Executive director Moe Garahan tells me the 150-acre agricultural operation forms part of the National Capital Commission’s Greenbelt yet it’s squarely within Ottawa city limits. “We have a 25-year lease on one of the NCC’s farm properties,” she says, and it’s a farm accessible by public transit. “You can take a city bus there: the O-C Transpo number 94.”

Twelve kilometres east of Parliament Hill, the Just Food Farm grows a dazzling mix of organic fruits and vegetables including carrots, brussel sprouts and watermelon.

Executive director Moe Garahan tells me the 150-acre agricultural operation forms part of the National Capital Commission’s Greenbelt yet it’s squarely within Ottawa city limits. “We have a 25-year lease on one of the NCC’s farm properties,” she says, and it’s a farm accessible by public transit. “You can take a city bus there: the O-C Transpo number 94.”

Just Food is intriguing not only for its status as a rural-urban hybrid. It also boasts an unusual electricity source: a 10-kilowatt photovoltaic array launched in October 2017 with the financial assistance of Bullfrog Power and Beau’s Brewery. The PV panels power a cooler and greenhouse — where the group will attempt year-round growing — and a circa-1920s barn that serves as an education centre.

“The whole farm is about education,” Garahan tells me. She says elementary and high school students, along with corporate groups, tour the facility throughout the growing season, learning about agriculture and solar energy’s inner workings. Last year, as part of Canada 150 celebrations, youth from across the country visited the property to witness the solar array’s construction.

As befits its name, the farm is a hub for social action. It donates some of its crop to Gloucester Emergency Food Cupboard, a local charity that provides families in crisis with a four-day food supply. Sadly, people in this situation are often given sub-standard provisions; here they can receive high-quality organic produce. Just Food houses a program called FarmWorks that teaches street-involved youngsters how to grow vegetables and develop other skills that can help them find employment. The farm provides space for Karen refugees who came to Ottawa after surviving war in Burma. In a sensitively written post, the organization’s website says the land offers these people, “who have endured years of displacement, a place of comfort and sense of home, as well as a place to practice and adapt their farming skills.”

The project benefits from solar energy’s affordability. “We expect over time the solar installation will save us money,” Garahan says. “Operational funds are hard to come by, so solar, which is in abundance, helps facilitate all our work.”

George Wright concurs. He grows oats at Castor River Farm, an Ottawa-area operation powered by wind and a three-kilowatt solar installation. “The price of solar panels has come down 10-fold,” he explains. “Renewables are a form of insurance; they carry us through the lows. During bad growing seasons we have no hydro bill.” If one needed another reason to embrace these energy sources, this is it: they can improve the economic security of the folks who grow our food.

W.H. Auden began his great poem, Law, Like Love with the words, “Law, say the gardeners, is the sun.” He meant, perhaps, that all the Earth’s bounty is ultimately attributable to the grand fireball in the sky. At Just Food Farm, with its new solar array, the sun brings forth more than vegetables and fruit. It energizes a powerful experiment in social justice.

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Imagination is key to innovation. After 18 years of constructing and racing solar-powered cars the Queen’s Solar Design Team, situated at Queen’s University in Kingston Ontario, plunged head first into building sustainable and energy efficient homes. They ended up placing first at the US Department of Energy’s Solar Decathlon in 2013 alongside Carleton University and Algonquin College for their net-zero home, and are now taking on a new challenge. Their goal? Building a completely autonomous home capable of surviving the Canadian winter.

The Queen’s Solar Education Centre as it is called is located at Queen’s University and will be used as a centre for inspiration, innovation and education.

Unlike a net zero home, which gives as much electrical energy to the grid as it draws from it, an autonomous home is completely independent of outside power sources and municipal water systems. It eats what it makes.

“For example,” says Matt Bowen, the Electrical Manager, “we feature Motech 235W photovoltaic panels, to generate electricity from sunlight. We use 8 large capacity Surette Rolls batteries to store the electricity generated by the solar panels, for use at night or during days of low sunlight.”

“I’d say, right now, the most impressive part of the home is the Solar Photovoltaic (PV) system simply because it’s the only system that’s nearing a working state” Bowen also mentions. “I’m very excited to see where our heating system ends up though, I believe it will be a very impressive system of technologies.”

