A provincially imposed 50 megawatt (MW) cap on new electricity generation is stifling wind power opportunities in northeastern Ontario, says a North Bay wind consultant. The Ontario government may be promoting the virtues of clean, renewable energy, but for Terry Wojick, that policy doesn't seem to apply in his region....

....Wojick says all his projects were progressing well until last April when the province released a second round of RFPs for more renewable energy. He was shocked to discover the Ministry of Energy has imposed a restrictive cap on the North East Zone, north and east of Sudbury, for new wind and water generation projects. The existing transmission infrastructure doesn't have the capacity to carry more power into the Ontario grid.

"All we're asking is a fair opportunity to bid into this RFP process," says Wojick, "and with the 50-MW restriction we can barely compete."

Canada Faces Lawsuit Over Failure to Meet Kyoto Commitment

Environmentalists threatened Tuesday to sue Canada to force cuts to greenhouse-gas emissions agreed under the Kyoto Protocol, despite officials' claims the target cannot be achieved.

The Friends of the Earth presented Environment Minister Rona Ambrose with a legal opinion asserting that Canada is in breach of the international treaty to reduce air pollution that causes global warming, and asked her to respond.

Otherwise, "I anticipate we would be on our way to federal court within six months," said Friends of the Earth chief executive Beatrice Olivastri.

$7-Trillion Warning on Global Warming

Canada signed up to the Kyoto agreement and agreed to reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 6 per cent below its 1990 levels between 2008 and 2012. Instead, those emissions are up considerably and the Conservative government has conceded it won't come close to meeting those commitments.

The report suggests that 1 per cent of global domestic product be spent immediately on dealing with climate change, to avoid higher costs later. Failure to act would lead to a drop of 5 to 20 per cent of global GDP and make large swaths of the Earth's surface uninhabitable.

The New Green Totalitarianism

This is a strongly worded reaction to the release of the Stern report. The issue of the proper role for government regulation as a response to climate change should be debated.

One of the unstated purposes of the Stern review is to bury the Kyoto Protocol, an unworkable plan built around unattainable objectives. Stern does a fine job eulogizing the failed accord with faint praise. "The Kyoto Protocol has established valuable institutions to underpin international emissions trading. There are strong reasons to build on and learn from this approach." So Kyoto is dead, with Stern noting that developing nations have no targets, Australian and the United States will not sign, and Canada will not meet the targets it has.

Treasury's Paulson Plays With the Plunge Protectors

It would be interesting to debate how effective a Plunge Protection Team could hope to be if the markets do go into reverse.

"Since taking the reins in July, the Wall Street veteran has reinvigorated the President's Working Group on Financial markets, which had languished." The article went on to say that before Paulson's arrival, the group met every few months, and sometimes only once a quarter. Now Paulson is insisting that it meet every six weeks.

Among other things, Paulson and the Plunge Protection gang discuss the problems that might occur with hedge funds and derivatives, plus the "government's ability to respond to a financial crisis," according to a source quoted by the paper.