Uneasy FIT

Landowner planning waste digester plant and 17-acre solar plant adjacent to Wellington

Bob Hunter is a man in a hurry. He manages, farms and does whatever he can to extract value from the 4,000 or so acres he owns in a swath stretching north of Wellington and west toward the Hillier shore on Lake Ontario. He has variously grown crops including corn, soy beans, canola and wheat. He has deposited tonnes of sludge from a paper recycler on his fields. He has erected nearly 20 arrays of solar panels along Gilead and Swamp College Road.

He has sought out developers to build industrial wind turbines and large-scale (100 acre) solar generating facilities. He has carved out and sold a great many building lots along the rural routes of Hillier.

Now he is embarking on perhaps his boldest endeavour in the County yet—17 acres of solar panels, along with an anaerobic digester facility—a plant that he proposes will consume municipal and farm waste as well as other plant material to create biogas. The biogas may be used as fuel or it could be used to generate electricity.

He wants to build these two electricity generation facilities just north of the village limits in Wellington, on land recently cleared on Belleville Road opposite Gilead Road.

He hopes to win four megawatts of power purchase agreements (PPAs) currently being offered in Ontario’s latest round of feed-in tariff (FIT) projects. The program offers a rich stream of guaranteed revenue to producers of solar and biogas as well as certain other forms of energy generation, at a rich premium over traditional forms of generation.

Hunter has just 60 days to get his application in. That is when the current window closes. But in this go-around the province has changed the rules to give local governments a measure of input over the projects that are developed in their communities.

So it was that Hunter was before a committee of council last week looking for support for his two projects, each with a planned capacity to generate about 2 MW of electricity. He presented a three-dimensional rendering to simulate the approximate location of about 17 acres of solar panels and the digester plant. He noted that some of the land would have to be rezoned in order to develop the project

As a prelude to his presentation, Hunter explained to council it would not be a “happy harvest” this year with some cobs yielding just three or four kernels of corn.

“Soybeans won’t be much better,” said Hunter. He presented a National Geographic graphic to show that China’s consumption of energy was growing rapidly and expected to continue to do so.

“This was a wake-up call for me,” said Hunter. “We cannot live without energy.”

HUNTER GREEN
Bob Hunter has worked with developers on at least two industrial wind projects in Hillier but none has yet gotten off the ground. Plans for a large-scale solar project on Huyck’s Point Road were transferred to Sophiasburgh earlier this year, closer to the Hydro One substation, after Hunter determined the costs to connect the project to the grid made the project uneconomical. With his latest proposal Hunter was hoping for quick approval, perhaps even that he might walk out the door that afternoon with council’s support. He didn’t.

Some councillors appeared ready and eager to give Hunter their blessing. Others warned that a salesman was trying to sell them snake oil. Most were in between these two positions.

Athol Councillor Jamie Forrester wanted to know what could be done to speed up the process for Hunter.

Engineering chief Robert McAuley noted that his department had not yet received an application from Hunter or PEC Farms for the project; that as far as his department was concerned, there wasn’t yet a project on the table to speed up.

Most council members agreed with Councillor Terry Shortt that they had been presented with an unreasonable timeline.

“We can’t just open the door to a new industry without understanding the footprint or seeing any plans,” said Shortt. “We don’t know what the impact of this might be on the community. The community has to have a say.”

Hillier Councillor Alec Lunn was a bit more accommodative.

“We should be looking for ways to move this forward,” said Lunn. “Shouldn’t we take a gamble?”

It was, however, more cautious voices that held the day. “Our responsibility is to do our due diligence before we issue any support,” said Mayor Peter Mertens.

But others worried about the process in which council is being asked to adjudicate such requests.

“Developers have no idea what might be considered by this council,” said Picton Councillor Brian Marisett.

Earlier this summer, as it became clear how the rules were changing, municipal staff developed a 14-point set of evaluation criteria for council to consider. Included among the proposed criteria was a $7,500 per MW per year fee payable for the 20 years of the FIT contract.

But council determined it didn’t yet have enough information; so agreed they would hire an expert to help guide them through the issues. That has not happened yet. The current window for developers to apply for FIT 2.0 contracts closes at the end of November.

In the meantime council had suggested that developers eager to get their projects considered before the end of November come to the committee of council and their proposals would be judged on a first come, first served basis.

Bob Hunter was the first in line.

This process raises a nest of other thorny problems however. Council has already heard from other developers seeking their support for projects aimed at the province’s current window. Some are very large. Some small. None has received council’s support.

County staff estimate about 50 FIT applications are currently waiting for municipal approval.

“We knew this was coming,” said Bloomfield councillor Barry Turpin. “It’s time to take a serious look at what we will accept and what we won’t. We need to look at this in a hurry.”

Forrester said some of his colleagues were sitting on the fence on the issue hoping it might just go away.

“It might,” said Forrester. “The opportunity is in green energy. We have a lot of land in the County that is not much good for anything. Shouldn’t we tie into industries that will make us money?”

Not all councillors were sitting on the fence.

“This is a sham,” said Ameliasburgh Councillor Nick Nowitski. “This scares the hell out of me. He [Hunter] wants council want to give him blanket approval without any drawings or specifications. There are at least 40 applications still in the queue ahead of him. Why should Mr. Hunter get preference?”

Nevertheless, the County’s engineering chief said that if Hunter got his application into his department by the beginning of this week, he would work to turn it around in a couple of weeks—in time for council’s second meeting in October.