The home will also feature “an integrated HVAC and hot water system heated with solar thermal technology, as well as rainwater collection, storage and filtration systems making use of grey-water runoff and compost to nourish the home’s flora,” as was stated on The Engineering Society of Queen’s University website.

The team has three main objectives with the house. The first is to give students the hands on opportunity of working with sustainable and energy efficient homes. “The hope is that they’ll sort of be inspired by this work, and decide to work in environmental fields and the solar industry,” says Katie Yang, the Buisness Manager on the team.

Close up of the exterior of the solar house

The second is to make the home a center for innovative research. Not only will it be a space to implement existing technologies, but also it will test out new ideas for similar houses. The team hopes that by doing so, they will discover a way to make living off grid easier by either making it less expensive or more efficient.

Their third and final objective with the house is broader outreach through community workshops. For example, during the summer the team visited a group of campers at the Eco Adventure Camp in Kingston. The workshop covered renewable energy and sustainable living while at the same time challenged the 10-14 year old participants to design their own eco-homes and solar-powered LEGO cars.

Campers at the Elbow Lake Environmental Education Centre design their own Eco-homes with QSDT. (Queen’s Solar Design Team). Photo Credit: Queen’s Solar Design Team

Another part of holding workshops is giving tours to elementary and university students as well as community members. Yang says, “We tell them [about] the technology that’s inside the house and where you can get them, and that they’re already on the market, which shocks people, they’re like ‘I didn’t know that this was already there, there’s a solar powered fridge,’ and they’re quite enamored by a lot of the technology.”

The team’s work also wouldn’t be possible without their numerous supporters, mentors, faculty members and sponsors. The team is especially excited about Bullfrog Power, a renewable energy company,who became one of their sponsors for $15,000 in the summer.

At the end of the day, imagination is what powers the drive for creation. “It’s still a work in progress,” says Yang. “Sometimes we get a little bit carried away when we’re imagining – we’re just like ‘oh we want this house and we want this to be amazing’– I wanted a bunk bed that doubled as a sofa… but we’re not at that stage yet. Although, I did hear that, at one point, there was even talk about a solar powered flat screen TV!”

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Each chapter presents a round-up of all the wins, advances and anticipated benefits of a particular renewable energy. Brown glows equally on the subjects of solar, wind, geothermal and small hydro power. Even a well-informed reader is likely to find something new and interesting among the neatly laid-out facts. For example, did you know that China, not Iceland, is the world’s leader in geothermal energy production? Indeed, these facts are the key strength of the book, as Brown has done thorough research but does not accompany it with balanced analysis. 

Cheering Canada’s electricity exports from Ontario to New England and New York, he is content to note that this is possible because Canada is so sparsely populated. Many Canadians might have hoped to make the argument – or at least raise the possibility – that our electricity surplus could be used to reduce our reliance on nuclear power. But these alternative possibilities are not touched upon by Brown.

Other chapters provide a valuable bird’s-eye view of sectors for which it can sometimes be difficult to discern clear trends. Brown ably pieces together facts and figures from around the world to give an interesting look at the relative success of various renewable energy technologies within different geopolitical climates. The United States, for example, is currently experiencing what Brown refers to as a “geothermal renaissance” with 124 power plants currently under development. However, here as elsewhere, he does not explain the factors that might constrain or otherwise impede the growth of geothermal power as an industry.

The result is that renewable energy is presented as a locomotive gathering momentum without any significant sources of friction to slow it down.

China is perhaps the best example of a country whose energy landscape can be either fantastically encouraging (now the world leader in small-scale hydro power with 249,000 megawatts) or Dickensian orphanage-level depressing (producing and consuming nearly as much coal as the rest of the world combined) depending on the facts produced.

Brown is justifiably elated on the topic of China’s small-scale hydro, but is content to note that on the subject of coal, “rising public anger over pollutants from coal-fired power plants is damaging the coal prospect.”

