On A Wind and A Prayer

   Nope, that's not a spelling mistake in the title. "Wind" is just the right word, because I'm talking about the wind turbine at the Canadian National Exhibition grounds. Mainstream opinion has been that "a profitable wind turbine didn't have a prayer", but last week Windshare's shareholders held their annual meeting, as usual, in a Baptist Church and got some good news. Toronto's Windshare project has sold about two gigawatt hours to the grid — enough to power close to 280 homes for a year. That means it's time for some cheques to be handed out. $4 for each share owned will go, among others, to the Daily Bread Food Bank and Foodshare, which will collect $4,000 each. An anonymous donor bought the shares for the Food Bank and then handed them over, hoping their gift would result in long-term profits. It begins to look as though they've achieved their end.
   There are problems to work out, like finding sufficiently windy locations to make the turbines workable, but Ontario is up for the challenge. To date, four companies have been chosen to develop five wind power projects here in Ontario, generating a collective 354.6 megawatts of green power: Last fall, the government's Bill 100 restructured the Ontario energy market, and set targets for alternative energy; clean energy to contribute to the grid. While Canada lags behind European adoption of wind power generation at the moment, it is making headway, says Robert Hornung of the CanWEA. David MacLeod, president of Windshare, told his group the project has displaced about 300 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions. Cleaner air for all of us to breathe, and a little extra food into the bargain, for those of us who need. This project sounds good, no matter which way you look at it.