The Telegram - Opinion - Letters to the editor. Nalcor not telling the truth Published on July 25, 2011

FINTIP

- July 25, 2011 at 12:32:37

Clouter is correct of course in asserting that wind, like any other source of power, can be stored. Methods include thermal (heat sink), compressed air, hydrogen, salt, and hydro-electric (including new stand-alone facilities using pumped storage and upgrading of existing plants through resevoir expansion). Efficencies of up to 99% are claimed for some of these technologies. Beyond wind there is solar, geo-thermal, wave, and waste (e.g. garbage and wood fibre). Retrofitting Holyrood to run on natural gas is a major opportunity, not only to lower production costs but to drastically reduce greenhouse gases. In addition to more efficient load levelling on the production side, there is demand side load levelling - the latter involves incentives for off peak consumption of power. Many homeowners and even some commercial operations can easily be persuaded to shift some of their energy intensive uses to non peak hours. There is also, as exists in other jurisdictions, the mandate obligating electrical utilities to compensate private producers of electricity for excess power fed into the grid. There is as yet a largely ignored opportunity to promote conservation at the home and consumer level using an almost insignifcant part of the investment required for Muskrat. Suffice it to say that we have a very staid, fixated, unimaginative, technologically challenged group of people leading our utilities and governments in this country and this province in particular. By bulldozing ahead with Muskrat and the Anglo-Saxon project, Newfoundland and Labrador is undermining its remaining legal challenge to the Upper Churchill contract. It is also destroying much of its leverage in dealing with Quebec and/or extracting maximum value from new markets once the Upper Churchill contract expires. And finally it is ignoring an opportunity to take advantage of new energy technologies and to establish this province as a leader in innovative power generation. A large part of the problem is that NALCOR operates as a closed shop. The process of evaluating and finding solutions to energy problems in this province needs to be opened to a much wider discussion and input from professionals and energy groups of all kinds. Only then can the consumer be assured that we are not assuming an enormous debt for a mega project that was unnecessary or unwise in the first place.

HE IS VERY CORRECT. SO CORRECT I'D VOTE HIM TO BE CHIEF OF nalcor RATHER THAN THE BLUNDERING SUITS RUNNING 'OUR COMPANY' NOW.