From the Monday, December 24, 20007, Business section, Toronto Star, pages B, B4, an article about geothermal energy:
THERE'S STILL TIME TO GET INTO THERMAL GAME
Tyler Hamilton
The year 1984 is more than just a George Orwell novel. It's also when the federal government packed in its geothermal energy program, more or less taking one of Canada's best renewable resources off the radar screen of the public and investors.
In the 23 years that have passed, the world has become a different place. Drilling technologies have improved dramatically. The ability to detect geothermal hotspots to detect geothermal hotspots deep below the Earth's surface has also gotten better. Climate change concerns have drawn much-needed atention to development of renewable energies such as wind-solar, hydroelectric and even wave power.
Around the world, including the United States, a great deal of investment - and in some cases, reliance - has been placed on the ability to tap the Earth's emission-free geothermal resources. Canada, however, isn't even on the map.
We remain the only country in the Pacific Rim to not generate electricity from the intense heat deep underground, and the federal government remains somewhat ignorant and uninterested in the potential. One company, Western Geopower, is trying to give it a shot on a 100-megawatt project in British Columbia, but operating alone without federal support hasn't been an easy endeavour.
"We're so far out of the game," says Alison Thompson, vice-president of the Canadian Geothermal Energy Association, based out of Calgary.
The organization has existed for three decades, but you'd never know it. No funding and no program over the years has gutted its profile, and limited its function to an academic exercise.
Thompson, research and development manager with oil company Nexen Inc., hopes to change that. Calling herself a "concerned citizen," she volunteered for the association earlier this year and has been part of an effort to rejuvenate the industry's image and boost its public profile.
The association's website at www.geothermal.ca has been revamped. It even got singer Sarah McLachlan to volunteer her "World on Fire" single as the association's theme song. And because Thompson is associated with the oil industry, it brings some credibility to the organization when it comes to lobbying the government for help.
"I'm a composting, rain-barrel type of gal, so this is something I want to hang my hat on," says Thompson, adding that she wants to bring the same kind of mindshare to geothermal as what we currently see in the wind industry. "They really have marketed themselves well, and that's what geothermal hasn't done a good job of.
"I just think the future is enormous for this."
The association's immediate goal is to lobby the federal government to reinstate its geothermal program and start collecting up-to-date data, through the Geological Survey of Canada, on geothermal hotspots and potential across the country.
Thompson says existing data suggests that "easy" geothermal projects in British Columbia could amount to 3,000 megawatts, but figures the number is likely closer to 6,000 megawatts. Alberta and the Yukon also have tremendous potential, but a lack of data "makes it hard to pin down."
If you drill deep enough you can even find potential sites in Ontario and other parts of eastern Canada - at least according to a comprehensive study released this year from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology - but Thompson says the focus at the moment is out west. Next year the association hopes to put out a white paper that will serve as a starting point for developing provincial and federal geothermal energy policy.
There are four potential types of geothermal energy Canada can tap. There are the clear-cut hotspots that are relatively shallow and provide enough heat - between 100 and 300 degreses Celsius - and the right geological conditions for building geothermal power plants. Such opportunities exist in B.C. and Alberta.
Then there's enhanced geothermal, which can tap similar temperatures but requires far deeper drilling and an attempt to engineer the right underground conditions for producing geothermal electricity.
The other two options involve medium-grade heat. For example, the fluid that comes out of conventional wells - a combination of oil and water - provides enough heat to run special micro turbines that can generate 250 kilowatts of power. There are hundreds of thousands of wells in B.C. and Alberta, "so put them all together and it's a sizable position on the grid," says Thompson.
There's also potential to find medium-grade heat from drilling relatively shallow holes at sites where you need it - what's called low enthalpy geothermal. "It's the lowest hanging fruit. Everyone knows that heat is there. Now the challenge is in finding technology that can use it on a massive scale in the oil sands," she adds.
Thompson firmly believes that Canada, while behind on geothermal, could leapfrog other countries by jumping into the game with the latest technologies. "Much like developing countries don't have land phone lines and skipped directly to cellular phones," she says.
She encourages individuals and companies interested in the technology to get involved, and give the association a stronger voice. "That grassroots ground swelling is what we're trying to create."
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Friday, February 15, 2008
Birdwatcher Watching Decline of Birds
From the Greater Toronto, Toronto Star, Wednesday, January 23, 2008, page A11, an article about birdwatcher Graeme Gibson and his concerns about the birds:
AND FEW BIRDS SANG
'If you are a birdwatcher, you know the Earth is in trouble,' says author Graeme Gibson, who sees their decline as bad for the globe - and our souls
Catherine Dunphy
Staff Reporter
The birdman of the Annex despairs at this time of year. The only sound from outside the plate glass of the Avenue Rd. restaurant where he sips his organic beer is that of the horns of motorists furious at the person making an illegal left at Davenport.
Birdsong?
Graeme Gibson's generous eyebrows rise behind his glasses.
"There are relatively few birds around town now," he says. "It's like creeping senility."
