Conservatives ground green energy plan

Scott Simpson
Vancouver Sun
January 28, 2009

Funding for renewable power projects -- and jobs they create -- missing from economic stimulus budget

Green energy proponents were disappointed by the federal government's decision to exclude renewable power from a $40-billion economic stimulus package announced in Tuesday's budget.

The budget introduced in Ottawa by Finance Minister Jim Flaherty includes $1 billion in new funding for green technology, including carbon capture and storage projects aimed at grappling with climate change.

However, the Conservatives spurned calls by environmental groups and independent power producers to enrich the enormously successful ecoEnergy for Renewable Power program.

Response to the program has been so positive since its introduction in November 2007 that all the $1.5 billion originally offered has been committed, even though the program was supposed to run through 2012.

It provides green-energy developers a one-cent-per-kilowatt subsidy on their projects, less than similar subsidies available in the United States and Europe, but enough to trigger a boom in renewable power development in Canada.

More than 250 wind, small-hydro and other green power projects in B.C. and around Canada have tapped into the program, and last November the Canadian Wind Energy Association called on the Tories to give it another infusion of cash.

CanWEA said in a news release that its proposal would have cost the federal treasury $600 million, and leveraged over $6 billion in new private sector investment into the Canadian economy while creating 8,000 new jobs.

It also would have helped the Tories reach their throne speech commitment of providing 90 per cent of Canadian electricity needs from renewable power sources by the year 2020, CanWEA president Robert Hornung said in the release.

Dale Marshall, a climate change policy analyst with David Suzuki Foundation, said the omission was "unbelievable."

"In the throne speech they were talking about the jobs of tomorrow. If clean energy isn't part of the jobs of tomorrow, I don't know what is," Marshall said in a telephone interview.

"[President Barack] Obama just renewed the U.S. program for three years. In Canada, we have a program coming to a stop.

"If you can't find money in $40-billion stimulus for the energy source of the future, it's anti-environmental. Instead, they talk about carbon capture and storage. It's a single-minded focus on technologies that aren't green technologies."

"It's disappointing, but it doesn't really change our world much," Independent Power Producers Association of B.C. president Steve Davis said in an interview. "We bid to BC Hydro and. as long it's a level playing field, it's nice to have business."

However, Davis is hoping the Tories will have a change of heart, since projects that can't tap into the funds will be less competitive with those that received the money. "If the money ebbs and flows, people need to build that into their price."

ssimpson@vancouversun.com