We Canadians

Reason 1: More Incentives, Lower Costs

Ontario has  planned a great incentive program that should become law very soon. For each unit (kilowatt-hour) of  solar power that you produce you would be paid over 80 cents. For each unit of power you consume you pay far less, probably just 10% of this.  This magic is achieved using Feed In Tariffs, the reason  behind Europe’s renewable energy boom.

Prices of solar PV panels have dropped in the last two years making  installations more attractive than ever before.

Reason 2: Just do the math

If you meet just 3% energy needs with solar panels, the Feed In Tariffs could reduce your utility bill by 30%. With current prices of solar panels, the payback could be less than ten years.If you sign a contract, the tariff is guaranteed for twenty years.

Reason 3: The benefits may not last too long

The feed in tariff is adjusted from time. If the program becomes very popular, the rates may be revised downwards. The price of solar panels depends on availability of  high quality silicon. Demand for solar panels is likey to take off  under the new US administration and this may well drive the prices upwards.

Reason 4: Solar energy is non-polluting

Solar energy is abundant and it causes no pollution, either. Just think of all the greenhouse gases that you save. It is a myth that producing solar panels takes too much energy; this might have been true a decade ago, but it is not true with current technology.

Reason 5:The cost of entry is very low

You can start with a very small project and expand as you gain experience.  Solar panels can be added at any time. A new, expandable line of inverters is now available; you just keep adding inverters as you add more panels.

Reason 6 :Solar panels are maintenance free

With solar energy, there are no mechanical parts to worry about. Unlike windmills, there are no noise issues.

Reason 7: Be a part of the solution

Once the Feed In Tariffs come into effect, you will pay for renewable energy regardless of whether you install a solar panel or not. The cost of  renewable energy will show up as a slight increase in everyone’s utility bills. The increase  may well be just a couple of dollars a month but why pay for other people’s installations.? Why not install your own and be ahead of the game?

They  may not be the best thing since sliced bread but they are pretty  close, at least in the field of renewable energy. Feed In Tariff s (FITs) have worked wonders in many European countries including Germany, which is now the second largest producer of solar energy in the world.

Many people, especially in North America, don’t understand what  FITs are and how they work. I didnt myself, until I did some research on the subject. In fact, the concept is quite simple - and very innovative.

As an example, assume a person decides to set up a rooftop solar panel in his home to generate electricity. If he uses this electricity directly in his home, he might reduce the electricity consumption just a little and save a few dollars on his electricity bill. These savings would  not  be enough to justify the cost of the solar panels; the payback time would be far too long.

However, with the FIT program, the producer feeds the solar electricity  directly  into the grid and the utility company pays for this at a greatly enhanced tariff, generally several times the rate of electricity supply.The key element, here, is that the renewable energy is not consumed directly but fed back into the grid.

So where does the utility company get the money to pay the tariff? It simply puts a small additional charge on the utility bills to all its consumers. The cost is negligible when it is spread over a large consumer base. In Germany, the cost of  is less than two dollars per month per customer.Thus, the FIT program supports itself without requiring  major investment by the Government.

The other key element of the FIT is the use of smart meters. Ordinary meters only measure the flow of electricity to the customer; smart meters can measure the flow of energy to the grid. So, in a typical system, the renewable source would be connected to the grid through a smart meter.

The FIT concept offers many advantages.

It is revenue neutral, other than for some administrative costs. As a result, the utilities can offer generous Feed In Tariffs - it does not cost them anything extra!

FITs reward micro-producers of electricity; you dont need to install a large wind farm to enjoy the benefits. Even a simple rooftop installation of solar photovoltaic panels can start earning money.

FITs solve the problem of energy storage; the grid itself serves as the reservoir of energy. Thus, users are assured a reliable source of power 24/7 without having any form of storage of their own.

FITs also assure stability; producers sign a long term contract with a guaranteed tariff. This way, they can plan their project and arrange financing without much difficulty.

FITs can be tailored precisely to the type of energy source; a better tariff can be offered for more expensive sources of renewable energy. Typically, highest tariffs are given for solar rooftop panels; tariffs are lower for wind farms and bio-mass type projects.

