Quotulatiousness

October 15, 2010

Reduce effectiveness of bird mincers by painting them purple

Filed under: Environment, Technology — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 09:52

Your neighbourhood bird mincers may soon be even more of an eyesore . . . they may need to be painted purple:

A study has revealed that a wind turbine’s colour affects how many insects it attracts, shedding more light on why the turbines occasionally kill bats and birds.

Scientists say that turbines, most commonly painted white or grey, draw in insects. These then lure bats and birds — as they pursue their prey — into the path of the turbine blades.

Support for the idea comes from another study showing that bats are most often killed by turbines at night and in summer, when insects are most abundant.

So, after testing, which colour works best to deter insects? Purple.

October 8, 2010

QotD: Green power play

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Environment, Quotations — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 14:23

The Swedish retail giant IKEA announced yesterday it will invest $4.6-million to install 3,790 solar panels on three Toronto area stores, giving IKEA the electric-power-producing capacity of 960,000 kilowatt hours (kWh) per year. According to IKEA, that’s enough electricity to power 100 homes. Amazing development. Even more amazing is the economics of this project. Under the Ontario government’s feed-in-tariff solar power scheme, IKEA will receive 71.3¢ for each kilowatt of power produced, which works out to about $6,800 a year for each of the 100 hypothetical homes. Since the average Toronto home currently pays about $1,200 for the same quantity of electricity, that implies that IKEA is being overpaid by $5,400 per home equivalent.

Welcome to the wonderful world of green economics and the magical business of carbon emission reduction. Each year, IKEA will receive $684,408 under Premier Dalton McGuinty’s green energy monster — for power that today retails for about $115,000. At that rate, IKEA will recoup $4.6-million in less than seven years — not bad for an investment that can be amortized over 20.

No wonder solar power is such a hot industry. No wonder, too, that the province of Ontario is in a headlong rush into a likely economic crisis brought on by skyrocketing electricity prices. To make up the money paid to IKEA to promote itself as a carbon-free zone, Ontario consumers and industries are on their way to experiencing the highest electricity rates in North America, if not most of the world.

Terence Corcoran, “Power Failure”, Financial Post, 2010-10-08

July 10, 2010

More hidden legal changes in Ontario

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Environment, Government, Law — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:33

Kelly McParland finds yet another sneaky change to Ontario law the government tried to slip in un-noticed:

Here’s a great story about the absurdity that ensues when a government tries to force-feed an impractical policy to the population for the sake of environmental posturing.

If you don’t want to read the original, here’s a capsule version:

Ontario sponsors a program to encourage small users of solar power by giving them subsidies. Except it has proved so popular, especially in rural areas, the province quietly slashed the subsidy late last Friday. (You remember Friday, right — quiet sleepy day between Canada Day and the weekend? If you really really wanted to release something at a time no one would notice, you couldn’t pick a better day. Not that the McGuinty government would deliberately try to hide what it was doing, of course. Oh no). The result is that people who bought into the program won’t get nearly the amount they expected. Now they’re upset — having discovered the ruse despite the government’s effort to hide it — and are bombarding MPPs with complaints.

Great eh? That’s good old Dalton McGuinty — absolutely, totally dedicated to energy conservation and environmental improvement, as long as it’s costing someone else money and not him.

This is yet another example of how the McGuinty government loves to sneak in unpopular changes and hope nobody notices for a while. Stealth nanny state tactics? Ladies and gentlemen, I present your Ontario government.

Update, 12 February 2011: The poor folks who took up the McGuinty government’s solar power subsidy are being shafted again:

Added to McGuinty’s problems with wind are similar signs of trouble on the solar front. After strongly encouraging individual solar projects, and offering outrageously generous pricing on solar-generated power, the province unexpectedly announced last summer it was slashing the rate it would pay on some projects. On Friday, hundreds more Ontarians were told that installations they’d erected at the behest of the government can’t be connected to the provincial grid because of technical problems. Rural residents, some of whom have invested large amounts in solar generating operations, will be left high and dry.

[. . .]

Angering rural voters, and battering your credibility with the environmental crowd, aren’t great ideas if you run a government that faces an election in eight months. So it’s no wonder that Ontario’s Liberals sought to hide the bad news by releasing it when (they hoped) no one was watching. But the excitement in Egypt won’t last forever, and eventually people will notice that Ontario’s government, once again, has been forced into a humiliating retreat at considerable trouble and cost to individual Ontarians.

June 24, 2010

The unhinged are now running Spanish “green” tech companies

Filed under: Environment, Europe, Politics, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 18:12

As I read this, I kept hoping that it’d be fake:

Spain’s Dr. Gabriel Calzada — the author of a damning study concluding that Spain’s “green jobs” energy program has been a catastrophic economic failure — was mailed a dismantled bomb on Tuesday by solar energy company Thermotechnic.

Says Calzada:

Before opening it, I called [Thermotechnic] to know what was inside … they answered, it was their answer to my energy pieces.

Dr. Calzada contacted a terrorism expert to handle the package. The expert first performed a scan of the package, then opened it in front of a journalist, Dr. Calzada, and a private security expert.

The terrorism consultant said he had seen this before:

This time you receive unconnected pieces. Next time it can explode in your hands.

Dr. Calzada added:

[The terrorism expert] told me that this was a warning.

I have no idea what Spanish law says about this kind of blatant intimidation, but I hope there are charges laid and convictions resulting from those charges.

