Wind Concerns Ontario Jane Wilson says rural Ottawa residents don’t want 700 wind turbines erected and need to voice their concerns.
Patrick Meagher
Farmers Forum
OTTAWA — Ottawa is one of the world’s largest rural cities with about 1,200 farms and thousands of acres of cropland and pasture. In fact, 90 per cent of the city’s space is countryside encouraging the city to come up with a unique official plan for green energy that might make a grown man cry.
While residents were locked down during COVID restrictions, the city of Ottawa’s councillors passed a climate change master plan in 2021 to move away from natural gas and electricity and power the nation’s capital solely with solar panels and wind turbines by 2050. The plan would include erecting 700 wind turbines in rural Ottawa (formerly Carleton County) and adjacent municipalities and 36 sq. kilometres of solar panels, many of which would go on rooftops.
“It’s unimaginable,” said Wind Concerns Ontario’s Jane Wilson, “It would industrialize the rural areas and it doesn’t work. (Wind power) is intermittent. This is so serious. There was no engagement of the people.”
The city says otherwise. To get feedback, the city threw an opinion on its website. Eight people responded, Wilson said.
While plans so far-reaching in time often don’t materialize, the Energy Evolution report is repeatedly referenced in current plans. With hoped-for financial assistance from the federal government and the province, the city has approved $57 billion to implement its plans. That’s more than 10 times Ottawa’s annual city budget.
City of Ottawa manager or strategic projects, Andrea Flowers, told Farmers Forum by email that funding these plans have not been approved in the budget.
“The City of Ottawa has not budgeted or planned on spending this figure,” she said. “As outlined in the City’s Energy Evolution Transition Strategy report (page 7), a community-wide financial analysis was undertaken to analyze Energy Evolution actions that have financial impacts. The analysis does not commit the City of Ottawa or any partners to any financial decision or provide direction on how to address funding gaps. This dollar amount represents a long-term estimate of how much might have to be spent by all levels of government, private and public organizations and private individuals combined in order to achieve the Energy Evolution targets, accounting for 30 years of inflation and cost-of-living increases, by 2050.”
Wilson also said that the city plans to install 122 shipping-container-sized lithium batteries in the countryside. But Flowers told Farmers Forum by email that “The City of Ottawa does not have plans to install any batteries of this sort or size anywhere, nor does any request to do so exist.”
Flowers did not refute that an idea had been floated to restrict vehicle traffic by charging $20 to drive downtown.
Referring to wind turbines, Flowers added that the “Large-scale provincially-regulated wind turbines are not permitted on lands designated as an Agricultural Resource Area, which contain Ottawa’s prime agricultural lands protected under provincial policy.”
She added: “At this time, the city does not have a plan to build any wind turbines on Ottawa farmland.”
As the city prepares for global warming, based on guess-work from unreliable climate models that have to-date not been able to predict future temperature, the city is all-in to cripple current energy usage with an incredibly expensive plan to replace safe, reliable and cheap energy. Said Flowers: “Through the city’s Climate Change Master Plan, council approved the final report for Energy Evolution in October 2021, which is the City’s strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 100 per cent by 2050.”
Wind Concerns Ontario says the future plan is popular in the city but wildly unpopular in rural Ottawa and the interest group launched a petition last month asking for a two-kilometre wind turbine setback from a home and between turbines. The organization noted that today’s turbines are huge, equivalent in height to a 60-storey building.
Wilson noted that prior to last October’s municipal election, the plan for 700 wind turbines came up at an all-candidates meeting and all councilors representing rural areas promised to fight it. “It’s recognized that this is not very popular. A gentleman told me, ‘the minute there is a map, everyone’s hair is going to catch on fire.’”
Wilson noted that wind turbines change a community, pitting residents against each other. When you erect a wind turbine your neighbours “hate you,” she said, adding that she has heard that some property owners with wind turbines have lamented that it was not worth up to the $15,000 a year in revenue and have found it too difficult to get out of a contract.
“With the degree of public resistance I don’t see 700 wind turbines coming, honestly,” Wilson said. “But that is still the city’s plan and people need to be aware of it and to let the city know what their feelings are.”
She added that most people she knows in rural Ottawa don’t see a crisis when they think of climate change. They see the weather. It changes, so you adapt, she said, adding that long-term warmer weather has great benefits to the farm community.
Rural Ottawa dwellers can also have their say be responding online to the zoning bylaw review rural discussion paper survey. There are only nine questions: Two ask you to define your gender. Three questions refer to your cultural heritage.
