Tories let wind energy incentive die

By JUDY MYRDEN Business Reporter
Thu. Mar 4 - 8:34 PM

A Pictou County wind developer is “disappointed” with the federal government’s decision not to extend a production incentive for wind energy producers.

“It’s certainly very important to the development of renewables," Reuben Burge, president of RMSenergy of New Glasgow, said Thursday night.

"If there’s no commitment then there’s uncertainty. It’s like they are saying they don’t support it.”

He said the federal government’s financial incentives helped to promote wind energy projects and give confidence in the industry.

“When the government isn’t behind it, it lacks confidence for lenders and we're in a bad financial situation this year and certainly for the next couple of years and anything would have been good to help."

Burge heads up Nova Scotia’s largest wind farm on Dalhousie Mountain, 25 kilometres west of New Glasgow. It started producing energy this year and can generate a total of 51 megawatts of power when all the 34 turbines are running. That’s enough electricity for 17,000 homes.

The electricity is sold to Nova Scotia Power through a long-term fixed-price purchase agreement, a method designed to stabilize energy costs.

The production incentive for wind-generated electricity of one cent per kilowatt will expire at the end of this fiscal year and will not be renewed, the federal government announced in Thursday’s budget.

Canada’s national wind association is predicting fewer wind turbines will be installed across the country as a result.

“We are shocked and disappointed that it has chosen not to extend a cost-effective program that facilitated record levels of investment and job creation in Canada’s wind-energy sector in the midst of the recession of 2009,” Robert Hornung, president of the Canadian Wind Energy Association, said in a news release later Thursday.

Hornung predicts wind investors and developers will head south where the U.S. government is creating a more attractive investment climate for wind producers.

“While the U.S. federal government’s incentive program will provide support for new wind energy projects constructed through to the end of 2012, Canada’s ecoEnergy program has now allocated all of its funding and is supporting no wind energy projects built after March 2011 – almost two years before U.S. support is scheduled to end,” he added.

The ecoEnergy for renewable power program was created in June 2007 and has now allocated all of its funding and met its target to support 4,000 megawatts of new renewable energy projects in Canada.

The association will lobby the federal government to recommit the incentive with an estimated $1 trillion to be invested in wind energy projects between now and 2020 in Canada.

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