Latest posts (RSS 2.0)Whether this year’s AMS executive candidate teams like it or not, the platform point that’s gotten the most attention so far in the campaign is Team CHR’s goal to cover 35,000 square metres of roof space with solar panels. It’s been a divisive point and drew the most attention in the final, back-and-forth section of last night’s presidential debate.
This is by no means a new idea. Joshua Pearce, a mechanical engineering professor, has been lobbying the administration on it for awhile. (Full disclosure: A good friend of mine worked with Pearce’s team this summer. As a fun break from the Journal, I acted in a commercial he made for the group). I wrote about the team in the Journal’s green supplement nearly three months ago.
Amir Nosrat, who’s on the SGPS executive and works in Pearce’s lab, sent us an e-mail this morning with a proposed opinion piece. We’re publishing other election-related stuff in tomorrow, so I thought I’d post his piece - unedited - on this blog (I couldn’t really think of any other place to do so, although Facebook notes seem to be in vogue these days).
Here’s what he wrote:
Solar is not as political as this
As a Master’s student working in Professor Joshua Pearce’s Applied Sustainability Lab, it really bugs me to see that what started out as a novel idea with real potential has become a contentious political game in an AMS presidential debate.
The campaign to get solar panels on Queen’s rooftops has been in the works for over a year now and has been spurred by many students and individuals, not all of whom are part of the Applied Sustainability Lab and it’ll be really disappointing to have it destroyed for some silly political sentiments.
Part of me is happy to see that this idea has found its way into the Queen’s mainstream ‘media’, thanks partly to Jerome Jame’s Facebook group and to Professor Pearce’s public relations tactics and partly to this new Green Corporate fervor. But please, let’s put aside the emotions and accusations and let’s try to get this picture straight.
Solar energy by itself is expensive. That’s why we have dedicated researchers not here at Queen’s but across the world to help with that. But so is every other source of power generation. Do you think a nuclear power plant could possibly survive its insurance premiums without government subsidization? What would be ‘nuclear energy too cheap to meter’ could easily turn into a ‘nuclear energy fallout’ if governments decide to withdraw all forms of subsidy to maintain these silos of uranium. Environmental damage caused by conventional sources of energy, if properly accounted for, can very well make solar energy look like peanuts.
But thanks to the efforts of departing energy minister George Smitherman, Ontario now has one of the world’s most competitive alternative energy subsidy programs known as the feed-in-tariff (FIT) because in order to give solar a chance, it needs to be put on an even playing field with the rest of those big energy buffs.
The program was modeled based on Germany’s famous renewable energy incentive that has made it one of the most successful countries in solar energy second to only Japan and far ahead than anywhere the US or Canada is.
Essentially, the FIT programs pays me anywhere between 40 to 80 cents for every kWh that I produce using solar panels depending on the size of my solar energy system. I would then buy back electricity anywhere between 6 to 12 cents for the same kWh I just produced. Guaranteed. For 20 years. Hmmmmm….
Is it viable for Queen’s to make a profit out of it? Absolutely. Is it risk-free? Of course not. Is it easy? Maybe not as much as we would like it to be. But why sweat it when there are companies out there who would pay us annually to have these panels set up on our rooftops?
I hate to get myself into AMS politics, but whichever team said that the time is not now for investing in solar energy was in my opinion dead wrong. The time IS now precisely because the FIT has a 2 year window. In fact, there is no time better than NOW. In 2 years, there are going to be enough smart people out there signing up for 20-year FIT commitments that Ontario is going to have to stop handing out contracts before the province goes bankrupt.
To be fair, I’m also not certain what CHR has in mind. It’s not as simple as ‘do this’ and it’ll be done. I’ve brushed across some university politics as VP Finance and Services of SGPS and I’m convinced the Queen’s University administration is slower than a half-asleep snail if it doesn’t want something.
Aside from the Board of Trustees that looks at nothing but numbers, physical plants services needs to give a green light for this project since they kinda control the rooftops. Seeing that they are millions of dollars behind on their regular maintenance and tend to be very jealous in letting outside organizations set up anything on campus, it won’t be the easiest battle.
So to tell you the truth, I find the political challenge from the administration a bigger problem than the technical ones.
If you give me a million bucks, I’d invest it in this project in a heartbeat. But unfortunately, I’m doing my Master’s here while the quality of my education is being sunk by Queen’s Centre’s massive debt while my bursaries are being rolled back. Maybe it wouldn’t be as hard on me if that debt got helped by the FIT.
I promise I’ll send my kudos and thanks to anyone who sets up those panels on our rooftops.
UPDATE:
In this post, I originally noted that although CHR’s platform says 35,000 square metres, Queen’s only has about 85,000 square feet of roof space to allocate to solar panels. I was basing that figure on an interview I did with Joshua Pearce for this article. CHR, though, consulted with Pearce in their research and he told them 35,000 square metres is a conservative estimate.
