With so much focus on fracking and pipelines right now in North America’s energy sector, it’s easy to forget that we still need a revolution in the wind and the sky.

There’s considerable growth potential for wind, solar and other forms of renewable energy, and in fact renewables are actually expanding in places that get denigrated by foes of fossil fuels — like Texas and Alberta.

Unfortunately, the debate over renewables has become not just polarized but fossilized. Neither side makes it easy: opponents of renewable mount strident, angry arguments and slag wind supporters as woolly-eyed eco-freaks, while supporters seem to assume that those who don’t automatically agree are mean and wrong.

The situation is actually more complicated.

Last year Texas, the epicentre of the U.S. oil industry, generated 12,600 megawatts of wind energy — more than double all of Canada’s output.

Meanwhile Alberta, our oil province, while pushing aggressively for pipelines to carry bitumen, is generating 8 per cent of its own electricity from a growing network of wind farms. (See clarification below)



“That’s a higher percentage of wind than any other province in Canada,” says Alberta Energy Minister Ken Hughes. “Lots of people think of Alberta as only oil and gas. We like to think of it as all-energy.”

He has a point. This month, Ikea Canada became the latest company to make a big bet on wind, announcing it acquired a 20-turbine wind farm in southern Alberta that will open about a year from now. Some assembly required, perhaps.

The wind farm’s 161 gigawatt-hours of power will be enough to power 32 Ikea stores each year, and the company says the project puts it well on the way to being energy-independent worldwide by 2020.

Ikea thinks it’s a worthwhile bet, even though internationally it may cost the company as much as $8 billion to reach the goal of generating as much energy on its own as it now consumes.

It’s good for the brand image and, by stabilizing energy costs, for the company’s bottom line. Ikea also has nearly 4,000 solar panels atop its Greater Toronto Area stores, and it’s piloting a program in Britain to sell panels directly to consumers.

Another of the biggest of the big box chains, Walmart Canada, has also become one of Canada’s largest commercial purchasers of green power. And organizations like Mountain Equipment Co-op have been pioneering green building and power for their stores.

With this activity in the private sector and in places like Alberta and Texas, why does the debate over the future of energy keep going in circles in places like Ontario?

In the province’s minority government situation, all three parties seem to focus on the wrong energy policy points. The opposition parties yammer endlessly about the two cancelled gas plants, while the government remains defensive, even though it actually has good news — we have all but eliminated coal-fired power from our energy mix.

Wind and solar energy are supposed to pick up some of the slack from coal. But although Ontario already produces enough wind energy to power a community the size of Mississauga, the province is not the leader it set out to be when the Green Energy Act was passed in 2009.

It’s true that the Green Energy Act and the Feed-in Tariff, which pays producers a premium for alternative energy, have needed adjusting and will need more still. The province doesn’t need to be furtive or opaque — it should be unambiguously in favour of more wind and solar power, giving some consideration to what communities say about where the facilities should go.

We’re going to need more renewable power. Climate change is happening. A cross-Canada organization of experts called QUEST — Quality Urban Energy Systems of Tomorrow — points out that our urban communities use 61 per cent of our energy and are responsible for half of our greenhouse gas emissions, which are going up.

Our rising emissions have already attracted the notice of President Barack Obama, who wants Canada to do more. Our private sector retailers seem to get it — even though it’s called alternative energy, it’s no longer an alternative.

It’s the future.

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David Israelson is a Toronto writer and communications consultant.

Clarification - January 9, 2014: The above column about the future of wind power in Canada states that Albert is generating 8 per cent of it own electricity from wind farms. The article did not make clear that wind accounts for 8 per cent of the province’s total generating capacity, not its output.

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