There were once many more cardinals, blue jays - even crows, which were decimated by the West Nile virus - about town. The best we can do now is salute winter's rough 'n' weather-ready starlings, pigeons, gulls - admittedly brown birds the colour of slush, ordinary birds, not the stuff of awe, wonder, colour and musicality.
The 82nd annual Christmas bird count held by the Toronto Ornithological Club on a balmy Sunday in December recorded 89 species, including 56,022 individual birds. Then again, 21,523 of them were European starlings, up from their 2005 tally of 12,000-plus.
On the bright side, there is a red-tailed hawk - "very big, very handsome" - lurking near a Richmond St. condominium.
"It's two feet when it stands on my friend's balcony. A marvellous bird. I've seen it."
He once watched it chase a flock of pigeons on Charles St. just west of Yonge. Thrilling. "They exploded into the sky," Gibson says.
He is often watching for birds. A respected author (Five Legs, Perpetual Motion) before he compiled the best selling The Bedside Book of Birds, in which he turned a passion begun at age 37 into an orgiastic, glorious - and award-winning - book not about birds but about people's relationship with them.
In it Gibson writes: "One of the rewards of birdwatching is the brief escape it affords our ancient and compelling need to make Nature useful. There may even be something of Thoreau's 'true knowledge' in that evanescent taste of freedom."
He also writes: "At its best, in its heightened moments, birdwatching can encourage a state of being close to rapture - the fogetfulness that blends the individual consciousness with something other than itself. Some people call it 'flow,' others enlightenment.'"
Gibson, 73, believes it might save the world.
"If you look out the window and don't see nature," he says, gesturing towards Avenue Rd., "all you see is culture. You are separated from nature."
Here connects by birdwatching in Toronto's ravings, the Summerhill reservoir, beside the Humber and Don rivers where migrating birds fly by, at Mt. Pleasant cemetery and in Rosedale's Craigleith Gardens. It grounds his activism these days. He was one of the founders of the Writers Union of Canada, the Books and Periodical Council, the Writers Development Trust, plus an early president of PEN Canada in 1987.
He is a founding user of Bullfrog Power, an alternative energy provider, at the Annex home he shares with his partner, writer Margaret Atwood. The pair are also joint presidents of the rare birds club of Bird Life International, a global alliance of conservation organizations.
"If you are a birdwatcher, you know the Earth is in trouble," he says.
He believes he first glimpsed the spectable of bird life in full flight as a 14-year-old in 1948, from the bow of the freighter that brought his family from Austrlia back to Canada and London, Ont., where he grew up.
He moved to Toronto to pursue teaching, then writing, and although he was an outdoorsy person keen on canoeing and hiking, he was pretty much oblivious to birds - until one day when, while walking in the Don Valley in the late '70s, he spotted a red-tailed hawk under the Bloor viaduct. Intrigued, he bought a bird book, then a pair of binoculars.
His birdwatching has since taken him all over the world. While sailing near Isabella Island, part of the Galapagos Islands, he spotted an albatross through an unexpected break in blinding rain. He felt as if he had received a gift, he says, and decided then to begin collecting writings and artifacts about how humans relate to birds.
For years he led birdwatching tours to Cuba, a primary source of his income, he notes.
Now, for about a third of every year, he and Atwood live in their home on Pelee Island, where he was instrumental in founding the Pelee Island Bird Observatory six years ago.
"Graeme has been critical to the (conservation) movement," says conservation theorist Elizabeth Agnew. "He and Margaret are both crack birders."
Agnew visited Cuba with Gibson. "Oh my goodness, it's like travelling with Mick Jagger," she says. "He's an entity and a quantity."
He's bemused by this. And by the propensity of birdwatchers to keep competitive lists of sightings. The only list he keeps is of birds seen in his backyard - because he's competing with no one, only revelling in the whir and strobe light flash of the fleeting presence of the creature believed to represent all our dreams.
AND FEW BIRDS SANG
'If you are a birdwatcher, you know the Earth is in trouble,' says author Graeme Gibson, who sees their decline as bad for the globe - and our souls
Catherine Dunphy
Staff Reporter
The birdman of the Annex despairs at this time of year. The only sound from outside the plate glass of the Avenue Rd. restaurant where he sips his organic beer is that of the horns of motorists furious at the person making an illegal left at Davenport.
Birdsong?
Graeme Gibson's generous eyebrows rise behind his glasses.
"There are relatively few birds around town now," he says. "It's like creeping senility."
There were once many more cardinals, blue jays - even crows, which were decimated by the West Nile virus - about town. The best we can do now is salute winter's rough 'n' weather-ready starlings, pigeons, gulls - admittedly brown birds the colour of slush, ordinary birds, not the stuff of awe, wonder, colour and musicality.
The 82nd annual Christmas bird count held by the Toronto Ornithological Club on a balmy Sunday in December recorded 89 species, including 56,022 individual birds. Then again, 21,523 of them were European starlings, up from their 2005 tally of 12,000-plus.
On the bright side, there is a red-tailed hawk - "very big, very handsome" - lurking near a Richmond St. condominium.
"It's two feet when it stands on my friend's balcony. A marvellous bird. I've seen it."
He once watched it chase a flock of pigeons on Charles St. just west of Yonge. Thrilling. "They exploded into the sky," Gibson says.
