Going solar: light a fire under government
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THE STORY so far: There’s big potential in solar energy, in terms of jobs as well as energy. This has been shown in Germany and Spain in particular, but in a cascading number of other places that are getting quickly onside. Worldwide, it’s big business.
In Nova Scotia – as in Canada generally – we’re way behind, but public interest is surging as a result of high oil prices. Suddenly, it’s one of the logical ways to the future.
What should be done in terms of public policy to guide it forward? The question is pressing because the province is due to come up with a new energy policy in the fall.
I put the question to a few people who got into alternative energy after the oil shocks of the 1970s and have spent their adult lives wandering the desert of official energy policy, but certain that they would be proven right someday. Now, grizzled with wisdom, they find themselves vindicated. What do they say?
One of these is Neal Livingston, owner of a small hydro plant in Guysborough County, who’s involved in a wind power company, has had solar on his house for decades, and has been in the thick of energy policy debates for as long.
He proposes a "crash program" of putting solar panels on homes and other buildings for heating and hot water, driven by grants, tax rebates and other incentives.
The program would have a specific policy objective: To shut down a coal-fired plant. It would also have a social aim: to distribute the economic benefits widely, as opposed to having them accrue to the shareholders of the power company. It would also require the training of a workforce.
Livingston foresees this taking five years. After that, the trained workforce would be given a new objective: to start on a program of installing photovoltaic (PV) panels – that make electricity, which is where the real boom is now worldwide.
It might be expensive, but the benefits would be huge – in savings on imported coal and oil, in personal savings on energy bills in the long run, in creating jobs and local businesses, and in lowering carbon emissions, just as they’ve done in the leading jurisdictions.
As for initiating it, he says, it should be a societal priority – like establishing electric power to begin with, or the telephone, television, or the Internet. Sounds like a plan to me.
At the nuts and bolts level, Don Roscoe has some advice. He’s more or less the main guy at Solar Nova Scotia, an informal grouping of some 20 businesses and 120 other members that gathers information and spreads the word on solar energy.
"There’s so little information about solar that people don’t even know how to ask questions,"he says.
But there are questions – lots of them all of sudden – and Solar NS., run out of Roscoe’s house near Peggy’s Cove, is overwhelmed.
Their website is the main place to find out who’s who and what’s what in solar energy services in Nova Scotia, and they intend to upgrade it and hire someone to take inquiries on short order.
They’re also linked to The Ecology Action Centre, another source of information. The question for the government task force: Why isn’t Conserve Nova Scotia, the government agency, more upfront in all this?
There’s also, even now, a skills shortage in installing solar, says Roscoe. The community colleges have established nationwide standards, but the courses are slow in coming. Another angle for the task force.
Roscoe even has worries about too much enthusiasm when there’s still too little information.
Some people are getting the idea that
"you can put a gizzie on your roof and solve all your problems,"he says, which is why there’s a need for information, expertise, guidance and infrastructure – fast.
Beyond all this, there’s also a big-picture issue. Wherever solar and other alternatives, but solar in particular, have thrived has been where they have "feed-in" laws.
In this system, the power utility is required to buy electricity from anyone who produces it at a fixed, long-term price, giving people incentive to power their own homes, businesses, municipalities and whatnot and sell the excess power. Ontario has just gone into it.
Here, Nova Scotia Power selects what projects it wants, and calls for bids. Also, it allows you to set up your own on-grid power system at home or business to reduce your own usage, but whatever excess you produce, NSP takes for free, unless you’re fairly big and have a negotiated contract with them.
Wherever this command-and-control system has prevailed, it has come out second-best to feed-in laws.
Notably, low-bidders often tend to not be able to deliver. "This is just set up to feed the shareholders," says Roscoe.
"It’s rigged to fail. Government has got to grow some
balls here."
Ralph Surette is a veteran freelance journalist living in Yarmouth County.
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