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Ottawa has one of the cleanest environments in Canada, but that is due to our lack of smokestacks – not because our behaviour is any different from that of other cities.

City council originally wanted to go “100 per cent renewable” but renamed its strategy “Energy Evolution” when it realized the Herculean effort that would be required to reach even a fraction of that original goal.

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A city report estimates that five per cent of our energy is from locally produced renewables from the half-dozen hydro dams and thousands of rooftop solar panels; it does not include the contribution of biomass (wood stoves in rural homes) or the output of NetZeroPlus heat pumps.

To meet the other 95 per cent of energy needs, Ottawa imports natural gas, oil, propane, gasoline and grid power, which results in $3 billion a year leaving our community to pay for this.

These calculations are much lower than data from the Office of Energy Efficiency, which indicates the city’s annual consumption is the equivalent of 50 billion kWh for all end uses, for an outflow of $5 billion. Federal data indicate that four per cent of Ottawa’s energy is renewable.