In May 2009 Ontario passed the Ontario Green Energy Act. Yukon used to be a place that needed not others to show us the way. Famously as a response of being overrun and disrespected by the gold rush stampeders, in 1902 chief Jim Boss of the TA'AN KWÄCH'ÄN wrote to Indian Affairs in Ottawa, requiring that his complaint was to be passed on to the King. Chief Boss continued in starting negotiations to secure land for the TA'AN KWÄCH'ÄN in which to some extent he succeeded. The sense of self determination and self reliance that Jim Boss displayed, over time, has become mainstream Yukon culture and it is being frustrated by government blocking fair access to the effective use of solar energies (photo voltaic, solar heat, wind, geothermal).
The people of Ontario felt the Oil Shock of 1973 had happened long enough ago to learn from it, followed by too many years without initiative for energy security, energy sustainability and energy democracy. Ontarians had grown tired of ‘global thinking and local postponing’ in the fashion of Kyoto, Copenhagen, Al Gore etc. Civic action beyond the familiar technocratic self reference was needed, very strong popular support has been polled in Ontario.
In broad strokes the Ontario Green Energy Act follows the German model, introduced in 1999 where solar energies (wind, photovoltaic, geothermal) with over 15 % of total energy production have surpassed the nuclear ‘industry’ in megawatt production.
The four pillars in the Ontario Green Energy Act are:
- Guaranteed feed in access to the grid together with guaranteed feed in tariffs
- No cap on program size, no cap on project size
- Investment priority for solar/renewable over conventional energies
- Establishment of a fast charge point infrastructure threshold to enable the use of electrical cars, trucks and busses everywhere
Some of the common misconceptions are that first rate wind mapping, high sun light intensity and urban demographics are required for success. Germany has a second rate wind and sun potential and about one quarter of the population lives in cities with a population of over 100 000, three quarters in villages and small towns. All other industrialized countries including Canada have roughly a reversed ratio. The vast North of Ontario which is north and west of Northern Ontario, in landscape, climate and population density has some similarity to Yukon; except that Yukon has more favourable education levels and more cosmopolitan attitudes than the North of Ontario. The truth is effective solar energies are found everywhere, conventional energies come from few and fewer places requiring volatile, aggressive, global logistics that burn up the wealth of nations. With the Ontario Green Energy Act Ontario has found a brilliant answer to the pressing energy crisis, killing six birds with one stone. Ontario is simultaneously improving energy security (1) while reducing the carbon footprint as well as reducing vast hidden or externalized fossil fuel costs generated by health affecting emissions and inflated military spending (2) as well as bringing sound economic development with good jobs back to Ontario (3). A leveling of the playing field on the energy markets (4) as the oil and gas, coal and nuclear industries are heavily subsidized and favored through every regulation and framework possible and ones that are hard to imagine.
These oil, gas and nuclear subsidies are very unhealthy because they don’t nurture a worthwhile fledgling industry in the way China supports infant industries which is equal
to economic development of the West in the 19th century and until post WW2. These subsidies exist on the down leg of the nuclear, oil and gas trajectory. No sustained growth prospects, no perspectives, hardly any new jobs come from there.
The by Harper proposed Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) between Canada and the European Union, possibly to be ratified in 2011, defines legislation that stimulates regional energy independence as an illegitimate investment obstacle for European investors; at this point Ontario has beat CETA to the punch (5).
Well known trade lawyer Steven Shrybman came up with a legal opinion to that end based on a leaked CETA draft. ‘Free’ trade agreement enforcement action with justice asleep against democratic legislation becomes less and less feasible in a scenery of globalization in retreat (In a similar context in the fall of 2007 my Trade Investment Labour Mobility Agreement, TILMA, assessment was proven right. Soon after I published the precise argument that TILMA has no benefits and that it promotes frivolous litigation profiteering the very point was used by the Yukon Party government in the rejection of TILMA).
More and more decentralized green energy generation, especially with a strong tie in to transportation where currently oil based fuels supply over 98% of global transportation energy, takes the pressure out of the speculative Oil Futures exchange (6). Oil Futures derivatives trade had contributed significantly to the global financial melt down by having sold oil that didn’t exist when the cash out crunch came in 2008.
There is a seventh bonus for Yukon over the six Ontario benefits.
The already proven entrepreneurial development stimulus of democratic, not corporatist driven, not conventional energy expert advised, green energy legislation will especially serve Yukon well on a path that will see smaller federal transfers down the road.
An economic weakness of Yukon, long transportation links, extreme dependence even by Canadian standards to world record levels of conventional energy supplies can be overcome by the economic engine of renewable energies. Nothing works without energy, nowhere more true than here and its cold and remote enough for people to know it. In aviation perhaps for a couple of generations, for some of the heavy equipment needs for many years still, oil based liquid fuels will be indispensable. That means as much of liquid fuels as possible need to be freed up on the road, especially on the road where in China for example electrification brings the cost of doing business down, and in home heating and in diesel generator use. There is heavy industrial lifting involved, it can only be done with years of careful preparation ahead of coming fuel shortages which are already felt in the global crude market, crippling the developing countries. Dirty Tar Sands mining, expensive deep sea drilling without crude shortage? If anybody needs more proof for the tightening of oil supplies, check the OECD’s International Energy Agency data. As a growing trend and by an increasing number of crude exporting countries the U.S. dollar is currently being de-linked from its universal petrodollar status. It started with Iran which by the end of 2007 accepted mainly Euros for crude shipments but no dollars at all anymore, the exclusive petrodollar bonus evaporates quickly now. In extension this also means that Canadian crude buying power is shrinking which affects our mid range ability to continue with existing Canadian crude import levels, namely from Venezuela and the Middle East. Furthermore Canada, different to all other OECD countries including the US, is the only country that has no energy security legislation and energy contingency planning; if in doubt check with the internationally respected energy security experts in the Parkland Institute from the University of Alberta.
Yes, nothing works without energy, energy security responsibility as well as energy ecology concerns have firmly arrived on the territorial/provincial level.
However, in a variety of elections to come, those who have obfuscated and frustrated with inaction and ignorance the energy aware electorate will pay a price.
The upcoming mid-term election thrashing for Obama will deliver a stern warning to the status quo experts among the Neo-Liberals and Neo-Democrats in Canada. They think they can slide through with platforms synchronized to Harper ‘light’ ideas on the ‘lesser evil’ wagon. Are synchronized politics an all party-one party totalitarian trend or just elitist reflex? The lesser evil mobilization plan has finally run its course while its technocratic calculation misses a point of Shakespearean value. Late neuroscience came up with the sobering discovery that an entire third of the human brain is solely dedicated to imagine and handle conflict and aggression. However painful, its enormous capacity can manage or absorb to cede territory to the political ‘foe’. But a slight against human solidarity, the prostitution of values, of reciprocity of integrity towards party memberships and electorate, the awakening to deceit and ultimately to treason against the community is what short-circuits the evolutionary proven mind. After the poison has burned through the veins, averting more pain and more insult, and fleeing more betrayal of commitment trumps even the suffering of open defeat. Its all black grief then, a zero (green) energy no-go to the polls.
That is how the citizen’s participation goes down and neocon dictators are elected by small percentages of votes.
No comments:
Post a Comment