NB Energy Commission

Transcription

1 NB Energy Commission Feb 10, 2011 Good afternoon Ladies and Gentlemen and members of the energy commission. My name is Yvon Arsenault, I am an owner of an Alternative Energy company based here in the greater Moncton Area. We have been in business for two years, and we have seen growth in the alternative energy sector in New Brunswick, but nothing like some of our neighboring provinces like Nova Scotia, Ontario and Alberta to name a few. We are not just talking about large scale wind turbines to produce electricity. We have what we think is a great opportunity here in New Brunswick for job creation, new tax revenues, reduce consumer energy demand by as much as 40% or more, while saving us money and reducing our carbon foot print without having to build new power plants. New Brunswick is in a world of trouble with the energy production, just like Ontario. Now is the time to embrace the opportunity that is presented to us and create new jobs, cleaner energy to last a life time. There is a lot of options when it comes to alternative clean energy other then wind farms. For example, solar thermal panels to heat hot water, for domestic use, heating homes, swimming pools, and even cooling. Heating commercial buildings like large hot water users, hotels, car washes, laundry mats, hospitals, nursing homes, schools, restaurants and large industrial consumers like beverage companies and dairy farmers. Photovoltaic panels to produce electricity for homes, commercial and industrial applications (solar farms). I as well as all of you don t like to see power rates increases, but realistically, rates need to reflect the true cost of delivering energy to New Brunswickers. We can no longer afford to operate NB Power at a loss and to keep using NB Power as an election carrot. If we leave the rates as they are currently, in three years, the rates will need to increase so much there will be an outcry of how did this happen. We need to take action and control now. Example: last week there was a public announcement made for all users to reduce their thermostats by 2 to 3 degrees to help reduce energy demands in New Brunswick. If this is not a clear message, I don t know what is. We believe that the province of New Brunswick should be a leader in alternate energy field by not only encouraging it's citizens to switching over to other means of using energy, the sun, wind, earth etc... that by providing realistic funs to make this initiative grow and to sustained it. What we mean by this in brief, is that by allocating the same funds as is required to re-build a Nuclear plant for example, at the moment 1.4 billion and growing. If similar money was available here now! we would reduce our energy demand by as much, and not need to rebuild

2 a Nuclear plant to provide electricity. Another issues not brought up every day is, I pick this little article from the CBC website this week, the article was publish January 17, 2001 and it read as follows. Experts consider future of Mactaquac Last Updated: Wednesday, January 17, :11 PM ET CBC News Three engineering experts have agreed with N.B. Power that the power plant at Mactaquac Dam can continue to produce electricity for another 30 years. Concrete in the structure is deteriorating, expanding and cracking because of a chemical process called alkali aggregate reaction. The problem forced N.B. Power to cut the station's life expectancy from 100 years to 60 years. But in a report obtained by the CBC's Canada Now, the three experts questioned the 60 year estimate. They estimated its life span at between 25 and 30 years. This week those 3 experts returned to Mactaquac to receive a new engineering report prepared for N.B power. It said Mactaquac could last another 30 years. The engineers saw the report and Eric Kollgaard agreed. " I think it depends on the efforts that are taken to keep it in service and how much money is spent but, certainly, I believe 30 years is a reasonable estimate of its life, without rebuilding major portions of the structure." They agreed with N.B. Power's strategy of cutting the concrete to relieve the expansion. But in 15 years, even N.B. Power President James Hankinson agrees, something will have to be done. "Beyond that we will look at considerable cost to replace or refurbish and we will start those analyses in the near future, " he said. So, the good news for the province is that the important operational and financial decisions on how to keep the plant producing low cost power won't have to be made for another decade. Read more: so in reading this you can conclude that we have only another 20 years before a complete rebuilt will have to be done, at what cost, and more importantly can we afford it? and if you picked up on one single line " I believe 30 years is a reasonable estimate of its life" the word estimate, scary isn't it.