Surprisingly, Brown spends relatively little time exploring new innovations within blossoming renewable energy fields. New municipal waste-to-biofuel advances, for example, would have fit neatly into the context of a discussion on our energy future. The chapter on solar energy concentrates almost entirely on conventional photovoltaics, even though ideas like light-sensitive nanoparticles, Gallium Arsenide-based cells and even floating solar power plants look increasingly like they will be a significant part of the not-so-distant energy future. Other advancements, such as battery innovations which threaten to turn the entire energy sector on its head, are also conspicuously excluded.

Moreover, an opportunity was missed to conduct some interesting analysis of the factors which allow technologies such as wind and solar power to thrive in some parts of the world and lag behind in others. What economic policies do the global leaders have in common? What geographical features? Thus, readers are left to wonder for themselves, as Brown’s theme of “renewable energy is moving ahead” seems to him a sufficiently robust idea to support the entire structure of the book, without accompanying analysis, explanation or examination.

It’s not by any means unreasonable to write a book presenting all of the good news in renewable energy around the world. Boosting the spirits of those attempting to affect this energy transition is a worthy cause. 

However, if this bit of quasi-propaganda were the explicit goal of this work, it ought to have been stated from the outset. Brown instead poses the question for himself, “Can the world’s economies move to wind and solar fast enough to avoid crossing key thresholds that could cause climate change to spiral out of control?”

As an experienced researcher and author of more than 50 books on environmental topics, Lester Brown surely has some interesting opinions to share on potential answers to that difficult and complex question. Unfortunately, he has divulged few of them in this particular book.

The Great Transition: Shifting From Fossil Fuels to Wind and Solar Energy by Lester Brown, New York: WW Norton, 2015, 192 pages. Reviewed by Stu Campana

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EACH WEEK, A\J staffers share our favourite facts & findings from whatever books, articles, documentaries, podcasts and other media we’ve been consuming. Here’s what we’ve learned this week!

Things from the Internet!

In St. Louis, Missouri, a large all-ages playground called City Museum has been constructed using found objects from the city including a ferris wheel, old bridges and two abandoned planes.
Source: Feel Desain \ Found by Rachel

Japan has developed floating solar power stations! The largest such system to date, which goes live this month, is located in two reservoirs in Kato City. The system consists of almost 9,000 solar panels on a bed of polyethylene and is fully waterproofed.
Source: Huffington Post \ Found by Rachel

The Coca-Cola company has revealed a new Coke bottle made entirely from sugar cane. Their goal is to use the “PlantBottle” exclusively by 2020.
Source: Mashable \ Found by Rachel

Germany has agreed to convert over 60 former military bases into nature preserves, aiming to create sanctuaries for rare species of birds.
Source: France 24 \ Found by Rachel

A new study by Yegor Malashichev, a zoologist at Saint Petersburg State University in Russia, has discovered that kangaroos are almost exclusively left-handed.
Source: National Geographic \ Found by Rachel

Things from Videos!

Animator Seth Boyden has created a short film that imagines a rock’s journey through time and space.
Source: National Geographic \ Found by Rachel

The post The Best Things Ever of All Time, This Week! appeared first on A\J.

EACH WEEK, A\J staffers share our favourite facts & findings from whatever books, articles, documentaries, podcasts and other media we’ve been consuming. Here’s what we’ve learned this week!

Things from the Internet!

New NASA maps pinpoint future global hotspots on Earth up to the year 2100, while increasing the resolution of computer models to an astounding 25km.
Source: Scientific American \ Found by nik

IKEA has pledged to spend €1-billion on renewable energy and steps to help poor nations cope with climate change.
Source: Reuters \ Found by Rachel

Does an octopus have a soul? Researcher Sy Montgomery thinks so – they can exhibit compassion towards humans and engage in erotic sex.
Source: National Geographic \ Found by nik

As part of a redevelopment project, Singapore has constructed a man-made forest consisting of 18 solar-powered “supertrees” that are fitted with solar photovoltaic systems that convert sunlight into energy.
Source: CNN \ Found by Rachel

This is batty! Researchers think they may have discovered a cure for the killer white-nose fungus that is decimating North American bat populations. UV light can make infection visible and bacteria, normally used to delay fruit from ripening, can cure the infection.
Source: National Geographic \ Found by nik

Things from Videos!

