Five years ago, having come back from Freiburg Germany, the solar capital of Europe, I was inspired by their zero emissions solar PV manufacturing facility there, feed-in tariff driven investment opportunities available to the general public, community owned wind farms, and solar PV on almost every other building I looked at, both residential and commercial.
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Five years ago, having come back from Freiburg Germany, the solar capital of Europe, I was inspired by their zero emissions solar PV manufacturing facility there, feed-in tariff driven investment opportunities available to the general public, community owned wind farms, and solar PV on almost every other building I looked at, both residential and commercial. All in a climate that is not so unlike our own. Having seen this I scheduled a meeting with the minister of Energy here in Ontario, only to be shuffled off to Donna Cansfield, the then deputy. She listened as I asked for four things, one of which was the feed-in tariff given what I had seen in Freiburg. She was of course well aware of this idea from other groups lobbying for this type of change...no doubt CanSIA and OSEA to name just a few. The thing is, as it turned out, she became the Minister and brought in the RESOP and I went ahead to put a new PV system in on the program knowing the ROI was twenty years....better than the 75 years on the original solar system.
So, why are we doing this? We need to create a sustainable econonomy that uses sustainable renewable energy and materials so that our children have a future, an economy and jobs. Solar PV companies create jobs. I think I saw that Canadian Solar has 4000 employees. Arise must have created quite a number in the former East Germany where they've set up shop. Day 4 is creating jobs. Sanyo and Sharp do a reasonable business in Ontario and provide some jobs in Ontario. More exist and given the numbers/rules with FIT/MicroFIT I think it looks like many more will want to enter the Ontario market. Producing as much as possible as soon as possible locally is the sustainable thing to do.
If someone had asked me, knowing what I know now, not knowing the details of what it takes to setup manufacturing shop in Ontario, I'd have thought a reasonable approach would be to have the first 12 months content rules that support the existing market...is that 18% or something similar so that the pioneers in the industry are allowed to proceed at full throttle, knowing that further content requirements are coming. From 12-24 months 40%, and then after 24 months 60%. The current rules appear to be a political decision to demonstrate action on the issue of manufacturing job losses. Given the horrific nature of that situation, if I were in the place of an auto sector worker, this political decision makes perfect sense as they need jobs right now. Given that I would say, if the rules can't be changed, then we have a challenge worthy of our efforts.
In either case I am prepared to put my money where my mouth is. I will proceed with an additional 5 kW solar PV investment whether the rules are adjusted or not. I suspect many other investors will do the same. With the trust I've built up with current providers I think it is likely that they will be able to find a way to meet the content rules while maintaining quality and price. However, it is not the pioneers that will drive this next phase. The very nature of the investment opportunity will now drive new large scale investment from new players. That will start now no matter the content rules. That will drive the change we need. Looking back ten years ago, this is actually a better situation than I could have imagined. More challenging given the content rules, nevertheless in many ways better than I would have thought possible.
From my childrens perspective, which drives my investment decisions and thoughts on strategy, the next logical area that needs to be addressed is an "ecotax" on electricity. Given the costs on our society of "dirty power", we should add something like 1 cent/kW to the cost of electricty for everyone. This should drive conservation and efficiency efforts related to energy consumption and help cover the additional costs of programs like FIT/MicroFIT, and make residential/commercial/industrial consumers looking for a hedge on their energy costs through FIT/MicroFIT. Like content rules that are designed to achieve certain political/social/economic ends, this type of tax is going to be painful, but it is the right thing to do, and it should be implemented ASAP even though it would be hard to make changes towards efficiency quickly enough to offset this additional cost. Hard but not impossible.
How do we create a sustainable economy? What is a feed-in tariff? How did Ontario get FIT and MicroFIT program for solar, wind and other renewable energy types?
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