The one problem with FITs is that the tariff structure  has to be crafted very carefully. If tariffs are kept low, there will be few takers. If the tariffs are kept high, it is like giving away money and the cost to other consumers may be too high.  It is very much an interventionist approach because a power authority fixes the tariff rates. Many Americans are opposed to this type of intervention on principle and as a result FITs have not yet proved very popular in North America.

Unfortunately, renewable energy projects require subsidy in one form or another, otherwise they are not viable.  The FIT is the simplest way to provide this incentive, with minimal administrative costs.

Ontario  has done its homework to create a good FIT program.  It had launched an incentive program in 2006 with somewhat similar incentives. However, the tariffs had been kept low for solar energy and the program did not draw much interest in this area. Tariffs have now been almost doubled for some types of solar panels and this could be the beginning of a new age of solar power. The program, would, however require some tweaking from time to time.

So, it is quite possible the generous tariffs we see today will not be on offer for too long.

THE  ROOFTOP SOLAR ENERGY REVOLUTION HAS BEGUN.

There has never been a better time to plan a  solar panel installation for your home in Ontario. Prices of these panels are  expected to drop  fast and the Ontario government is offering incentives to promote their use as never before. The  government’s plans are still at the public review stage but they are expected to be enacted into law within a few months.

Once the new  rules come into effect, homeowners will be paid 80.2 cents for each kilowatt-hour of rooftop solar power that they sell to the grid; this is over ten times the going rate for power that they buy from the grid.Hence, if you install solar panels to meet just 3% of your electricity consumption, you could, potentially, save 30% of your electricity costs.  The trick  is not to consume the solar power directly, but to sell it to the grid at a higher rate and buy it back from the grid at a  lower rate to meet  everyday electricity needs.

The Ontario plan is based on using  Feed-In Tariffs (FIT) that have proved wildly popular  in many European countries, including Germany, which is now one the largest producers of renewal energy in the world. FITs have, however, rarely been tried in North America where  more complicated incentive programs are  in vogue. Not surprisingly, Europe is way ahead of North America in the development of renewal energy.

The beauty of the FIT concept lies in its simplicity. It is easy to administer and it is, essentially, revenue-neutral. In this program,  producers of renewable energy feed energy into the power grid and are paid at an enhanced rate, generally several times higher than the rate at which power is supplied from the grid. The difference  is made up by imposing a small fee on all consumers. In the case of Germany, this fee works out to about two dollars a month for per consumer. Most consumers take this increase in their stride.

The key to success   lies in choosing the correct tariffs,  tailored precisely to the type of renewal energy source  being used. The tariff  is kept high for sources that are expensive to install, such as rooftop solar panels; it is kept  lower for sources like wind power or bio-mass that have lower capital costs. It is, of course, an interventionist approach as the energy regulators provide FITs that they believe are appropriate for stimulating renewal energy production.

Fine tuning of the tariff structure is required from time to time. If the tariff is too low, there will not be many takers, because renewable energy is expensive to generate. If the tariff is kept too high, it may result in high electricity costs for all consumers. Germany had to fine-tune its tariff structure a couple of times before it found the right balance. Once it did, the renewal energy program simply took off.

In 2006, Ontario introduced a plan that had some features  similar to FITs. It was called the Standard Offer Program; the highest incentive was 40 cents per kilowatt-hour(KWH), for rooftop solar units.There were lower tariffs for wind power and other forms of renewal energy.  The program was a mixed success;while it sparked a wind farm revolution in Ontario, there were few takers for its rooftop solar energy  incentive program. At 40 cents per KWH, the payback time was far too long.

Ontario is trying to correct this with its new green energy program that  almost doubles the tariff for rooftop solar units. The aim, obviously, is to   jump-start solar energy generation and create an environment for solar industries to develop in Ontario. The tariff is guaranteed for twenty years when a new contract is signed, making it a very attractive offer. Tariffs for other forms of renewable energy, such as wind and bio-mass, are also attractive and should stimulate further growth of these industries. For homeowners, the  enhanced tariff for rooftop solar panels may well lead to a spurt in home energy generation. The payback time is expected to be 12 years or less;  it may drop substantially if  the  price of solar panels keep falling.