A new hydrothermal vent field has been discovered in the Gulf of California. The Pescadero Basin vents are the deepest known high-temperature vents in the Pacific Ocean, located 12,500 feet below the surface.
Source: National Geographic \ Found by Rachel

The post The Best Things Ever of All Time, This Week! appeared first on A\J.

EACH WEEK, A\J staffers share our favourite facts & findings from whatever books, articles, documentaries, podcasts and other media we’ve been consuming. Here’s what we’ve learned this week!

Physics of the world’s oldest broken bone pushes the date of land-dwelling animals’ appearance back by 2 million years.
Source: IFLscience.com \ Found by nik

Starting this summer, Duke Energy will build a facility near Epcot that will provide solar power to Walt Disney World. The power plant’s 48,000 solar panels will be arranged in the shape of a Mickey Mouse head.
Source: Orlando Sentinel \ Found by Rachel

Politics is for the bees! The Bí Project is aiming to turn signs from the Irish same-sex marriage referendum campaigns into urban beehives in Dublin.
Source: The Irish Times \ Found by nik

Sydney has recently started paving roads with a more environmentally friendly asphalt mix containing recycled printer toner, marking the world’s first commercial use for toner waste.
Source: The Guardian \ Found by Rachel

One of the world’s largest solar plants has been opened in Pakistan with the aim of supplying clean, reliable energy and helping alleviate the country’s chronic power shortages.
Source: Responding to Climate Change \ Found by Rachel

A Dutch start-up called Nerdalize has developed a radiator that stores the heat generated by computer servers to create “data furnaces” that can warm homes and offices.
Source: BBC \ Found by Rachel

A California-based non-profit, GRID Alternatives, plans to give away 1,600 free solar panels to California’s poorest residents by 2016.
Source: Inhabitat.com \ Found by Rachel

In France, a new law was recently passed that mandates all new buildings in commercial zones must partially cover their roofs in either plants or solar panels.
Source: CSGlobe \ Found by Rachel

The post The Best Things Ever of All Time, This Week! appeared first on A\J.

EACH WEEK, A\J staffers share our favourite facts & findings from whatever books, articles, documentaries, podcasts and other media we’ve been consuming. Here’s what we’ve learned this week!

Things from the Internet!

Photojournalist Martin Edström has taken a series of 360° panoramic images of Son Doong, the world’s largest cave, in Vietnam. 
Source: National Geographic \ Found by Rachel

An international committee of taxonomists has chosen their top ten species discovered in 2014 from more than 18,000 choices! Highlights include a species of spider that cartwheels and a feathered dinosaur with chicken-like features.
Source: The ESF Top 10 New Species for 2015 \ Found by Jordan

Walk Score recently released its annual list of America’s most cycling-friendly cities, with Cambridge, Massachusetts, taking the the top spot. The company takes into account bike-lane availability, plus the number of hills in a city, bike-commuting rates, and how often bikers have to de-saddle along their routes, among other factors.
Source: Grist \ Found by Rachel

A study by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) recently concluded that solar energy holds the best potential for meeting the planet’s long-term energy needs while reducing greenhouse gases.
Source: Computerworld \ Found by Rachel

According to a new study led by Yale University, worms and other small soil-dwelling animals act as a buffer against climate change by feeding on microbes that release carbon dioxide from decaying organic matter.
Source: Al Jazeera America \ Found by Rachel

Things from Videos!

A time-lapse video shows how bees develop, from larvae to when they hatch.
Source: National Geographic \ Found by Rachel

The post The Best Things Ever of All Time, This Week! appeared first on A\J.

EACH WEEK, A\J staffers share our favourite facts & findings from whatever books, articles, documentaries, podcasts and other media we’ve been consuming. Here’s what we’ve learned this week!

