GREEN ENERGY FOR GREEN JOBS

The world needs more green energy.  With conventional energy use driving climate change, air pollution and the build up of toxics like mercury in our environment, we need to rapidly shift to cleaner energy sources like wind, solar, geothermal and hydro. 

In fact, there is already a worldwide race underway to tap these zero emission energy sources.  Wind power development is exploding worldwide while countries such as Spain, Germany and Japan are converting hundreds of thousands of rooftops to solar generation. 

In Canada, hydro-electric power is well established and meets anywhere from a fifth to close to 100 percent of our various provinces’ electricity usage.  Now many provinces are also ramping up the use of renewable power.  Prince Edward Island, for example, hopes to generate 30% of its total energy (electricity, heat and transportation) from renewable energy within the next eight years. 

But despite more than a century of experience with using renewable hydro power, Canada is a relative late comer to other forms of renewable energy.  Ontario, for example, first eliminated the use of polluting coal power in the early 1900s thanks to power from Niagara Falls.  It is now committed to eliminating coal for the second time by 2014, a commitment that represents one of the largest climate change actions currently underway in North America.

In fact, with its new Green Energy Act, Ontario is really announcing its intention to be on the forefront of developing low or zero emission energy sources.  The Act will recognize, through special tariffs for renewable power sources, the many additional benefits such clean energy provides – from increased employment to zero waste. 

The Act is also designed to make Ontario a magnet for green power developers and manufacturers.  The Ontario government, for example, projects that the prime conditions for green power created by the act could support 50,000 jobs in the next three years alone.

Another effective way to reduce the impact of our energy use is to increase the efficiency of our homes, factories, offices and institutions.  Thanks to plentiful energy supplies, efficiency has never been a top priority in Canada.  The result is that we are one of the world’s largest per capita energy users — and also big polluters. But it also means we can now tap a huge amount of low-cost efficiency “resources.”  This will create new jobs in areas like retrofitting homes or installing energy efficient manufacturing equipment to make our businesses more cost competitive.  California, for example, has already reduced electricity demand through conservation efforts by 10,000 megawatts — about a third of the power Ontario uses on a peak demand day.   The result is a cleaner environment and ongoing good green jobs as the State continues to tap the bottomless well of efficiency improvements.

Green power is today’s internet.  Large power plants are being replaced by dozens of small renewable systems around the world.  New technologies for power storage, whether it is large-scale utility storage or the battery in an individual electric car.promise to speed up this transition.  Meanwhile, greater efficiency will make green power go further.  It is a well balanced system that can create sustainable long-term jobs in every region of the country while improving our health and our environment.