The Toronto Star has been doing some excellent work on the environment and energy issues in Ontario lately — I pointed to some not too long ago. Many of those stories come from the Roberts-endorsed Tyler Hamilton.
Yesterday, Hamilton had an excellent piece in the front of the business section. It’s on the alternatives to nuclear construction that the province is ignoring; it tallies up all the missed opportunities. The conclusion is that Ontario could build ten times as much renewable energy as the government currently estimates, more than enough to displace the planned and allegedly necessary nuclear reactors.
Some of it is pretty familiar stuff — solar, cogeneration, offshore wind — and then there’s "energy from waste," or garbage incineration, something I imagine Gristmillers will have some strong opinions on. (In this case, the pilot project Hamilton cites uses plasma torches to generate incredible heat, and is promising pollution lower than provincial limits.)
The silence of the Ontario government on offshore wind power is particularly baffling. Ninety-five percent of Ontario’s population (and one-third of Canada’s population) lives within a few hundred kilometers of Lake Huron, Lake Erie, or Lake Ontario.
One small anal-retentive gripe on my part: the proper abbreviation for megawatts is "MW," not "m/w," which the Star chose to go with in this graphic (PDF).
