The idea behind the standard offer was to encourage local communities to put together ten megawatt projects. The OPA provides small electricity generators (from residential photovoltaic rooftop generation of one kilowatt up to small wind farms of ten megawatts) with a standard pricing regime. John Kourtoff, president of Toronto’s Trillium Power Wind Corporation says, “The SOP is very good, but it’s been abused by the industry. It was meant for community power, but developers chopped big projects up into smaller, ten megawatt parcels.”
Why should the people of Harrow and Essex County have to put up with blatant abuse of taxpayer dollars? Mike Crawley and AIM Powergent have used and abused the Standard Offer Program, thus pushing the smaller investor aside by piecemealing 4 projects into one in order to obtain the premium government sponsored subsidy. A SUBSIDY THAT WAS NOT MEANT FOR THEM AND THEIR PARENT UK CORPORATION. This little deal will give AIM literally millions of undeserved dollars over the life of the contract. THIS IS YOUR MONEY, FOLKS!!
We demand that this contract be terminated immediately.
Filed under: Liberal Energy Policy, Liberal Party, Ministry of Environment, Ontario Government, Ontario Wind Farms, Problems Wind Energy, Renewable energy, Truth about wind, Wind farms, environmental fraud, greenwashing, rural communities, wind turbines
This outcome was quite an unfortunate one. That being said, there simply must be some accountability leveled on those highly paid consultants that were used to formulate this proposal along with the government organization(s) that ultimatley pushed this short sighted program through. I have to believe that this approach has been tried and properly executed in European based regions of the world. It is also quite interesting that it was a European (UK) based company that was the one that capitalized on this gigantic blunder. The whole thing has the smell of some potential back room deals of trans-atlantic proportions the way I see it. Regardless of my previous theory on how this may have transpired, I have only one question….what can be done now to reverse this mistake?
You are not alone in Harrow and Essex. This abuse has happened all across Ontario not to mention Canada. What “was” a good idea at the time by politicians and using “lofty” green language, they unleashed a virtual feeding frenzy of developers trying to grab every dollar that was to be alloted to Joe Q. Public by using the 10 megawatt limit to justify a huge 400 foot tower that would “qualify” legally to meet the 10 meg restriction. Instead of many small wind projects that would actually allow landowners to conserve” electricity use, these monster wind turbines cannot even feed into the present day grid system that exists at present. As with any other project that is initiated by a Government Agency politicians get involved and it literally “implodes” under the heavy involvement with the “old boys clubs” that circle the money offered up from the taxpayers coffers all in the name of “progress”. Hopefully this has reached the “breaking point” and the citizens of Ontario will band together and stop what I call the most “destructive project” that has ever been implemented in our Country.
To Joel, what can be done now? make your MPP aware that you are aware. Write to your local papers. Send a letter Mr. Guinty. Insist on an answer. Send a letter to Min. of Ont. Energy Board. Send a letter to OPA. The message has to get out somehow. Politicians only respond to numbers and that also means a large number of people all have to do their part, then it will happen. It’s just too easy to discount the concerns of a few. Politicians will address issues only when they know that a significant number of people are involved.