Is the answer really blowing in the wind?

Robert Knox thinks so.

He's been involved at the forefront of the wind energy development movement in central Ontario since the late 1990s, when he and partners Malcolm Hamilton and Roger Short created Chinodin Wind Power.

Starting with a copy of the wind map of Ontario and a test turbine on Hamilton's property south of Maxwell, the three men started what is now the Melancthon Wind Farm operated by Canadian Hydro near Shelburne, Ontario.

"What we saw was something that would benefit the community, in terms of economic benefits and making the community very green at the same time," Knox said in a recent interview from his home in the Pretty River Valley. "Our starting point was: Wouldn't this be a great thing for the area. It's a windy location and farmers need extra income."

"Our first business model was to develop small turbines for farmers - they would get free electricity and we would sell the excess."

Unfortunately for Chinodin, the grid couldn't handle that type of generation, but that didn't stop these early wind entrepreneurs.

"That's not the way it went, but we knew it was still a windy place and we determined the best way was to use large generators and sell the energy back into the system."

"We took it to the point where we had to do the financing in order to start construction so we sold to Canadian Hydro Developers (CHD)."

"That was a good decision on our part. They are an excellent organization they are very passionate about renewable energy," he said.

It's been a long road with a few bumps along the way, but Knox is still an ardent advocate of wind energy and he has created the Ontario Highlands Friends of Wind Power website while still pursuing several Standard Offer Program opportunities in the Dundalk area.

"It's (the website) the vehicle we use to poke back at anti-wind groups and take a proactive stance with wind energy development," he said.

The Standard Offer Program (SOP) is for small local projects up to a maximum of 10 megawatts. The object is to encourage the development of distributed energy - energy that is created and used locally - as opposed to transmitted power that is generated at a mega facility like a nuclear plant and then transmitted via high voltage power lines to where it is needed. The thinking is to create a whole lot of small projects - that don't connect into the provincial grid, but into the local distribution system.

Knox says the SOP was a great idea but it has failed to date because Hydro One's system can't handle local generation, making connection costs prohibitive.

"There are a whole lot of people who went out and started these projects but a lot of them have failed because they can't stand the capital cost of getting on the grid."

Which is why Knox likes the new Green Energy Act. He calls it an "enabling piece of legislation that allows a new local approach for distributed generation from renewable sources."

"It sets out to ensure that small renewable energy projects can gain access to transmission lines. It sets out to improve the distribution systems, so that in fact, those connections can be made. It provides assured access to a grid that's capable of dealing with small energy projects," he says.

Knox calls the Green Energy Act "a really interesting document" that develops province-wide standards for wind turbines by modifying the planning act and the Environmental Protection Act, establishing a standard approval permit process that will allow for appeals if a project causes environmental damage or has health and safety issues.

"The issue here is, it puts the onus on people making the complaint to establish that there are actual damages," says Knox.  "In a legislative way, that's the proper way of doing things. It should be up to you to prove damages. The anti-wind groups say that's not appropriate, but I think they are wrong."

"It basically would take off things like visual impact as a reason for complaining or stopping a project, but it's very clear that any injury would be a legitimate complaint," he said. "People who oppose wind don't like it (The Green Energy Act) because they can't just say it causes health problems - they have to prove that it does."

The second goal of the act, he says, is to reduce the province's carbon footprint.

"The government is doing this because of the desire and the need to reduce carbon emissions - the goal is to make the system more capable of using distributed energy, which would get rid of line losses," he said. "When energy was cheap and you weren't worried about carbon emissions it was okay to build plants in far off locations - that's not the case now."

The argument against wind generation because it costs more than the current price of traditional generation, ignores some important facts, he adds.

"These harsh critics are not looking at it in a holistic way, only at what it does to their particular perspective," says Knox.

"Electricity is going to increase in cost because you have to replace aging nuclear facilities and shut down coal if you are going to meet your electricity generation demands and achieve your green goals," he says. "To replace any generation that has been around for 30 to 50 years, it's going to cost more because costs have increased."

Knox admits that, that at present, wind energy costs twice as much as current traditional generation costs, but adds those costs don't include Ontario Hydro's stranded debt or the final cost of nuclear generation.

"People who oppose these things tend to exaggerate the impact and they don't look at the entire system," he says. "The true cost of carbon-based generation is never taken into consideration, neither is the stranded Hydro debt, or the disposal of nuclear waste and the decommissioning of old nuclear sites."

"They don't seem to worry about coal, even though it's proven that it makes millions of people sick," he adds. "If the larger community is saying we want renewable energy they have to come to the table with good reasons to put them in other places."

When asked why some people are so opposed to wind turbines, Knox says he can understand where they are coming from, but believes their fears are exaggerated.

"They really are concerned about their property and their community. They really think wind turbines will be harmful to their way of life. They start from a rational concern, then it becomes a singular focus: I hate turbines and I don't want them anywhere near me so what things and arguments can I bring to bear to get rid of them."

"Their argument that no coal fired plants have been closed may be true, but you may be using less coal and other carbon based generation, even as the demand continues to increase," explains Knox. "Ontario's approach is to develop the replacement power first and then scale back coal. Or replace it with greener carbon based generation like gas."

"A lot of these people don't understand global climate change - their concerns are local but not global."