He is often watching for birds. A respected author (Five Legs, Perpetual Motion) before he compiled the best selling The Bedside Book of Birds, in which he turned a passion begun at age 37 into an orgiastic, glorious - and award-winning - book not about birds but about people's relationship with them.
In it Gibson writes: "One of the rewards of birdwatching is the brief escape it affords our ancient and compelling need to make Nature useful. There may even be something of Thoreau's 'true knowledge' in that evanescent taste of freedom."
He also writes: "At its best, in its heightened moments, birdwatching can encourage a state of being close to rapture - the fogetfulness that blends the individual consciousness with something other than itself. Some people call it 'flow,' others enlightenment.'"
Gibson, 73, believes it might save the world.
"If you look out the window and don't see nature," he says, gesturing towards Avenue Rd., "all you see is culture. You are separated from nature."
Here connects by birdwatching in Toronto's ravings, the Summerhill reservoir, beside the Humber and Don rivers where migrating birds fly by, at Mt. Pleasant cemetery and in Rosedale's Craigleith Gardens. It grounds his activism these days. He was one of the founders of the Writers Union of Canada, the Books and Periodical Council, the Writers Development Trust, plus an early president of PEN Canada in 1987.
He is a founding user of Bullfrog Power, an alternative energy provider, at the Annex home he shares with his partner, writer Margaret Atwood. The pair are also joint presidents of the rare birds club of Bird Life International, a global alliance of conservation organizations.
"If you are a birdwatcher, you know the Earth is in trouble," he says.
He believes he first glimpsed the spectable of bird life in full flight as a 14-year-old in 1948, from the bow of the freighter that brought his family from Austrlia back to Canada and London, Ont., where he grew up.
He moved to Toronto to pursue teaching, then writing, and although he was an outdoorsy person keen on canoeing and hiking, he was pretty much oblivious to birds - until one day when, while walking in the Don Valley in the late '70s, he spotted a red-tailed hawk under the Bloor viaduct. Intrigued, he bought a bird book, then a pair of binoculars.
His birdwatching has since taken him all over the world. While sailing near Isabella Island, part of the Galapagos Islands, he spotted an albatross through an unexpected break in blinding rain. He felt as if he had received a gift, he says, and decided then to begin collecting writings and artifacts about how humans relate to birds.
For years he led birdwatching tours to Cuba, a primary source of his income, he notes.
Now, for about a third of every year, he and Atwood live in their home on Pelee Island, where he was instrumental in founding the Pelee Island Bird Observatory six years ago.
"Graeme has been critical to the (conservation) movement," says conservation theorist Elizabeth Agnew. "He and Margaret are both crack birders."
Agnew visited Cuba with Gibson. "Oh my goodness, it's like travelling with Mick Jagger," she says. "He's an entity and a quantity."
He's bemused by this. And by the propensity of birdwatchers to keep competitive lists of sightings. The only list he keeps is of birds seen in his backyard - because he's competing with no one, only revelling in the whir and strobe light flash of the fleeting presence of the creature believed to represent all our dreams.
Saturday, February 2, 2008
Banning Dirty Cars From City Centres in Germany
From the business section of the Toronto Star, Wednesday, January 2, 2008, page B4, an article about Germany's plan for taking car of air pollution and dirty cars:
GERMANY BANS AIR-FOULING VEHICLES
Berlin - Three German cities, including the capital Berlin, began implementing a new air pollution system yesterday that bans the dirtiest vehicles from their centres.
Drivers in Berlin, Cologne and Hanover are now required to display a coloured badge showing the level of pollution cuased by their vehicle, with a scale of red, yellow and green.
Some vehicles, notably an estimated 1.7 million old diesel cars and vans, will not qualify for even the most polluting red badges and will be prohibited in central areas.
Drivers without a badge who are caught in the city centre will face a 40 euro, or $58 (Canadian), fine and will be docked a point on their driving licence.
The system is to be extended to about 20 German cities this year, including Stuttgart and Munich.
It applies to all vehicles, including those registered outside Germany, but some officials have indicated that foreign cars will be treated with leniency.
In Berlin, city authorities have decided not to punish errant drivers until the end of January.
gence France-Presse
GERMANY BANS AIR-FOULING VEHICLES
Berlin - Three German cities, including the capital Berlin, began implementing a new air pollution system yesterday that bans the dirtiest vehicles from their centres.
Drivers in Berlin, Cologne and Hanover are now required to display a coloured badge showing the level of pollution cuased by their vehicle, with a scale of red, yellow and green.
Some vehicles, notably an estimated 1.7 million old diesel cars and vans, will not qualify for even the most polluting red badges and will be prohibited in central areas.
Drivers without a badge who are caught in the city centre will face a 40 euro, or $58 (Canadian), fine and will be docked a point on their driving licence.
The system is to be extended to about 20 German cities this year, including Stuttgart and Munich.
It applies to all vehicles, including those registered outside Germany, but some officials have indicated that foreign cars will be treated with leniency.
In Berlin, city authorities have decided not to punish errant drivers until the end of January.
gence France-Presse
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