Municipalities can't reject green energy projects under FIT
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TORONTO
Municipalities can get green energy projects faster if they want them but still can’t say no if they don’t under new Feed-In-Tariff program rules, Energy Minister Chris Bentley announced Thursday.
“We’ve listened very carefully about where to locate these projects,” Bentley told a crowd of green energy advocates and industry players at Ryerson University.
The long-anticipated FIT review, which also slashed FIT subsidies for renewable energy as expected, will give priority to any project that can show it has local support, Bentley said.
“The priority system we’re going to use based on points will tend to move projects where they have support,” he said.
“It’s more likely if you have that municipal related support you’ll get a contract than if you don’t.”
Local opposition - especially to industrial size wind farms - devastated the governing Liberals’ rural caucus and left the party with a minority government in the last election.
Bentley said the new rules will also move to protect Ontario’s best farmland from being paved over with solar panels by barring ground-mounted solar generation on Class 1,2 and 3 soils.
There will also be 10% of capacity that are set aside for projects with “significant Aboriginal involvement.”
But giving local government a veto over green projects would result in 440 different sets of rules the industry would have to follow, Bentley said.
Progressive Conservative MPP Vic Fedeli said the changes will not satisfy rural communities who wanted more ability to say no.
“This doesn’t fix the real problem,” Fedeli said. “It still removes the public’s venue away.”
PC Leader Tim Hudak introduced a private members bill Thursday calling for the FIT program to be scrapped altogether, arguing it’s still paying too high a price for renewable power.
“That’s as good as admitting you’ve wasted billions of tax dollars, so you’ll try wasting a couple of billion fewer instead and see if that works,”
Hudak said of the review.
“No, the answer, as contained in my bill, is to cancel the FIT subsidy program altogether.”
On the price side, the Ontario Power Authority will now offer contracts for small rooftop solar projects at 54.5 cents a kilowatt hour, down from 80.2 cents a kwh.
Wind drops to 11.5 cents a kwh from 13.5 cents and solar ground-mounted under 10 kw falls to 44,5 cents a kwh from 64.2 cents.
Prices for water projects, biomass, farm bio gas, biogas and landfill gas all remain the same.