Time to be proactive, not reactive, about energy future

June 10, 2012 - 4:12am

by Rachel Brighton, Just Business

Protests against Nova Scotia Power are like water off a duck’s back.

Instead of dressing up and parading in front of corporate shareholders and executives in Halifax, angry ratepayers should pile into buses and tour Cumberland County to learn how citizens can take a real stake in the democratically governed production of green energy.

Some of them may be put off by the sight of the 15 tall wind turbines planted on the stark Tantramar marsh just on the Nova Scotia side of the New Brunswick border.

But that privately owned wind farm on private land does not indicate the full thrust of the region’s energy strategy, which is partly geared to attracting outside investment and very much aimed at building energy self-sufficiency.

Cumberland County should inspire municipalities and civic institutions in the way its public buildings, infrastructure and services are being powered with green energy, including solar, wind and — thanks to the flooded coal mines under Springhill — warm mine water.

A battery maker, a boiler maker, a plastics manufacturer and a pizza chain were among the first businesses to experiment with this geothermal heat from the mines, which has been used in Springhill for two decades and provides energy for heating, cooling and processing to 10 operations in a geothermal industrial park.

The Joggins Fossil Institute is powered by wind and solar, and at the new community centre in Springhill, underground warm water is converted into energy for heating, cooling and making ice for the arena.

The county has the province’s only regional energy office, a partnership that includes Cumberland County, the towns of Springhill and Parrsboro and the Cumberland Regional Economic Development Authority.

A regional energy strategy was developed with advice from local manufacturers, wineries, producers of blueberries and other agricultural products, the forestry sector, environmentalists, academics, the Nova Scotia Community College and Minas Basin Pulp and Power, which has a stake in the experimental stage of tidal power development in the Minas Channel.

Kings County, which has placed a hold on large-scale wind projects and is considering a moratorium on new wind farms while it figures out how to balance the interests of developers and residents, should marvel at what can happen when municipal governments are proactive rather than reactive in the renewable energy game.

Local governments are realizing they can gain a competitive edge if they have the right wind regime, the right regulations and a hold on natural assets, such as a natural supply of warm water underground or the prospect, as difficult as it seems, of harnessing tidal energy.

Public attention right now is fixed on the cost of power that is distributed through a provincial monopoly. The simplest and easiest way to avoid these costs is to generate alternative energy sources.

Municipalities can and should play a bigger role in energy generation to help us break our dependence on a monopolized, expensive, centrally operated power system.

Rachel Brighton is a freelance journalist and former magazine publisher. She writes on environmental technology for the new Herald Magazine and on small business for The Chronicle Herald.

http://thechronicleherald.ca/business/105568-time-to-be-proactive-not-reactive-about-energy-future

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Ms Brighton is correct on many level - any investor will tell you a diversified portfolio is much more stable than investing in a single stock. There are some important things missing here, though.

Cumberland County is unique in having a variety of excellent resources available to it that others do not, not least geothermal and access to the biggest tides in the world. It is also the sunniest part of the province, so solar is a definite possibility as that technology moves apace. Oh yes, and we have wind too.

Of these renewables (in the absence of any large hydro project) wind energy is by far the most invasive to those nearby and for miles around. Municipalities have to understand that these energy generating sites cannot be located just anywhere. Rules have to be written to protect residents from these projects and developers from attracting such poor acceptance the entire industry gets bad press.

The Municipality of Cumberland County has definitely made great strides in supporting these renewables, but what Kings County has done is realise that people are part of the environment too. It is the residents who are the end user of the County's services and it is they who the county need to listen to and realise that if they are not happy they will either (a) react at election time, (b) not develop their properties, thus affecting its tax value or (c) simply move away.

The Municipalities can have their renewables and keep their residents happy at the same time, but it takes good planning guidelines that are not a cookie cutter approach but look at each case on its own merits. Yes, that takes more time but what is important: doing it fast or getting it right?