Alternative Energy: Canada Needs to Learn from Germany!

Published Friday, November 14, 2008 by Dan Gainsford | E-mail this post

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I've been ranting about alternative energy for some time and it's funny that my website alternative energy section (dated 2006 and underdeveloped) actually includes quotes regarding Germany and it's progressive nature with respect to alternative.

Anyways here's a great segment done by the fifth estate on Canada versus Germany.. and how the writing from my site was the writing on the wall, even back then.

http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/2008-2009/the_gospel_of_green/video.html

From my site, originally from Walrus Magazine,

"After years of neglect, Canada's alternative-energy sector produces just 4.5 percent of Canada's total production. As if declaring its preference, Ottawa gives the oil industry $1.6 billion in subsidies each year , and companies such as Suncor and Canadian Natural Resources will spend nearly $100 billion to develop the Alberta oil sands over the next two decades. In doing so, vast amounts of new carbon emissions will be created in almost open defiance of the Kyoto Protocol."

"We are light years behind, oil has an built-in subsidy advantage, and we haven't compensated the other side by giving subsidies to other energy sources." - David Anderson, Former Canadian Environment Minister

"In 1999, Spain produced the same amount of electricity generated by wind as Canada. Now, Spain has 8,000 megawatts in place and expects to have 20,000 by 2011. Canada, by comparison, has 590 megawatts of installed capacity and is aiming for 7,500 megawatts by 2013... Germany put in 10,000 megawatss of wind energyin the last four years - and yet Canada has much better wind resources." In fact, the Wind Energy Association calculates that Ontario alone has the potential to produce 40,000 megawatts, and puts Quebec's potential at a whopping 100,000 megawatts - nearly the equivilent to the country's entire electrical consumption."

"... since 1997, when Canada first agreed to reduce greenhouse gases, Ottawa has been spending $2 a barrel on oil and gas tax subsidies for every $1 it has spent on reaching it's Kyoto goal... How can this be part of a consistent government policy?"

Above excerpts taken from The Hydrogen Generation, The Walrus Magazine, Dec 2006

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