Spain, of course, recently announced that they were having to cut back on their plans to become the greenest country in Europe, as they couldn’t afford the additional costs, both up-front and in lost opportunities in other industries.

H/T to Ace for the link.

Update, 25 June: In the comments, Ed Darrell says I’ve been taken in and has a long post up with translations of the original article used by Ace and PajamasMedia: here. If Ed is right and I’ve been taken in, I’ll post a retraction. I’m sure he’ll do the same if it turns out to be true.

Update, 28 June: A clarification posted at Ace of Spades HQ makes it seem a bit less like a mock-bomb threat.

The Green company sending the package apparently had its actual package — a report — swapped with car parts at some point in the mailing. [. . .]

It didn’t look like, or feel like, a letter or report, so at that point Calzada got a security guard to scan it — and what was inside was a cylindrical object with wires attached. At that point, the security guard got an expert to examine it, with others in attendance. The contents were a container for diesel of some sort, and some other parts. The expert saw this as a bomb threat, based on a pattern used by, eg., ETA: “This one is a hoax bomb. The next one might not be.”

June 17, 2010

Spain finds its “green” energy unsustainable

Filed under: Economics, Environment, Europe, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:20

Spain can’t afford to subsidize all those “green” jobs anymore:

Dead broke Spain can’t afford to prop up renewables anymore. The Spanish government is cutting the numbers of hours in a day it’s prepared to pay for “clean” energy.

Estimates put the investment in solar energy in Spain at €18bn — but the investment was predicated, as it is with all flakey renewables, on taxpayer subsidies. With the country’s finances in ruins, making sacrifices for the Earth Goddess Gaia is an option Spain can no longer afford. Incredibly, Spain pays more in subsidies for renewables than the total cost of energy production for the country. It leaves industry with bills 17 per cent higher than the EU average.

[. . .]

“Sustainability” has been the magic word that extracted large sums of public subsidy that couldn’t otherwise have been rationally justified using traditional cost/benefit measures. Spain paid 11 times more for “green” energy than it did for fossil fuels. The public makes up the difference. The renewables bandwagon is like a hopeless football team that finishes bottom of the league each year — but claims it’s too special ever to be relegated.

Of course, the lesson won’t be learned by other countries or regions . . . Ontario recently signed on to a similar kind of deal with Samsung. But Ontario taxpayers are getting a bargain: the jobs being created under this scheme will only cost $303,472, compared with the eye-watering $774,000 the Spanish jobs cost.

April 12, 2010

New “green” jobs to pay over $300K

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Environment — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 15:49

Oh, wait. Sorry, that should be will cost over $300K:

The Government of Ontario recently signed a $7 billion no-bid contract with two Korean companies to supply wind and solar power to the province. Officials claim the backroom deal will boost “green” industry and job creation. But it’s hard to fathom how the additional employment can possibly be beneficial when each new manufacturing job will cost taxpayers a whopping $303,472. Nor do dramatic increases in electricity rates constitute much of a bargain.

Having failed on his pledge to shutter all coal-fired plants in the province by 2007, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty evidently has sought a grand green gesture that would appease the global warming alarmists. Executives of Samsung C&T Corp., in concert with the Korean Electric Power Corporation, were understandably eager to cooperate.

The agreement commits the province to buy wind and solar energy from the two companies at artificially high rates. It also extends to Samsung and Korean Power preferential access to the transmission network at the expense of independent wind power producers. As if either provision won’t adequately punish Ontarians, McGuinty also has pledged to override local zoning laws in locating new wind farms and transmission corridors.

Update, 12 February 2011: Even Premier McGuinty can only deny financial reality for so long:

Times of international turmoil are great moments for domestic governments to make important announcements they don’t want to be noticed. Especially if the announcement involves a sudden reversal in policy that could seriously embarrass the government.

So Friday afternoon was an ideal time for Ontario’s Liberal government to take a big chunk of its alternative energy program and chuck it overboard. Attention was riveted on Egypt, where spectacular events were unfolding. The perfect opportunity for Premier Dalton McGuinty to engineer yet another major reversal, while paying a minimal price among voters.

After years of touting wind projects as a critical piece of the alternative energy puzzle, the government let slip — very quietly — that offshore wind projects are no longer part of the game plan. Turns out there just isn’t enough scientific evidence that offshore wind projects do a lick of good, said Brad Duguid, the energy minister.

October 9, 2009

Consciously “green” consumers more likely to cheat, says study

Filed under: Cancon, Environment — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:03

The Register has an interesting summary of a recent University of Toronto study:

Psychologists in Canada have revealed new research suggesting that people who become eco-conscious “green consumers” are “more likely to steal and lie” than others.

The new study comes from professor Nina Mazar of the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management and her colleague Chen-Bo Zhong.

“Those lyin’, cheatin’ green consumers,” begins the statement from the university. “Buying products that claim to be made with low environmental impact can set up ‘moral credentials’ in people’s minds that give license to selfish or questionable behavior.”

[. . .]

So there you have it: People who buy green — who offset their carbon, who purchase greened-up electricity, who put windmills on their roofs etc etc — are in the main thieving, lying, holier-than-thou scumbags. The old adage is right: You can never trust a hippy.

Much as we’d love to believe it, though, the whole study — like all of its News McNugget fast-food psychobabble kind — has caused the needle on our bullshit meter to flick far across into the brown zone. Green consumers, we’d suggest, are far more likely to be ripped off by unscrupulous charlatans than they are to be charlatans themselves.

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