Alternative Energy

The demand for alternative energy in North America is growing - and Ontario is in a prime position to meet that demand, given its establishment of North America's first comprehensive Feed-In Tariff Program for energy generated from renewable sources. This combined with Ontario's strategic location in North America, long-term government support for alternative energy generation and advanced and diverse manufacturing capabilities, position Ontario as a preferred location for manufacturers of sustainable, alternative energy technologies and related components, service providers and project developers.

Video: A Rising Power

Transcription:

OPENING GFX TITLE
A RISING POWER Music up

NARRATOR:
It's a bold promise with a bold goal – to make Ontario the North American leader in renewable energy, and a world leader in green power technology.  
That means developing, encouraging and growing the full range of renewable energy sources... like wind power...... solar energy....hydro electricity..... biomass and biogas…
Is it possible?  And why Ontario?

SUPER : Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario

NARRATOR:
Well, some of the answers are already arriving.

SUPER: JOE SICOLY:
Project Manager, Prince Wind Farm

This farm has 126 turbines. They are 80-metre turbines to the top of the nacelle, and the blades are tip to tip 77 metres high.
This project can produce enough electricity annually to supply 60,000 homes with power.

NARRATOR:
The numbers are starting to add up:  Less than ten years ago, there were just ten wind turbines in the province.  And now there are well over seven hundred.   (1)

SUPER: Sarnia, Ontario

Ultimately, the plan is to create the largest cluster of wind and solar companies in the world.  And similar progress is being made in capturing the power of the sun.

SUPER: ROBERT REID:
President, N-Sci Technologies, Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario

There's approximately 50,000 panels and about 80 acres of land that's being used.  
 
NARRATOR:
Solar farms are now harvesting the sun's power in sites big and small across the province.  This growth in wind and solar power generation is being driven, in part, by Ontario's Green Energy Act. 
This ground breaking legislation, guarantees renewable energy suppliers specific rates for the power they supply.

SUPER: Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario

This spirit of innovation and the lure of the opportunity opening up in Ontario, is attracting global attention.

SUPER: MARTIN POCHTARUK:
President, Heliene Canada

We're a Spanish manufacturer of solar panels that has come to Ontario. 
Basically we're going to be making photovoltaic models. This is an electrical component that transforms light into electricity.

NARRATOR:
Heliene is not alone, some of the world's biggest solar and wind power companies are following them to Ontario:  Siemens, Vestas , GE and Samsung to name a few.

SUPER: Toronto, Ontario

SUPER: JOHN PAUL MORGAN
President and Chief Technical Officer, Morgan Solar

Our goal is to revolutionize solar power production to bring its costs down so that they are not only competitive with traditional generation, but that it in fact is less expensive than traditional generation. A lot of the developing world, a lot of the new economies that are coming online have tremendous power needs, and traditional generation is too expensive to meet those needs. So we're looking to introduce a new way of generating electricity through solar electricity, which is less expensive, which is more cost effective.

NARRATOR:
Morgan's passion for cost effective solar power is fueled by his experience as a volunteer for Doctors Without Borders.

John Paul Morgan continued:

I was stationed in the Congo. I guess I came to believe that electricity was as fundamental a human right as access to clean water, as personal security.  That without access to that tremendous power you were denying people the right to live in the modern world.  I felt that that was an injustice and so I guess we wanted to find a way to try to address that. The World Bank estimates that for every 1% increase in electricity production in a country, you have a 3% increase in GDP. So there's a very direct driver there between quality of life and access to power.

NARRATOR:
Solar power, wind power, hydroelectric power and, in Ontario you can add garbage power to that promising list.

SUPER: Sault St. Marie, Ontario

TREVOR SAWCHYN:
Director of Operations, Elementa Group

The garbage you see behind me is processed in the Elementa process and turns into this and a useable synthetic gas that has real heat and energy value and a small amount of waste.
The gas has many different off uses.  This gas can be used to power turbines for electricity, it can be used as process gas to replace natural gas.
The Elementa process is really an alternative to landfills. It's an additional diversion for landfills. Municipalities around the world have garbage problems. They don't know what to do with the garbage.

NARRATOR:
Bio gas production does have one unfortunate by-product drawback, but here too a made-in-Ontario solution is being developed.

SUPER: Pickering, Ontario

ROCKY SIMMONS:
President & CEO Eco-Tec, Pickering, Ontario
 
When you produce this biogas, the biogas is contaminated with hydrogen sulphide. It's that rotten egg smell. Hydrogen sulphide is corrosive, and also is ha... is a hazardous material. So it must be removed before the biogas can be used for fuel, for energy usage. And so what we have is we have technology that came from the University of Toronto, and we are basically moving this worldwide on removal of the hydrogen sulphide from the biogas so it can be used as a fuel.

NARRATOR:
Once the hydrogen sulphide is removed, methane is a clean burning gas that can be harvested from landfills and organic waste.

SUPER: Orangeville, Ontario

NARRATOR:
But developing a renewable source of hydrogen, perhaps the cleanest fuel of all, is a tougher technological challenge.  But one Ontario company has met that challenge, and the source they've unlocked may seem surprising - ordinary sewer water.

ANGELLA HUGHES:
President & CEO, Xogen Technologies

It's an electrolytic technology to treat raw sewage. And what's significant about that is the technology generates hydrogen and oxygen gas as it's operating,. which has benefit either as a source of energy for the plant or we can sell as an industrial gas. 
So we're seeing a lot of interest in the technology from outside of Canada. An example would be Brazil. At the present time they're only treating about 25% of their wastewater in the developed south. So these are very attractive to counties such as Brazil.

SUPER: Toronto, Ontario

NARRATOR:
Deep beneath the waves of Lake Ontario lies one of the more innovative and astonishing sources of green energy in the world.

ANDREW WILCOX:
Manager, Business Development, Enwave Energy

Deep Lake Water Cooling is actually a fairly simple process. Toronto Water draws water in from the lake, as they normally would for consumption - for chlorination and filtration for consumption throughout the city, the homes and offices - Enwave borrows that drinking water before it makes its way out to the city and uses that to air condition a number of the buildings in Toronto's downtown core.  We cool about 40-45 million square feet of real estate throughout the downtown core. We have about 65 buildings connected to the Deep Lake Water Cooling system, ranging from commercial office space to hospitals, event based arenas, the Convention Centre, residential buildings, retail buildings - you name it.   The environmental benefits are significant. So almost 80,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year reduced from the downtown core, that's a considerable number. We've eliminated refrigerants, harmful ozone depleting refrigerants from many of the buildings of the downtown core, and reducing the electrical demand as well.

NARRATOR:
So why Ontario?  Why is it on its way to becoming the global go-to centre of green energy innovation? 
 
JOHN PAUL MORGAN:
I think Ontario is probably one of the best places in the world to do what we're trying to do. I would think that it would literally be... I can't think of anywhere else that I'd rather be.

FADE TO BLACK/MUSICOUT /END

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