A “feed-in tariff” offering guaranteed premium prices for electricity from wind, solar, biomass and other green sources promises to attract large-scale international investors and developers, especially those aiming to erect wind turbines, to Canada’s most populous province.

The Erie Shores Wind Farm includes 66 turbines with a total capacity of 99 MW. Credit: Denise Morazé/IPS

With the tariff – similar to those that spur renewable sources in Europe but novel to North America – many in the industry see Ontario as a bright market at a time when the recession and declining demand for electricity have dimmed prospects across the rest of the continent.

“I want every American governor to say, ‘Why did we not think of that and why did we not put that in place?'” Premier Dalton McGuinty said when the programme was announced on Sep. 24.

McGuinty’s Liberal government says it is promoting green energy to combat climate change. It needs additional energy sources to fulfill its promise to shut Ontario’s last four coal-burning generating stations – the province’s biggest sources of greenhouse gas and toxic air pollutants – by the end of 2014.

That search became more urgent last spring when soaring costs forced the suspension of plans to expand nuclear power generation.

“We are thrilled that the government has followed through on its pledge to make Ontario a global leader in renewable energy,” a coalition of local and international environment groups said shortly after the announcement.

The scheme also impressed German parliamentarian Hermann Scheer, the force behind his country’s tariff-fueled green-energy boom: “Ontario is quickly emerging as a global leader… with policies that rival those of the renewable energy superpowers in Europe and elsewhere,” he said.

But likely more important than environmental considerations, the government is counting on investments in renewable energy, particularly in wind development, to replace jobs being lost in the declining auto industry – until recently, the heart of Ontario’s economy.

The scheme will be expensive, requiring the Ontario Power Authority, the government-controlled electricity system manager, to pay far above current market rates. Those prices will be guaranteed for 20 years, with, apart from solar projects, no limits on production as long as there’s capacity on the provincially owned transmission grid to carry it.

The plan includes 2.1 billion dollars to upgrade the aging and bottlenecked transmission system. And a “domestic-content” rule, requiring developers to buy some local equipment and services, aims to attract turbine manufacturing and other industries.

Ontario now has nearly 1,100 megawatts (MW) of installed wind capacity and about 500 more under development. While tops in Canada, that total pales in comparison with the world-leading United States, Germany, Spain and China, which combined account for three-quarters of the global total of 121,000 MW.

It’s also a small fraction of the provincial generating capacity of 34,000 MW, dominated by nuclear, hydroelectric and coal.

But wind will dominate any new production that results from the feed-in tariff, which sets different rates for each renewable source. Wind generators with land-based turbines will get 13.5 cents for every kilowatt-hour they send to the grid. Projects built offshore in one of the four Great Lakes that border Ontario are to be paid 19 cents.

Current residential rates are either 5.6 or 6.5 cents, depending on how much a household consumes in a billing period. The average wholesale price is about 3.0 cents.

The programme replaces two flawed schemes: One paid a version of feed-in tariff to projects under 10 MW: Solar installations received 42 cents per kilowatt-hour; all other renewable sources got 11.2. Bigger developers had to bid for the right to supply limited amounts to the grid – a process that was not only expensive and uncertain but also kept prices below 10 cents.

“Ontario wants green-energy business,” Energy Minister George Smitherman said at the announcement of the new tariff. “These regulations will help ensure industry and municipalities that jobs will be created, investment is committed and that the renewable energy industry grows across the province.”

Three months earlier – after he had introduced legislation to permit the new system, but without details – Smitherman received the World Wind Energy Association annual award, which cited his “outstanding achievements in making Ontario the leading wind energy jurisdiction in North America”.

There are signs the strategy is working.

“We’ve seen a lot of developer interest and a lot of entrants that weren’t in the market before,” says Tim Stephure, an analyst with the market research firm North American Wind Power Advisory, of Cambridge, Mass.

The tariff is “very competitive, especially compared with other markets in North America”, he said. “It’s very attractive.”

“Ontario has become of great interest to the industry, not just in Canada but beyond,” says Robert Hornung, president of the Ottawa-based Canadian Wind Energy Association. “There’s a tremendous amount of competition to secure investment and bring in jobs. Ontario has sent a clear signal: ‘We want to compete.’ ”

A flood of applications for projects offshore – where the potential capacity is estimated to be 35,000 megawatts – forced the government to call a halt, at least until spring.

