Acting Green

Last July, when I asked the Canadian Wind Energy Association’s VP of Policy Sean Whittaker about barriers to wind development, he didn’t mention legislation. “Transmission is the issue,” he said. That hasn’t changed. But a few other things might.

If Bill 150-or as it’s more affectionately known, the Green Energy and Green Economy Act (GEA)-passes, then renewable energy approvals would allow green energy projects to be built regardless of zoning and building code restrictions, subject to provincial regulations on setbacks. At least that’s the idea.

“In principle, it’s a real opportunity for new renewable generation and the transmission required to get that energy online,” says Valerie Helbronner with Torys LLP.

In principle. But in order to deliver cleaner, economically viable energy production, the GEA has to be well mapped out, and the Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure (MEI) still hasn’t hashed out all the details. At a Canadian Urban Institute (CUI) session on March 26, Deputy Minister with the MEI, Saäd Rafi, was asked how land-use planning fits into to the new legislation. He said, “We’re looking to do away with the zone designation. It’s part of the commitment to having a working feed-in tariff.” In other words, that’s an area they have yet to consider.

The Ministry is taking meetings with associations and developers and plans to create a Renewable Energy Facilitation Office to build an effective Act.

Helbronner says, “One of the biggest issues is making all the consultation processes work in parallel under a tight timeline.” Bill 150 is in committee hearings already; it’s going to its third reading in May and to force of law by June. Before then, it has to be reviewed by the Ministry of Environment, Ministry of Natural Resources, Ontario Power Authority (OPA), Hydro One and other distributors, not to mention consultations with multiple stakeholders and the public.

To further complicate the process, Helbronner points out one noticeable absence in the queue of consultants: the Ontario Energy Board (OEB). “As an independent regulator it has an impossible role to play,” she says.”It has to specify transmission.” According to the Ontario Sustainable Energy Association, it will cost $60 billion to expand and reinforce the Ontario grid and bring on new generation. Someone needs to work out who is building these new lines and, more importantly, who is going to pay for them.

Once that’s decided, developers will still need to consult with aboriginal communities, as stipulated in Bill 150. “The principle behind it is really important, but I’d like to know where aboriginal consultation fits into the streamlining process,” says Helbronner.

While this legislation may move forward with more than a few questions unanswered, at least one thing is clear: the intention is to improve on the Renewable Energy Standard Offer Program (RESOP) launched two years ago. The GEA would do away with RESOP’s size limit of ten megawatts, give green projects priority connection to the grid and a feed-in tariff that eliminates some of the issues that, at a practical level, were a major barrier to new projects.

John Kourtoff, whose company Trillium Power Wind Corporation is looking to develop offshore wind, calls this new legislation “transformational.” In Germany, advanced or differential tariffs like the one proposed in the GEA encouraged people across the country to participate in the renewable energy sector because they were assured a reasonable return on investment (ROI).

It also promoted the decentralization of power generation, something the industry would like to see the MEI address. At that CUI session, Rafi was asked how distributed energy fits into the plan and he said, “[The GEA] is not intended to exclude it.” During a later presentation, the Canadian District Energy Association’s Bruce Ander said, “We should do a lot more than not exclude it. It should be strategically incorporated as a tool to support renewable energy generated through the GEA.”

But the GEA doesn’t deal directly with grid modernization; it only lays the groundwork. Bernadette Corpuz, with Gowlings’ National Energy and Infrastructure Industry Group, says smart grid “is not one of the GEA’s major tenets, but it’s critical.”

The act does allow for local distribution companies (LDCs) to pursue their own renewable and Combined Heat and Power (CHP) projects as long as they’re under ten megawatts. These projects are expensive, and the new legislation can’t change that. But it can at least free LDCs from provincial and federal constraints and get them a better ROI by raising the base rate offered by the OPA.

Anders says the MEI should instruct the OPA to release the new clean energy Standard Offer Program it’s working on as soon as possible. “It wouldn’t interfere with the GEA or feed-in tariff program.”

On the other hand, rush the process-any more than it already has been-as the industry will end up facing the same practical issues it did with RESOP. In response to the crowd’s request for details, Rafi said, “This is not an overnight effort.”