Even if you do not opt for this program, you might still pay for others who take advantage of the scheme, because that is how FITs work. FITs are revenue neutral so, in effect, all consumers end up paying for them. Hence it makes good economic sense to install a solar panel in your home and to do it as soon as possible.

Acting President PIPSC

“I am not a big fan of public-private partnerships” says Gary Corbett, acting President of PIPSC, one of the largest public sector unions in the country.  He believes this type of unequal partnership is sometimes ineffective because the ultimate responsibility  for the work remains with the government.

He cites the example of a road contructed under a  public-private partnership.  The road was not salted properly during the winter and this led to a tragic accident . Guess who was sued as a result? It was not the private company, but, rather, the government  simply because  it has deeper pockets.

In his wide-ranging interview with We Canadians, Corbett talked about his youth and how he was brought up around the Sydney tar ponds area. The coal industry was predominant and created a large number of jobs. However, when the industry started losing money it simply shut down operations and walked away. The government was left on the hook  for cleaning up the tar ponds.  He hopes enough safeguards are in place to prevent this sort of thing from happening in the Alberta oil sands. He does, however, believe in the  development of the  oil sands as it is  bringing so much prosperity to Canada. The rapid growth should, however, be tempered with environmental responsibility.

Corbett is a mining engineer by training and he worked with Natural Resources Canada for many years. He became heavily involved in union activities because, as he says, professionals deserve more respect in the public service. He served as a Steward, a chairperson for the Physical Sciences group and as the National Vice President.

Corbett encourages scientists, engineers and other professionals to make greater efforts to win recognition in the public sector workplace. They should get more involved with professional associations such Professional Engineers Ontario and actively promote  the causes important to them. They must resist  attempts to de-professionalize the civil service; a common tactic is to put non-professionals in a position of authority over professionals  to influence their work.

Corbett wants to provide more opportunities for career growth in the public service. That is why PIPSC  favours more action on classification of jobs so that employees can move up the ladder more easily.

Corbett hopes the economic stimulus spending will lead to more hiring of professionals, who represent the future of the public service. He is a strong defender of  public servants ,who , according to him, deserve a better public image.

He appeared on a CTV program recently where the interviewer talked about a few senior government employees who made over four or five hundred  thousand dollars a year. Corbett was quick to point out that such instances are very, very rare. Generally, the top employees in the public service make a fraction of what the private sector pays out to its CEOs. A clip from this interview can be seen at:

http://watch.ctv.ca/news/ctvs-question-period/march-15-2009/#clip150205

Corbett is currently the interim President of PIPSC; elections are due in June. If elected as the President, Corbett would like  to work hard to improve the image of public servants and to make PIPSC even more responsive to the needs of its members.

There  is only one solution for AIG’’s problems - nationalize the company and let the government take  full control. How hard can it be to run an insurance company profitably? It is definitely not rocket science.

Throughout the world, insurance companies make good profits - it is a fail-safe business. Essentially, they just sell insurance; if there are claims, the cost of the insurance policy goes up. How hard can it be to make money in this kind of business?

Insurance companies get into trouble only when the executives get too greedy, like at AIG . The company faced a securities commission investigation into fraud in the mid 2000s. The New York State Attorney General’s investigation led to a 1.6 billion dollar fine in 2005, as well as criminal charges against some company executives.

Currently, tax payers  own 80% of the company. Letting private sector executives run the company is no answer  - it will be just  produce more of the same. Why not simply nationalize and let the government run it  for some time until the current financial crisis blows over? At the very least, it will ensure that no company executive draws a bigger salary than the US President, with far less responsibility.

Diet fads come and go. Over the years,  North Americans have experimented with scores of diets and yet they remain unhealthy and obese. People switch from one diet to another and stay exactly the same.

However, there is one diet that has stood the test of time - the Yoga Diet. It has been around for thousands of years and it really works. Those who followed it have lived long, productive lives and it is not a passing fad. It is based on well-established rules that Yogis have followed since time immemorial.

RULE 1: Eat according to the season.

Don’t eat the same food in summer and winter. In summer, eat more fruits and vegetables that grow naturally around this time of the year. According to Yoga, a fruit and vegetable diet has a cooling effect on the body. In winter, switch to more proteins that generate natural body heat.In India, traditionally, the rainy season is the time to eat more fried foods.

