Don’t get me wrong, sports courts and ice rinks are all important threads in a community’s fabric, but they cost money to operate and require maintenance and replacement as they depreciate over time. The LED lights and solar system installed at the Evansdale Community League in Edmonton are different. The lights will save 65 per cent on electricity costs for the rink and the solar system will pay a dividend every single month for the next quarter century.
Read MoreEpisode 120 - Original Story: https://www.greenenergyfutures.ca/episode/mayor-robertson-100-cent-renewable-cities By David Dodge and Duncan Kinney Vancouver's cycling mayor pledges to make city run on 100% renewable energy. Photo David Dodge, GreenEnergyFutures.ca It may have left everyone not from Vancouver green with envy, but Mayor Gregor Robertson got elected by promising to make Vancouver the “greenest city in the world.” The
Read MoreEpisode 122 - Original Story: https://www.greenenergyfutures.ca/episode/solar-pv-training-job By David Dodge and Duncan Kinney Solar sector employment in the U.S. is booming. It rose 21.8 per cent in employment in 2014 for a total of 174,000 solar workers nationwide, and similar growth is predicted this year. It’s only a matter of time until the solar wave that is rolling across the U.S. comes to Canada. And when it does come we will
Read MoreEpisode 121 - Original Story: https://www.greenenergyfutures.ca/episode/sunmine-kimberley-bc-solar-pv By David Dodge and Duncan Kinney You hike over the crest of the hill and there it is: 96 sun-tracking solar masts, each with 42 solar modules — 4,032 modules in all — perched on the side of a hill with the beautiful Rocky Mountains in the background. It’s called the SunMine project and it’s all part of the reinvention of
Read MoreEpisode 125 - Original Story: https://www.greenenergyfutures.ca/episode/beyond-coal-phaseout-alberta By David Dodge, Duncan Kinney & Dylan Thompson Approximately 13 million tonnes of coal are mined at Highvale (adjacent to Wabamun Lake in Alberta) each year and delivered to TransAlta’s Sundance and Keephills coal-fired power plants. Photo David Dodge Renewable energy made up half of all the new power plants constructed in the world
Read MoreEpisode 124 - Original Story: https://www.greenenergyfutures.ca/episode/hutterite-solar-western-canada-biggest By David Dodge & Dylan Thompson You’ve seen them before, though they don’t tend to stand out. Hutterites—women in bright coloured, identical dresses and men in somber, dark jackets and hats. They’re almost always at the farmer’s market on a Saturday morning selling fresh eggs, carrots and potatoes. This quaint image
Read MoreOriginal Story: https://www.greenenergyfutures.ca/episode/iveson-edmonton-energy-transition-strategy By David Dodge & Dylan Thompson Climate change is often portrayed as this giant, fuzzy, future threat that’s hard to relate to, but the mayor of Edmonton, Don Iveson, brings the idea home: “We don’t have to look much further than the disastrous Calgary floods of 2013, the increasingly intense summer storms we now face, or the
Read MoreEpisode 118 - Original Story: https://www.greenenergyfutures.ca/episode/cochrane-sustainable-development By David Dodge and Duncan Kinney There’s a quote from cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead that you will see tacked up on bulletin boards or floating through your Facebook feed. “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.” To see that
Read MoreEpisode 89 - Original Story: https://www.greenenergyfutures.ca/episode/how-wind-and-solar-are-driving-down-prices-canadas-most-fossil-fuel-friendly-province By David Dodge & Duncan Kinney Have you heard the one about how renewables are too expensive and that they always need subsidies? Well, both wind and solar now compete with fossil fuel electricity generation purely on price, without subsidies. But wind and solar aren’t just
Read MoreEpisode 47 - Original Story: https://www.greenenergyfutures.ca/episode/47-rocket-stoves By David Dodge and Duncan Kinney If you’ve ever gotten smoke in your eye around a campfire multiply that by the 2.7 billion people that still cook and heat their homes using open fires and leaky stoves. And what is a temporary annoyance for you and me on a camping trip kills millions of people a year. Two million people a year die prematurely from
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