How To: Get Renewable Energy in Toronto

Toronto, Canada, can be cold in winter, so one of the biggest energy hogs is the heating of our homes and apartments. Most are heated by natural gas, which may be the cleanest fossil fuel but certainly isn't renewable. Therefore the greenest thing you can do is seal your windows and insulate your house. However, depending where you live in town, there are other options for other types of energy.

Toronto Hydro: Most electrical utilities in Canada are publicly owned; the City of Toronto owns the local distribution utility, and buys its juice from Ontario Power Generation or OPG. Hydro gets a bit of power from the wind turbine built by Windshare near the waterfront (shown in the picture) but gets the bulk of it from OPG's hydro-electric generators at Niagara Falls and the balance from a mix of nuclear and coal. The provincial government has pledged to close down the coal fired generators (now providing 30% of Ontario's electricity) by 2014 and pays a lot of money for renewable power from sun and wind, so one could say that without doing anything, a good portion of a Toronto resident's electricity is from renewable resources. But that doesn't mean you can't do better:

>Bullfrog Power: This supplier of wind and water powered electricity has become wildly popular since it started three years ago. (your writer was one of the first one hundred subscribers). It is the only utility I have ever heard of that throws an annual party for its customers (at a Bullfrog-powered brewery, of course) and where people proudly decorate their houses with its stickers. It costs a bit more than Toronto Hydro's power, (8.9 cents per KwH vs 5.6 cents, just for the power) which is a good incentive to turn your lights out. (since there are also delivery and regulatory charges the total cost is not that much higher) As of this month one doesn't even get a separate bill, but instead one pays through Toronto Hydro, the City owned utility. More info at Bullfrog Power.

Windshare: You can invest in a wind co-operative like Windshare and get a pretty good return."Investing in wind power directly increases the level of supply to the market. Choosing to purchase green electricity increases the market demand for green power, which will create market pressure to increase the level of supply over time."

Rooftop Co-ops: Local co-operatives like Rise Again and WISE act collectively to put solar thermal and photovoltaic units on roofs in neighbourhoods and promote the use of solar power.

Enwave: Downtown residents in new buildings may be cooled with lakewater piped in by Enwave, another City utility restructured into a for-profit private company that delivers cold water through 40 kilometers of pipe. Each building has a heat pump that moves the heat from the building into the water. Such systems are far more effective than normal air conditioners, and reduce the heat island effect by transferring the heat to Lake Ontario instead of the air. More information at ENWAVE.

So there are green options available in Toronto, but the greenest of them all is to use less of the stuff. They just built a billion dollar natural gas fired generator down on the waterfront to handle peak loads, but that will pump exhaust products of combustion and CO2 into the downtown air every time it turns on. Let's prove that province that it wasted that billion, that spending the money on conservation would have been a better investment, by cutting back our use enough so that the thing never gets turned on.

Start by reading the How to Green Your Electricity Guide