Imagine how rich you’d be if you lived near Pincher Creek and knew how to snare the wind. What if you could spin it into gold?
An inexhaustible natural resource, wind comes screaming down from the Crowsnest Pass, like some indomitable, unseen Mississippi.?
But where is the magician with the skill to capture it??
Hint: Don’t bother looking under “shamans” in the Yellow Pages.?
Big companies have noticed that the cost? of creating wind-generated power has dwindled? Photo by Canadian Hydro Developers Inc.? John Keating, president of Canadian Hydro Developers Inc., isn’t the Windspeaker type. He’s a chartered accountant with an enduring respect for the bottom line, and you’ll find him seated behind a neat, broad desk on 5th Avenue S.W. ?
Keating and his people are catching the wind. Better, they’re starting to make it pay. They proved it in late September, by closing a three-year deal with Shell Canada Ltd., to sell the oilpatch giant all the electricity generated by three 375-kilowatt wind turbines.?
Is this significant? Quite — particularly in a symbolic sense. The sale was the first of its kind for the 10-year-old firm, founded by Keating, his brother Ross, and a third partner, since retired.?
In Keating’s words: “Shell’s a progressive company, looking to the future. They realize to continue in tarsand development, sour gas processing, all those things, may create emission liabilities in the future.”?
That’s the sweet thing about wind. It doesn’t assault the environment. Instead, it gives it a tender peck on the cheek. Same applies to the low-impact, run-of-river hydro plants, which represent the bulk — nine plants out of 11 — of Canadian Hydro’s assets.?
The Shell deal says that, for the first time since Don Quixote tethered his horse in the barn, high-tech windmills are coming into their own.?
It says the Big Guys have noticed the cost of creating wind-generated power has dwindled, from 20 cents per kilowatt hour in 1990, down to seven cents today. Meanwhile, the price of natural gas has doubled in the past year, with the cost of electricity obediently tagging along. Do the math.?
As of Sept. 30, the average spot-market price for Alberta power was a bit more than 10 cents a kilowatt hour, three cents more expensive than wind. So a stiff breeze makes economic sense — this year. But the average 1999 price of conventional power sources was 4.3 cents. So Keating and Co. will proceed with enthusiasm, tempered with clear-eyed caution.?
“Once we gain the confidence that there has been a paradigm shift, and that higher energy prices are here to stay, we’ll have the confidence to go into wind energy on a much larger scale,” said Keating, originally from Medicine Hat. According to company lore, the outfit was born after Ross — an electrical engineer, with long service in the oilpatch — visited a Vermont giftshop, and checked out its basement power source.?
It was a water wheel. A light dawned behind the eyes of Ross Keating, now the firm’s senior vice-president.?
“Hydroelectric power has always been profitable. We applied the principle on a scaled-down version to the (southwestern Alberta) irrigation system, and wild rivers, capturing water as it flows, rather than create a big dam,” said John. Project One was a new, $3-million run-of-the-river plant on the Belly River. “And we’ve had a positive cash flow from day one,” Keating said.?
Last year, they branched into wind, acquiring the Cowley Ridge plant near Pincher Creek, then expanded it last summer, adding five 80-foot turbines. Ten of Canadian Hydro’s 11 power plants have earned the feds’ seal of approval, carrying the EcoLogo symbol.?
Never shy about plugging the product, Keating insists the firm — somewhere below the $2 mark on the TSE — is undervalued by the market.?
But the cash flows steadily, and the Keating boys are doing the right thing environmentally.?
Don Quixote would be pleased.