Major developers are arriving, some acquiring smaller companies. Calgary-based TransAlta Corporation recently purchased the already sizeable Canadian Hydro Developers Inc., also from the Alberta city, which plans a major offshore project in Lake Erie.

British giant International Power plc recently acquired AIM PowerGen, which is building a 40-MW wind farm in Ontario. International’s chief executive, Philip Cox, said the new tariff was key to the decision.

Still, the industry has concerns.

Just six days after announcing the new plan, Smitherman ordered 500 MW of transmission capacity to be reserved for developers who sign “framework agreements” with the province. The government hasn’t provided details, but the move is apparently to reward companies that agree to build manufacturing plants, and create jobs, in the province.

First on that list is said to be South Korea’s Samsung Group, which might use Ontario as a base for selling turbines across North America.

While job creation is a worthy goal, investors question further constraints on access to the grid and, more important, wonder what other changes might be in store, Stephure says.

Smitherman’s order “sends a somewhat ominous signal to the rest of the industry,” he says. Ontario “makes the rules the whole industry has to play by and now they’re bending them already. Standard rules and certainty are important.”

The domestic-content rules – 25 percent for projects built to the end of 2011; 50 percent afterwards – will inhibit developers getting the cheapest equipment available on the global market and, in turn, increase project costs.

German solar developers are protesting the rule and threatening to stay away if it’s not rescinded. It’s not yet clear whether wind developers will issue the same threat.

As well, the Ontario Power Authority will keep any carbon offsets or other environmental benefits that might be available if a carbon market ever develops.

And, to appease critics who fear health and noise impacts, the government has imposed setbacks from homes and schools that are stricter than most in Europe and elsewhere. Even so, a neighbour of one project has launched a lawsuit that demands wind development be stopped until further studies are done.

None of this will open up development of Ontario’s by far biggest wind resource – the remote shores of James and Hudson Bays, now well north of any major transmission line. The plan doesn’t include expansion of the grid to this windswept tundra. Developers would also have to negotiate with aboriginal communities, which now have a major influence over what happens in the northern half of the province.

Despite the uncertainties and criticism, Hornung is optimistic. “It’s still early days. This is a very ambitious initiative. We’re just in the launch-window phase.”

*This story is part of a series of features on sustainable development by IPS and IFEJ – International Federation of Environmental Journalists­ for Communicators for Sustainable Development (www.complusalliance.org).

One of the displays at an exhibition here imagines a Netherlands pig grower who, in some not-distant future, has given up his farm and now commutes to work downtown at a high-rise “Pig City.”

In the Vertiscape, diners would ride a glass elevator to a restaurant atop several storeys of crops and livestock - the menu ingredients. Credit: Vertiscape designer Brad Augustine

The animals he helps to tend, conceived in the “eros room,” don’t leave the open-sided, 40-storey sty until they’re slaughtered and processed.

A portion of their feed is grown in or around the building; the rest is waste from nearby food processors. Their manure is converted into fertiliser as well as biogas for heat and electricity.

Some 44 towers could supply all the Netherlands’ pork, say the designers, MVRDV of Rotterdam.

Pig City is the most provocative concept at “Carrot City,” a two-month exhibition here devoted to the rapidly growing field of urban agriculture and how it interacts with the design of buildings and spaces. No one is yet prepared to build the sty-scraper, and the exact concept might never fly.

But it and the entire show are inspiring discussion about city “farms” and their role in the coming new world of food production. In both industrialised and developing nations, experts say, humans must begin to nourish themselves with crops and livestock raised in their ever-expanding metropolises.

Populations are growing, arable land is being lost to development, fuels will become expensive and scarce, and greenhouse gas emissions must be cut to curb climate change.

To those concerns add “a crisis of trust” in the current food system, says Joe Nasr, one of three professors at Toronto’s Ryerson University who organised the exhibition. “It’s increasingly showing flaws,” he said. Here, warning signs include the recent deadly bacterial contamination of imported spinach, peanuts and pistachios.

These issues, along with unease about chemicals and genetic modification, as well as reduced nutritional value, have sparked interest in local food and the “100-mile” diet, as well as “small plot intensive,” or SPIN farming, based on producing organic fruits and vegetables in numerous tiny backyard plots.

In the developing world, food shortages are endemic, and climate change is expected to further reduce production.

The movement to promote urban agriculture began in poorer countries, where it was intended to improve the efficiency of an already widespread practice. Expansion to the industrialised world is recent, although it circles back to older times: A downtown Toronto neighbourhood is known as Cabbagetown because in the mid-1800s, impoverished Irish immigrants grew the vegetable in their patches of front yard.

