The Editor:
I know it is an extremely popular activity to deny the environmental crisis we are in. Somehow there has been a disconnect created between our human activity and environmental degradation. That disconnect has no greater example than the clean coal technology of Brad Wall’s government.
Despite the propaganda about clean coal technology, burning coal never has been, or ever will be, clean. Solar generated technology is.
Mr. Wall has long championed clean coal technology for energy as opposted to renewable energy technology to the point he has spent, reportedly, $1.4 billion tax dollars in his carbon capture program at Boundary Dam. Construction setbacks, persistent design and technical issues, are forcing the Saskatchewan government to pay up to $18 million before the end of the year because it cannot fulfill its carbon contract to oil extraction company, Canovus.
If you take $1.4 billion and divide it by $20,000, which is approximately the cost of installing enough roof-mounted solar electricity to power an average modern bungalow, that would be 70,000 houses that could have free electrical production installed. That would be the equivalent of 82 per cent of the houses in Regina. For fun, let’s include the $18 million in contract penalties and we can add 900 more homes for free electrical production every time we have to pay that much in penalties. That is three or four reserves.
If we installed that amount of solar, the existing demand on our present aging generating system would be reduced not just the equivalent of the kilowatts generated by the sun. Additional savings are realized when energy is produced on-site as opposed to huge resistance losses in the hundreds of miles of transmission lines that brings power from Boundary Dam to your house.
Local employment of Canadians to install solar to 70,900 homes would further stimulate the Saskatchewan economy that the foreign employment being used for the carbon capture program, does not.
This previous dialog is considered on the basis of SaskPower still owning the entire system, solar included, for the $1.4 billion of your money it has spent. If SaskPower would offer progressive incentives to advance the solar industry, individuals could own and generate as much electricity as they wanted to, selling the excess to SaskPower at a profit.
The technology and cost of solar electricity is getting better, more efficient and cheaper every year. Solar energy is space-age technology with a bright, clean, rapidly expanding, endless and renewable future.
Another wonderful thing is that solar is only one way of creating clean environmental saving energy. There are many clean, renewable energy options.
Do the math. Consider our grandchildren.
Greg Chatterson
Fort San, Sask.
