Watts Happening?

by Don Pettit for Peace Energy Cooperative www.peaceenergy.ca ph 250-782-3882

Snapshots from around the world

POWER SHIFT:

he biggest, most dramatic and fastest power shift in human history is happening right now. Its just amazing how little we hear about it in mainstream media. Today Ill do my part in correcting that oversight. Well travel the world and take a few snapshots of whats REALLY happening out there. Its amazing. First a quick note: Peace Energy Cooperative, based in Dawson Creek, is looking for a renewable energy (RE) equipment sales person. The Coop has moved into RE sales for home, farm, ranch, and business, but demand has far outstripped its ability

to cope. For the right person, this will be a golden opportunity to move into the rapidly expanding retail market for renewable energy in the Peace Region. Call the Peace Energy Coop office at 250782-3882 to find out more! SOLAR COSTS PLUMMET, AGAIN The cost per watt of solar cells in Canada dropped 24 per cent in 2012, and by an astonishing 90 per cent since 2000. (I recently ran across an old invoice for a solar panel I bought for my home system in

As solar power reaches cost parity with conventional energy sometime in the next five years, lots of workers will be kept busy installing solar panels. Here, a roof top is being

outfitted with a solar array in Dawson Creek by Ron Moch of Moch Electric Ltd. Totalled over the year, this solar roof will supply all of the buildings electricity.

1989. The 80 watt panel cost $800. Today, the same panel, with higher quality and a better guarantee, costs about $100 an 800 per cent drop!) Thanks to efficiency innovations and low-cost mass production in Asia, the International Energy Association predicts that solar will reach cost parity with traditional power sources within five years. Wind power has already reached cost parity with an energy source that used to be the cheapest, coal. CHINA GOES RENEWABLE, BIG TIME China, already a world leader in renewables, is planning to more than double its wind capacity in the next six years, from the current installed 75,000 megawatts to an astounding 200,000 megawatts by 2020! Thats the equivalent of 125 Site C dams in six years! This is the biggest renewables push in history. Why? Its cheap to mass produce, its fast to install, and its very, very clean. HALTING CLIMATE CHANGE Recent studies suggest that in order to limit global warming to two degrees and avoid the worst effects of climate change, the world needs to invest about $1 trillion dollars per year for the next 36 years in renewable energy. Currently, the world pays about $6 trillion dollars per year to burn fossil fuels. Which is the better deal? SOLAR BREAKS ALL RECORDS, AGAIN

gas) producers to power their planned facilities with clean energy instead of fossil fuels. This would generate 400 more permanent jobs, cut pollution by a third (the same as removing one million cars from the road), leave a lasting RE legacy along the coast that will endure long after the gas is gone, and would not reduce but improve the gas sectors competitiveness. Anybody listening? FRANCE PRICES CARBON In its 2014 budget, France revealed that it will tax carbon at an initial rate of CAD$10 per tonne. This will raise about $500 million per year which France will plow directly back into its transition to renewables. COAL GOING, GOING, GONE An Edmonton Journal op-ed by a Calgary ER doctor, an Edmonton physician and the head of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment urged Alberta to phase out coal power as quickly as possible. Under Ontarios new Green Energy Act, their last coal-fired plant, and the continents largest, will be closed down before the end of this year. Wind and solar are taking its place. ITS HAPPENING

We started our energy history with renewables: think human power, animal power, water wheels and Dutch windmills. The next big transition was to Deutsche Bank predicts that the global solar industry coal, spawning the industrial revolution. Then came will bring online 46,000 megawatts of solar in 2014, oil and gas and another revolution in technology followed by another 56,000 megawatts in 2015. that brought us to the world of today. Now we are Wow. coming full circle back to renewables, but light years ahead in sophistication, power and reliability. LNG SHOULD GO GREEN Dont be fooled by lack of media attention. This grand power shift is happening, its happening right A recent Tides Canada report proposes that the BC now, and like all the other energy revolutions, it will provincial government direct LNG (liquefied natural change everything.