 Western diets completely ignore the basic rule of eating according to the season.  It makes sense - we cannot eat exactly the same food in all seasons. An off-shoot of this rule is: eat local whenever possible, so that you eat what grows naturally at that time of the year.

RULE 2: Eat food that is  tasty, moist and nutritive. These are the three essential attributes of  good food.

If it is not tasty, you won”t eat it for too long and that is why some diets fail. But the taste should be intrinsic - not the result of too many added flavours.

Yoga emphasizes food that is moist  because it mixes more easily with saliva where much of the digestion actually happens. Using this simple criterion, one should not eat burgers and fries,  at least not too many of them. Soups are good and so are foods cooked in plenty of gravy. Curries are good unless they are overspiced or too rich. Stir fried vegetables retain much of the natural moisture and can form an important part of the Yoga diet.

And of course, food has to be nutritive otherwise why bother to eat it? Combine it with taste and you have a winning combination. Raw fruits meet all of these criteria - they are moist, tasty and nutritive.

RULE3: Eat three meals a day. Yoga does not advocate eating five or six times a day -unless, of course, there are special health reasons to do so. Just eat breakfast, lunch & dinner preferably at the same time every day. Relax a little during and after the meals to allow the food to digest.

Do not snack all the time; this does not promote good digestion as the stomach will keep on forming digestive acids.

RULE4: Eat a little less than a full stomach. In fact, the Yoga texts advice filling half the stomach with food, one quarter with water and leaving the rest empty. The yogic way to do this is to drink water  before a meal and perhaps,a little during the meal. However, one should never take water, or other liquids, after a meal as this dilutes the gastric juices.

RULE5: Do not eat leftover food, or food that is stale or reheated. This simple rule excludes much of the food eaten in North America which is neither fresh nor wholesome. This type of food is called “tamasic” in Yoga and induces lethargy.

RULE6: Avoid processed foods. They cannot be completely eliminated from our diets but atleast their use can be minimized. A perfect example of bad processed food is enriched white bread. First, the nutrients are taken out  of wheat, then the white is processed some more and finally a few nutrients are added back in, to meet nutritional standards. It is no longer food - it is just a chemical  mix.

RULE7: Do’nt  count the calories -they do not count in the Yoga diet. The food we eat should not be reduced to a chemical formula of x amount of calories and y grams of fat. Do not reduce food to a chemical formula;it is much more than that. It is the source of all our energy.

Most important - listen to the body’s intelligence. When you practise Yoga regularly the Yoga diet becomes natural and the body will tell you how much to eat and when to stop.

Try it - the Yoga diet really works, or at least, it has for the last few thousand years or so. Once you try it, there is no going back - you will feel mentally, physically and spiritually uplifted for the rest of your life.

Media coverage of the current economic crisis has been profoundly negative. The media is supposed to cover the facts - which it does quite well. In addition, it covers opinions that simply add to the prevailing doom and gloom.

Just look at the media pundits on the news channels. They are wrong most of the time but this hardly ever stops them. They just thrive on negative news and forget the positive.

To take an example from today’s news, for the third straight day the stock markets have been doing well in Canada, the US and around the world. I searched the CNN website for coverage of this positive story - and found it buried on the inside pages. It should have made it to the front page but that spot was reserved for Madoff and his shennanigans which hardly affect the world economy.

By focussing on the negative, the media could have made the recession a little worse. In fact, the media wants to convert it into a depression and we already have some pundits comparing it to the  Great Depression of the thirties. There is, of course, no basis for such a comparison -the two events are totally different.

The Canadian media is  marginally better. When a politician says something positive about the economy, the media goes into attack mode. When something positive happens, it is played down.

We need a more responsible media that focusses more on facts and less on “expert” projections of the future. The “experts” are generally wrong; last summer they were predicting gas prices of two dollars  a litre and this never came to pass. Now they predict a long recession lasting another two years or more - is there any reason to believe them? The real truth is that no one has yet been able to predict the future correctly and it is a waste of time to try to do so.

The media will do much better by sticking to the facts and by accentuating the positive whenever possible. In fact, by offering more facts and unbiased news coverage, the media might   be able to pull itself out of its own recession.