On May 16th, Ecuador plans to break the World Record for tree planting in a historic reforestation blitz.
Source: The Independent \ Found by nik

People who commute on foot or by bicycle are happier, sleep better and are better able to deal with problems than those who drive to work.
Source: Fast Company \ Laura

Leaving electronic devices – like computers – on all the time consumes an average of 164 watts per home, according to a new report from the National Resource Defense Council. That’s the equivalent of brewing 234 cups of coffee every day for a year, and a really easy way to cut your energy consumption.
Source: Treehugger \ Found by Laura

A Dutch solar bike path pilot project is outperforming expectations. The 70-metre-long SolaRoad has generated enough power for a single-person household for one year in just six months. Roads are next.
Source: CBC \ Found by David

Sri Lanka has become the first nation in the world to comprehensively protect all of its mangrove forests.
Source: BBC \ Rachel

An elephant saved a human baby’s life after tearing a house down in conflict over blocked migration route.
Source: Times of India \ Found by nik

NEW STUDY: Scientists discover that the Earth is endangered by a new strain of fact-resistant humans.
Source: The New Yorker \ Found by nik

The award-winning Epuron renewables commercial still feels fresh and utterly charming after 8 years.
Source: YouTube \ Found by nik

Genital warfare: Many species of hawkmoth have evolved a handy way of jamming bat sonar.
Source: Futurity.org \ Found by nik

The post The Best Things Ever of All Time, This Week! appeared first on A\J.

Each week, A\J staffers will be sharing our favourite facts & findings from whatever books, articles, documentaries, podcasts and other media we’ve been consuming. Here’s what we’ve learned this week.

Things from the Internet!

BioSCAN researcher discovers 30 new species of fly in Los Angeles in only 3 months. Bonus: The most lurid fly sketch you’ve ever seen.
Source: BioSCAN Buzz \ Found by nik

The post The Best Things Ever of All Time, This Week! appeared first on A\J.

A\J: Does Ontario have a long-term comprehensive energy plan?

Read “The Story of Solar” from A\J’s latest issue and see how solar cells and photovoltaic systems work.

A\J: Does Ontario have a long-term comprehensive energy plan?

Shawn Cronkwright: Last year the Government of Ontario published its 2013 Long-Term Energy Plan. The goal is to have 20,000 MW of renewables on-line by 2025; 10,700 MW to be sourced from non-hydro renewable energy and the other 9,300 MW from hydro.

In the Ontario Power Authority’s (OPA) experience, what is the most difficult part of incorporating PV into the existing grid?

The OPA’s role is in the planning and procuring section of the plan. The Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) actually operates and integrates the PV into the grid, so OPA don’t concern themselves with that aspect. They like that PV generation lines up nicely with peak demand.  The greatest difficulty is that the supply can change very rapidly. They can be generating a large number of MW, and that can quickly diminish due to clouds.

What is the OPA’s renewable energy of choice?

The OPA encourages all renewable energy developments, as they all have their own benefits and challenges. Wind is the lowest cost, but you only get power when it’s windy. Bioenergy helps take care of agricultural waste. Biomass is huge in Northern Ontario with the forest industry. Hydro [is] great where there is [an] appropriate water resource.

The Feed-in Tariff (FiT) in Ontario is perceived as very difficult to comply with. Is this deliberate to slow down or control the rate of uptake?

The OPA is not trying to make it difficult, but they are trying to accomplish a lot of things through the program at the same time. 2009 saw lots of FiT uptake. The cost of PV equipment has dropped drastically, helping uptake as well. Even though the pay-out for PV generation has been decreasing, every time there is an offer they are way over-prescribed for the FiT program.

The FiT is not just about energy, about getting as much as you can get. They are also trying to encourage aboriginal communities and co-ops to get involved. So it’s also a social improvement project.

How will all this work with smart grids?

Well, the grid is slowly getting “smarter.”

A few years ago, the electricity was for the most part centrally produced. Now, electricity flows both ways inherently, right down to the house level. Smart meters have been installed and they can monitor electricity entering and being pulled from the grid. Now that managers can see the usage and generation patterns more clearly, they can also charge much closer to what the real cost for electricity generation and use is. This ability also promotes energy conservation.

Another benefit of the two-way meters is that outages can be seen and responded to much quicker. With one-way supply of electricity, it was very difficult to detect where outages were occurring and when. With two-way meters, they see any disruptions much faster.

The IESO is adding some storage capacity to the grid to take care of short-term response in demand changes – 50 MW in total. 35 MW came on this summer, and another 15 MW are in the works.

The OPA is working on adding longer-term response and storage options.

The post Ontario’s Solar Plan appeared first on A\J.