OTTAWA — A recently released report from the University of Ottawa said that Ontario’s approach to wind energy provoked a “gold-rush” mentality amongst companies and rural Ontario was ignored.
Ontario’s Green Energy Act, introduced in 2009, is the culprit, the study alleges.
The professor who headed the study, Stewart Fast, told the Ottawa Sun that “there was a sense that the quicker you got in your proposal for the FIT (Feed-In-Tarrif, which gave premium prices for solar and wind energy) contract, the better chance you had.”
Municipalities couldn’t always tell how many turbines were coming because the process encouraged residents to keep their contracts a secret from their neighbours who had suddenly become competition.
“As it currently stands, Ontario’s renewable energy policy framework ignores these complex questions of identity and the question of whether or not turbines will fit into communities,” said Fast.