At the end of World War II, 80 percent of U.S. citizens grew food; potatoes and tomatoes sprouted outside the Roosevelt White House.

The ideas proposed by advocates of urban agriculture – nearly 50 are displayed at Carrot City – range from small and simple to large-scale and high-tech.

Many illustrate actual or potential locations – parks, rooftops, former warehouses and arenas, front and back yards, the vast open areas around many suburban apartment towers and even under elevated expressways.

Others propose products to get more from those areas – easily watered and aerated containers, giant soil-filled bags for temporary sites, low-maintenance chicken coops and vertical planting boxes for walls. A few present designs for projects such as Pig City that amount to large-scale intensive agriculture.

Proponents claim the high-tech concepts would create ideal growing conditions, without risk of crop failure, drought or pests, letting them produce far more food per square metre than conventional farms. A hectare inside a vertical farm proposed for Dubai could match the output of four to six hectares on the ground, its designers say.

They are intended to be closed-loops: They’d use their wastes as a source of feed, heat or energy; recycle and purify water; and require virtually no herbicides, pesticides and antibiotics. With their small footprint, they might allow farmland to revert back to its natural state, able to conserve water, prevent erosion, cleanse the air and store carbon.

They’d also dramatically reduce emissions associated with on-farm machinery and transportation to processors and markets.

Typical is a project called Agropark. Its main floor would house 100,000 pigs. In the basement, manure from upstairs would feed mushrooms and generate biogas to warm fish tanks. In the top-floor greenhouse, commercial flowers would absorb carbon dioxide from the mushroom beds. Their residue would, in turn, help to fuel the biogas digester.

In the Vertiscape, designed by a Ryerson student, diners would ride a glass elevator to a restaurant atop several storeys of crops and livestock – the menu ingredients.

The exhibition showcases several arguments for urban agriculture.

Whether muddy-handed planting in a community garden or punching computer keys in a high-tech high rise, the farms aim to reconnect city dwellers with the production of their food, after decades in which globalised industrial agribusiness has made it as abstract as calculus.

“Vertical farming allows us to dynamically thrive in the local place where we live while linking in to the global flows to embrace modernity and simultaneously return to our roots,” say the proponents of the Dubai project. “Those roots simply exist 1,000 feet (305 metres) above the ground.”

Food production could transform a city’s character. Whether leafy towers or front-yard gardens, “when the designs are visible, they attract attention and change the experience of walking down the street,” says Ryerson architecture professor Mark Gorgolewski.

There’s also a social policy dimension. In Chicago’s Growing Home programme, for example, ex-inmates tend gardens and greenhouses on four vacant lots in a disadvantaged south-side neighbourhood. They acquire life skills and job experience; residents get fresh food in an area abandoned by supermarket chains.

Carrot City also makes the case that good design and the prospect of being on the leading edge could make a necessary change acceptable.

“People don’t see edible plants as attractive or part of the landscaping,” says the third organiser, June Komisar.

Urban agriculture suffers from “assumptions based on the dirty city,” Nasr adds. “Things from there are unsafe; bad for you.”

In wealthy countries, it faces a cultural stigma: “Food production is for the poor, not for modern people.”

Talk of high-rise farms, particularly towers of chicken or pigs, often sparks derision or hostility. But even front-yard gardens are a tough sell to the many who demand the lush green grass that now covers 12 million hectares of the United States and costs 30 billion dollars a year to maintain.

“How far have we come from the core of our humanity that the act of growing our own food might be considered impolite, unseemly, threatening, radical or even hostile,” writes Fritz Haeg, a California “social designer” in his book “Edible Estates – Attack on the front lawn.”

The range of sizes is important. While critics complain high-rise projects are another form of industrial agriculture, supporters say they’re required for volume. In any case, there’s plenty of scope for small-scale farming, Komisar says. “If everyone realises they can do some of their own – in gardens or containers on a balcony – it will give people more control over their nutrition and ensure access to good food.”

How much could urban agriculture produce? For a start, Gorgolewski says, it might meet 30 percent of the needs of low-income people. “With a fundamental rethink, we could push that proportion to the entire city.”

*This story is part of a series of features on sustainable development by IPS and IFEJ -International Federation of Environmental Journalists ­ for Communicators for Sustainable Development (www.complusalliance.org).