Nova Scotia wind farms a lesson for BC

As an advocate for clean energy, I saw a beautiful sight the other day. As I traveled down Highway 104 through Pictou County, Nova Scotia, high on a hill outside New Glasgow two dozen 80 metre wind turbines were spinning slowly in the chilly January wind.

I have traveled this stretch of highway many times in my life, and seeing the wind turbines on the horizon for the first time is a clear indication that the energy future has certainly arrived in this small Maritime province, and the newly elected NDP government is not wasting any time seizing upon this future.

The 51 MW Dalhousie Mountain Wind Energy Project was registered for an environmental assessment by the local proponents RMSenergy Ltd. in August 2008 and by the end of 2009 was producing energy to the Nova Scotia transmission grid and powering more than 15,000 homes. This is, I believe, a remarkable accomplishment, and the result of a government obviously insistent on making a dent in the province’s massive consumption of dirty coal and natural gas for energy.

Like BC Hydro’s Clean Energy Call, the Dalhousie Mountain project is a result of a Request for Proposals from NS Power Corp. more than two years ago. RMSenergy’s proposal was one of three projects that won out over 100 other proposals for a variety of clean energy projects. But unlike British Columbia, speed and timeliness appears to be of the essence in Nova Scotia. The crown power corporation is not being dragged to the clean energy dance – they’re already twirling around the dance floor. Once engineering plans were finalized and financing secured, the Dalhousie Mtn. proposal was submitted to government for environmental assessment in August 2008 and approved a month later after an open consultation process and community and environmental group support. The final purchase agreement with NS Power contained a $25,000/MW penalty if power was not being supplied to the grid by the end of November 2009, which the Dalhousie Mountain proponents avoided. Unfortunately two other Nova Scotia wind projects with approvals in hand missed that deadline. The companies involved blame it on the downturn in the economy. (One of them, coincidentally, was owned by EarthFirst Canada Inc., which also sold its BC Dokie Wind Farm project to the Plutonic Power/GE partnership.)

In Nova Scotia there is an accelerated push for clean, renewable energy supplies. Both the previous Conservative government and the current NDP administration are determined to reduce the province’s dependency on fossil fuels, and produce 25% of the provinces’ electricity from renewable sources by 2015. This is a far cry from BC’s goal of 100% electricity self-sufficiency by 2016, but it must be realized that NS doesn’t have the huge dams or thousands of rivers that BC can currently draw from.

What is impressive is the obvious commitment of politicians, communities, environmental groups and business people to work together to accomplish goals. With NS Power, the process is more streamlined, and you hear few complaints about the provincial government working hand in hand with their “buddies” in the corporate world, as you constantly hear from anti-development contrarians in British Columbia these days. There is a push from NS environmentalists to move away from the current RFP system and adopt the “feed-in-tariff” model differentiated by technology type, size and resource quality which is now in place in Ontario. The hope is this model will quickly open up the province to even more clean energy projects.

There is good incentive in NS to switch over to clean energy. Coal and natural gas are the dominant energy source for electricity, while many residential homes are heated with oil burning furnaces. Change was promised to New Scotland, and from the look of the turbines spinning on the New Glasgow hilltop, that change is finally arriving.

MC