Until recently, green power was given about as much nourishment in Ontario as a dandelion in a concrete crevice. 

Now that the new Green Energy Act has made renewable electricity the belle of the ball, how can Toronto, rich in lake breezes but far from the strongest gusts and rushing rivers, cash in? Will our power lines be blown over by Big Wind 100s of kilometres away, or will a city largely juiced by dodgy nukes finally get power to the people through community-controlled green voltage?

***

If you were dozing while the final details of the Green Energy Act surfaced over the last few weeks, here’s the basic rundown: renewable energy projects will now get fast-tracked, and thanks to a new feed-in tariff plan, anyone and everyone who wants to get in on the sustainable energy game (from your Aunt Ethel to multinational energy conglomerates) will get paid the same premium price to feed solar, wind, hydro, biomass or biogas into the grid. 

Not only are local distribution companies now required by law to conserve energy and facilitate the connection of renewable projects to the grid (hell, it’s now a condition of their licence to operate), but they also have to give green power priority access to that grid. That means a rooftop solar farm would get bumped ahead of another fossil-fuel-burping Portlands Energy operation.

Besides the payoffs to homes and hardware stores that strap solar to their roofs, the most transformative news for this city is that the act finally lets municipalities and local power distributors like Toronto Hydro produce their very own power – if, and only if, that power is green as pesticide-free grass. 

That means Toronto can finally get serious about green energy – and grow it at home.

Up until now, local forms of earth-conscious energy have been purely aspirational: one symbolic turbine here, a few avant-garde solar rooftops there, with a little deep-lake-water AC in the core and a whole lot of big nuclear power propping up the rest of the city. So how do we journey from being an urban centre that gets maybe 2 per cent of its energy from local sustainable sources to one with solar panels on every school, strip mall and community centre?

Toronto Hydro’s Blair Peberdy points to the example of the WindShare turbine at the Ex – not the spinning part, but the community-owned aspect – with a solar twist.  

“Where can we get 300 to 400 kilowatts [of green energy in the city]?” he asks. “By looking at a partnership with a community co-op, the right community co-op that wants to invest in a fairly large installation, and finding the right roof space.” 

Throw a major property owner with a lot of building tops into the mix and you could create a golden triangle of sustainable urban production merging private, public and community. 

In the strictest sense, the phrase “community power” refers to a grassroots class of green energy projects that are 50 per cent or more owned and developed by those who live near them: residents, co-ops, not-for-profits, farmer groups, First Nations, mosques/churches, even municipalities themselves.

This ground-up structure is credited with entrenching renewable energy in Europe. (Over half of Denmark, Germany, Sweden and the UK’s combined wind capacity is community-owned.)

The people behind the pioneering for-profit WindShare co-op, namely the Toronto Renewable Energy Co-operative (TREC), are gearing up to get more co-ops in motion here now that the energy act boosts community ownership and makes it easier to form energy co-ops. Already, TREC’s developing SolarShare (a 250-kilowatt solar system planned for Toronto, with shares up for sale in the new year) and its LakeWind project, slated to be the first community-owned wind farm in North America, merging a farmers’ co-op on Lake Huron with urban investors to power 3,400 homes. 

TREC’s Our Power arm aims to mobilize small neighbourhoods to install solar panels. Residents can band together to get a better deal on panels and cash in on grid payouts.

The city itself is mapping out holistic neighbourhood energy plans that take major redevelopment projects to a whole new level. Toronto community energy planning guy Kirk Johnson says clusters of drafty old public and private apartments like those involved in the Mayor’s Tower Renewal are being overhauled for aggressive conservation, then connected with an array of district (aka on-site) renewable energy initiatives that could include wind, solar and geothermal, plus combined heating and power (aka cogeneration). 

Whatever form community energy takes, Jane Story of Ontario Sustainable Energy Association (OSEA) says this is no trickle-down economics. 

“If people own their own source of power, they don’t feel so infringed upon by outside developers,” says Story. “They actually benefit directly in jobs and in additional revenue for their community.” 

Unlike conventional energy systems, where at least 75 cents of each dollar leaves the local economy, Story says locally owned renewable projects generate up to 10 times the local economic benefit.

It doesn’t hurt matters that under the new FIT rules, community power projects can score a 1 cent per kilowatt “adder” just for being owned, at least in part, by the community, though the province has a different definition of this than do energy groups. Such projects can also cop $200,000 in development funds from the Community Energy Partnerships program.

Says TREC exec director Judy Lipp, “We are now in a better position to compete like private developers in the commercial sector to build community-owned energy projects like WindShare.” 

Still, Lipp’s concerned that community power will fall between the cracks. “This is a really immature sector. There’s huge potential, but you can’t just have one or two policies on the price alone.” 

Lipp says at this point they still can’t compete with the big boys when it comes to investment and debt financing or locking down a supply of turbines when everyone’s scrambling for limited local content.

“A challenge for the community power sector is making sure that local ownership actually means local benefit, as opposed to a large developer coming in and negotiating an unattractive deal for the sake of getting the adder,” Lipp says.

Others worry that the Green Energy Plan will mean hoisting more controversial transmission lines across the province to access scattered sources of wind and hydro. And let’s face it, they’re right: Hydro One has been ordered to get movin’ on expanding and strengthening transmission and distribution lines.

But that’s where community power can be a serious leg-up. If you build it locally and close to load (or close to those who use it), then you should actually reduce your need for large transmission lines. In fact, if we don’t hustle to get more local green power up and running, and pronto, Toronto will end up with more high-wire headaches.

In March, Energy Minister George Smitherman publicly stated that Toronto could avert plans to erect the dreaded East Toronto Transmission Line if we generate enough sustainable energy on our own turf. If we can’t conserve or create enough under the new Green Energy plan, well, the chances of being saddled with the $600 million lines carrying 700 megawatts of coursing power from Markham to the mouth of the Don River would spike dramatically.

Ultimately, every kilowatt we put into the grid is one less kilowatt that we draw from generators upstream. That means less nuclear power fuelling your laptop and desk lamp.

So can renewable power get Toronto off nukes for good? Well, Pembina’s Cherise Burda says we’d certainly preclude green energy from reaching its full potential if the province committed itself to pumping another $26 billion into a new nuclear reactor in Pickering, thus hogging our finite grid. 

“Pickering B is only 10 per cent of the electricity grid. Let’s save that 10 per cent of the grid for green energy” [above and beyond the 8 per cent green energy targets the province already had].

Burda adds that nukes can’t compete with community power when it comes to invigorating local economies, boosting conservation awareness and protecting the environment.

For that you need true people power. 

adriav@nowtoronto.com