY?

BY Jim Harding

Published in R-Town News on October 14, 2011

With a provincial election coming, it’s time to take stock of how well Saskatchewan is doing making the transition to a sustainable energy system. How do policies and programs here compare with other provinces, the U.S. and Europe? In a nutshell we are still far behind where California was in 1983 and have apparently learned nothing from the successes in Europe since 1991. We aren’t even in the same ball park as Ontario was back in 2006.

PIPELINE PIPE-DREAMS

Our federal and provincial governments push for Trans-Canada’s Keystone pipeline to bring even more toxic tar-sand oil through the lush southern prairies into the U.S. They push for Enbridge’s Northern Gateway pipeline to the West Coast where tankers going to China will threaten the marine ecology and diminishing fish stocks. Meanwhile, year-by-year, non-toxic renewable energy makes steady gains.

According to the Monthly Energy Review of the U.S. Energy Information Administration, domestic renewable energy production by June 2011 was “significantly greater than that of nuclear power and continues to close in on oil.” During the first half of 2011 renewable energy (biomass, bio-fuels, ground source heat, solar, water and wind) provided 18% more energy than nuclear plants and 80% of the energy that comes from crude oil. Renewable sources provided 14% of electricity, quickly catching up to the 19% from nuclear, which, despite heavy public subsidies, has lost ground since 2009. (Globally renewable-generated electricity passed nuclear in 2005.) Coal’s share in the U.S. electricity market has also dropped as renewable capacity increases.

NET-METERING PROGRAM

Meanwhile, Saskatchewan has an on-again, off-again net-metering program which barely taps renewable sources. It allows small, individual producers to put excess electricity on the Sask Power grid, but provides only credit for this. If you produce what you consume from the grid you won’t have an electrical bill, but “your excess power must be used during your annual billing cycle”. The small producer takes all the risks. The only incentive is a 35% grant on eligible costs up to $35,000 which is administrated by the Saskatchewan Research Council (SRC) which monitors the program.

The program started in 2007 under the Calvert NDP but was discontinued by the Wall government in 2011, just as it was starting to gain momentum. It’s recently been extended to August 30, 2012, but to qualify, a project registration form must be filed by December 2011. A government program review is underway, with no date of a report. Wall’s government clearly doesn’t want energy policy to be an issue in the November election.

There are now 200 plus small producers in Saskatchewan’s program, mostly generating wind power. Our family has installed a hybrid system of both wind (2.2 KW) and photovoltaic (PV) solar (1.3 KW) to maximize production through all seasons. After four months we’ve produced about 2,000 kWh, close to what we consume. Net-metering however doesn’t promote the conversion to renewables because there’s no incentive to produce more than you consume. While the price of electricity will continue to rise, the pay-back time on the investment is long. After the SRC grant and even if prices double, it will take ten years to recover our costs, disregarding depreciation and maintenance. Our motive for installing renewables was mostly environmental; we cut about 6,000 pounds of carbon a year compared to using electricity from Sask Power’s coal plants.

FEED-IN TARIFFS (FIT)

The conversion from coal must be made province-wide if we are to lower our greenhouse gases, which are the highest in the world (72 tonnes per capita annually, the global average is 4 tonnes). Jurisdictions wanting to encourage the conversion to renewables to help avert a climate crisis have gone way past net-metering and implemented feed-in tariffs (FITs) where small producers are guaranteed a fair price to cover their costs and provide some earnings. This is quickly catching on globally; two billion humans now live in places that have or will soon have feed-in tariffs.

California launched the first FIT called the Interim Standard Offer in 1983-84. It was based on avoided costs of using fossil fuels and favoured large developers. It established 1,200 MW (Mega-Watts) wind capacity, mostly in California’s windy passes and reduced CO2 over the decades. Germany is rightly considered the global pioneer; its first program, in 1991, provided 20-year contracts and was more advanced than California is today. Germany sparked the revolution in renewables in 2000 with its Advanced Renewable Tariff after its decision to phase-out nuclear power. It succeeded because it’s not a “one size fits all”; it differentiates the size and application for each technology. France followed suit in 2001 and Spain in 2004. These three countries set “the gold standard” for renewable energy policy world-wide. By 2008 Germany had 24,000 and Spain had 17,000 MW wind capacity. France, which heavily subsidizes its large nuclear fleet and was more restrictive with its siting policy, had “only” 3,400 MW of wind. Germany is now a world leader in solar energy and Spain is looking at tidal power.

NORTH AMERICA LAGGING

North American has been slower to convert; Ontario now leads all Canadian provinces and U.S. states. Its 2006 Standard Offer Contract had limited success with only 150 MW capacity by 2008. But its 2009 Green Energy Act brought it into the same league as the Europeans. It has social as well as environmental objectives: it favours local control, community economic development and equal economic opportunities. Like Germany it has no regulatory cap and has a diversity of tariffs for different conditions (e.g. off-shore and on-shore). Ontario outranks the timid programs in Vermont, Maine, Wisconsin, California and Oregon. A recent program comparison by Paul Gipe of the World Future Council says Ontario surpasses Spain.

SASKATCHEWAN’S LOBBIES

Ontario has awarded over 2,500 MWs of contracts for renewables; one-fifth of these include homeowners, farmers, community and aboriginal groups. This amounts to 70% of our total grid and Saskatchewan has the potential for renewables equal or greater than Ontario’s. With a much smaller land-mass, France has wind capacity equal to our total grid. Even if our existing wind capacity goes through a planned doubling we will still be under 400 KW compared to France’s 3,400. Why are we so far behind?

Thirty years after California’s first program and twenty years after Germany’s, we’ve barely touching the surface. There are some who would call our on-again, off-again net-metering program “green-washing masquerading as policy”. We have been held back by Sask Power’s addiction to coal; the $1.24 billion committed to rebuild a 100 MW unit at Boundary Dam for carbon capture “while enhancing provincial oil production” shows the province’s misplaced priorities. One hundred MW renewable capacity could be built much cheaper and older, dirtier coal plants could be phased-out. And energy conservation and efficiency is hardly tapped. Meanwhile the powerful uranium lobby repeatedly tries to convince gullible politicians that we should buck the global trend and “go nuclear”. Our energy policy is more lobby-based than evidence-based and evidence will likely be lacking during the election.

But the future is already here, or at least it’s becoming clear that the sooner we replace the environmentally dangerous sources of energy, the sooner we start the transition to a sustainable society that doesn’t sacrifice water, air, land or health for energy. If those running our governments were concerned about all our grandchildren they would nix the crude oil pipelines and shift resources for a faster transition to renewable, sustainable energy. The November election is a time to speak up loudly about this.

more at http://jimharding.brinskter.net and www.crowsnestecology.wordpress.com