3 We are not just talking about electricity plants here, if you look at the few disasters around the world in the last few years i.e.; Enbridge gas with their massive spill in the Unite State, BP in the gulf of Mexico, Enron with killing thousands of birds in Canada and being fine millions of dollars, who do you think is paying for all this cleaning up, and fines, the companies, no. we are the consumer with higher retail price, the companies and stock holders don't feel a thing in the long run, but the consumer will. If there was less demand for these environmentally harmful product the price would actually go down, today we do not need to depend on these hazardous chemical to make the wheel turn. Ladies and Gentlemen there is an alternative, the Sun, the wind, even earth itself, with geothermal and other emerging technologies. I would like bring to the attention to the energy committee and the attending audience that at present in New Brunswick we have several students attending an Alternate Energy Course, and they will be ready for employment this coming summer. We have been approached by some of these students for employment, but unfortunately we cannot hire them at this time, not because we don't want to, but because not enough work is available in this province. These student will have to go outside this province to find employment if they want to stay in their field. New Brunswick is spending a allot of money on educating these students and they will simply go to work somewhere else, what a waste of money. Job Creation would only be a side effect of this initiative for many, many years to come. This is the fastest growing job sector in the world at the moment. These are not your minimum hourly paying jobs, they are long lasting high paying jobs. Beside creating direct jobs, thousand of indirect job will be created to support all these new workers. These high paying jobs also pay higher taxes, bringing new money to the province. We would also prefer to build with Solar energy producing jobs than Large Wind Turbines, the reason for is as follows. When you build a wind farm, you have to bring in large International Corporation from outside to build these farms. The money invested just simply leaves with them once the project is terminated, creating very little long lasting jobs. Yes there is a real possibility we will save million in electricity, but we will not have created a large pool of sustainable jobs. If we build with solar we have the manpower right here right now ready and trained without having to invest anymore money. In Ontario alone they created 13,000 new direct jobs within the first 6 month of announcing their fit program. In Germany they created over 50 thousand new jobs in a 5 year period, what can we do in New Brunswick. I believe we could potential employ 1000s directly and as many indirectly within the first year. These are real jobs, not just for one area of the province but the whole of the province. I don't know another employment sector that could requires as many employees in the short term. In the long term these system will produce even more jobs. Lets face it if we want our province to prosper we have to invest, creating job is investing in the future, people will stay here, bring in or increasing the population, creating an even larger demand on our aging electrical system, the payback is not long term but immediate with increasing prosperity for the province. Example: In Ontario they got really creative with

4 their new energy policy. Businesses, schools, churches and farmers to name a few are now leasing their empty roofs for additional income to solar companies to put solar panels to create electricity. Everyone can benefit from working together in creating a new way we make our electricity. This is an extract from employment figure from February 4, 2011, the heading read " Economy generates 69,200 new jobs, but unemployment rate rises to 7.8 per cent" and later in the same article it read this part " One encouraging aspect of the report is that employment growth was spread widely across Canada. Eight provinces joined the list of winners, leaving only British Columbia and New Brunswick on the negative column. And there were some big gains in Ontario Alberta where employment grew by 36,300 and 21,600 jobs respectively. Relative to their population size, Nova Scotia with a 6,200-job rise and Newfoundland with a gain of 4,900 were also significant winners. This article extract, was taken from the web site; therecord.com, Why the Sun, we have plenty of it here. Let's look at Moncton for example, we have a daily average 4.4 Kw per sq meter of energy available, better than Ontario or Nova Scotia, only the prairies are a little sunnier than we at 4.7. If we look at Germany a country with less Solar Energy available than we do and 5 % of their energy comes from the sun. In some parts of the world it is mandatory for new home construction to produce part of their hot water from the sun. The Moncton area is a beautiful city not only for its people, but for its quality of Sun, so why not take advantage of it. The Sun combine with other technologies are also a great combination. Geothermal is a means of extracting energy from the ground and transferring it into our every day energy needs, combine this technology with Solar thermal and we have the most efficient means of heating our homes and all buildings today while using approximately 800 % less energy to do so. The rest of New Brunswick is as good. There is a subdivision in Alberta which everyone uses geothermal and solar combined to heat and cool their homes, which was first done in a complete German city.

5 Ladies and Gentlemen in my conclusion New Brunswickers would save on electricity, create real sustainable jobs, reduce our dependency on outdated fossil fuels, reduce our environmental impact. I hear that New Brunswicker's want alternate energy every day, but it's Fredericton that needs to hear it loud and clear, call, talk, to you elected representative, they were elected to hear you by you, use them. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over anticipating a different results We have come to a cross road in the future of New Brunswickers, where we can secure our future energy needs, make a positive environmental impact and create a lot of jobs. I conclude, are we insane, or are we going to shine through making NB the province where people want to live and prosper. Thank you