100 miles: not just for food anymore

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When you turn on your coffee pot in the morning, you probably don’t think too much about where the electricity powering it comes from.  Perhaps you imagine a far away factory with a big smokestack belching pollution?  It’s a nasty image many of us try hard to forget.

You would be forgiven for not imagining your morning perk is brewed using energy generated from solar panels on the roof of your kid’s school, or from a wind tower owned by an Aboriginal community on Lake Erie. 

That’s the reality coming to Ontario however.  Of the thousands of new renewable energy projects now being built across the province, a surprising amount of them are community owned.

This is made possible by the Feed-In-Tariff (FIT) program which helps community and Aboriginal owned projects get started. The benefits of cleaner air are shared by everyone, but the income stays local.

So far under the program, there are 55 Aboriginal projects, and 196 community owned projects in the pipeline. There are also thousands of smaller local projects happening under MicroFIT.

Here are some great recent examples:

Elementary school rooftop solar projects – Toronto District School Board Toronto

Aboriginal owned wind project – PUKWIS Georgina Island, Lake Erie

Spiritual centre owned solar project – Mount Carmel Niagara Falls

Local renewable energy cooperative - Bright Sky power – Burlington

Electricity doesn’t have to come from far away factories, now it can be come from your own community.

Adam Scott

Project Coordinator – Green Energy