New federal funding for cutting greenhouse gases under the Kyoto accord is a small first step but won’t expand “green” energy use such as wind, small-hydro and solar power, say Alberta’s renewable energy developers.
Environmentalists also welcomed the $1.3 billion in funding announced last week, but say Ottawa is moving at a snail’s pace on implementing Kyoto and quickly needs new regulations to limit greenhouse gas emissions for large industries.
“These are good first steps. But, boy, they’re pretty small first steps,” said John Keating, CEO of Canadian Hydro Developers Inc. of Calgary, whose projects include small hydro, wind and biomass power.
Keating called it “ridiculous” that Ottawa didn’t allocate specific funding to expand development of renewable energy sources. “The components for renewables really weren’t very meaningful,” he said.
The federal funding includes $100 million for Canada’s fledgling ethanol industry to boost production of the clean-burning gasoline additive.
But environmentalists who support using ethanol say even if its use was mandated across the country, it would cut less than three million tonnes of the 240 million tonnes of greenhouse gases that Canada must reduce under Kyoto by 2008-2012.
Ottawa could have gotten a bigger emissions-reduction bang for its buck by offering financial incentives to increase use of public transit and improve vehicle fuel efficiency, says Matthew Bramley, director, climate change, for the Alberta-based Pembina Institute for Appropriate Development.
The federal government is providing $115 million to develop cleaner fossil fuels, yet there’s no specific funding for renewable energies, especially wind-generated electricity, he noted.
An existing federal tax incentive for wind power producers “is really not good enough when you think that Canada continues to lag considerably behind the U.S. in terms of the level of government support for wind power,” Bramley said.
Federal climate change plan objectives, to develop 1,000 megawatts of new wind power by 2007 when only 100 MW exist now in the country, “are in danger,” says Robert Hornung, executive director of the Canadian Wind Energy Association.
Support for wind energy from the federal and provincial governments “remains ad-hoc and unco-ordinated,” Hornung said.
Michael Carten, president and CEO of Sustainable Energy Technologies Ltd., says he’s pleased Ottawa is “going in the right direction” in providing funding to develop new energy efficient technologies.
The Calgary company has developed commercial power-inverter technology that converts DC power to usable AC electricity in solar and fuel-cell systems.
Ottawa’s funding includes $130 million to accelerate development and commercialization of fuel-cell technologies, and $30 million for demonstration projects in decentralized, community-based energy production.
Carten said he’s concerned, based on how Ottawa has allocated similar incentive-based funding in the past, that the government will be swayed by political concerns and support a handful of companies in Quebec, British Columbia and Ontario, while ignoring Alberta firms.
Bramley said the missing piece in the Kyoto plan remains new regulations that impose a mandatory cap on greenhouse gases from large industries.
