05-08 Canada

Are we good guys or bad guys? Well, like China we are major producers of fossil fuels and major users of renewables.
There is wind power in windy PEI. And a biggie is biomass or wood chips as fuel for generating electricity. Thanks here to our pulp and paper industry. The biggest renewable, of course, is hydroelectric power. Few people would realize that close to 19% of the energy produced in Canada comes from renewables.
But the interesting stories going forward are all associated with PV solar energy. Here are a couple of Canadian stories which point to the kind of changes we will soon see everywhere.
Anyone travelling across Canada, will come across thousands of remote communities that get their electrical power from diesel generators. And shipping diesel fuel to these communities is expensive.
The remote community in British Columbia’s Nemiah valley is home to the Xeni Gwet’in First Nation. The photo gives you a sense of the beauty of this part of the world.
Well, the story is about adding solar panels in concert with the diesel generators to reduce fuel consumption. The solar provides energy during the daytime and the diesel generators kick in at night. Not easy to get the batteries you need for storing solar energy in those remote communities.
I have spoken in small towns that have as many as three diesel generators. And, in the future, these hybrid diesel/solar systems will reduce the number of generators to no more than one.
Another story is about a large real estate developer and property manager called Oxford Properties Group which is an arm of the Ontario Municipal Employee Retirement System or OMERS.
Well they are panning to install a million square feet of solar panels on the rooves of their real estate properties across North America.
The attached photo shows the solar panels on the roof top of the Yorkdale Shopping Center which they manage. It obviously is a good long-term investment because they are reducing the electrical charges to their clients by about 20%.
What is so interesting here is the obvious location of future commercial solar installations. It will be the rooves of shopping plazas, factories and office buildings. In all of these applications surplus energy is fed into the grid.
And another story is about the Canadian entrepreneurs and small businesses that are making their future around ongoing innovations in solar technology. Son-of-a-gun. If two of those solar installations I investigated in Mexico weren’t using Canadian solar panels.