Dear Editor:
RE: ‘A liveable world’, July 15.
Interesting to read Mr. Moore’s description of how his home’s solar power helps his power bills and saves the world from his own property – commendable?
My irritation is with our main grid power production. At that level major suppliers of wind turbine/solar (WT/S) cannot match the cost/efficiency of clean power available in our homes’ power sockets. WT/S power sources are the most expensive, unreliable and inefficient.
The sun in Canada is hardly overpowering. Developing batteries large/efficient enough to smooth out unreliable WT/S power issues is decades away – ask Texas?
Canada’s power is way “greener” than any other G20 Nation. Our politicians/public need to be wiser, honest and promote the truth. Media should amplify this as well, instead of promoting false, naive and wrong-headed views that WT/S power will be our environmental saviour. It will not be!
McGinty’s WT/S experiment will add ‘“excess” costs more than $135B between 2015-35 for less than 5% of our power. Captive power users pay those costs – true everywhere excessive use of WT/S power facilities has occurred. Germany proves this with the highest power rates in the G20.
We could have installed other power systems with zero CO2 emissions, but whacky environmental groups like Sierra Club and the David Suzuki Foundation disagree. Oddly, those WT/S-loving lobby groups are against clean, reliable power systems (nuclear and hydro).
Of course, citizens can install whatever they want on their own property, but it will make negligible difference to overall emissions in the long run given our clean base power.
Financially, we have all taken a massive hit in this past year from COVID-19 and we cannot afford to throw good money after past bad spending on unreliable power systems. Better solutions exist!
Mike Hall.
Guelph/Eramosa