To the Editor:
Canadians are used to thinking of energy in a big way.
Reshaping Northern Québec with dams for massive hydro-electric projects; digging up Northern Alberta with the oil sands; massive fracking operations in southwestern Saskatchewan; offshore oil wells in the stormy North Atlantic, even hectares upon hectares filled with solar panels or wind turbines, farming the breezes and sun.
We are blessed with a bounty few other nations have. Yet, in the process, we often overlook the smaller scale opportunities that could help sustain our towns and cities.
Take the town dump, for example.
Dumps naturally give off methane as the trash slowly decomposes. Methane, in turn, is 70 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas.
But methane has another name: natural gas. If a town capped its dump, captured the methane, and used it to do work they'd otherwise have to buy gas (or some other fuel) for, they'd save some money and convert the methane into carbon dioxide through its use, reducing its effect on the environment.
By using that gas to run a district heating system for example, they'd lower the cost for people to live there, or businesses to locate there - an economic incentive that didn't require a tax giveaway.
In other words, smaller scale doesn't interest big corporations half as much as it can interest you, me, and the places we live.
There's all sorts of free energy waiting out there. Another example: we can get energy from the local water tower when gravity sends it back down as it's used simply by putting a turbine in the pipe. It's a "run of river" hydro facility but installed inside our civic infrastructure, instead.
Why does this matter? After all, we get electricity from the grid, gas comes in pipelines, and we've got lots of it.
We're used to thinking in terms of money as the differentiator between our community and the other ones around it. That's how different jurisdictions get into battles to see who can offer a major new factory the biggest tax break and the cheapest land and services to attract them (and their employment).
Suppose we started thinking about offering things in kind, instead. "Come here, we have really cheap gas for your factory. Come here, we have really cheap electricity."
We could think even more audaciously if we wanted. A city like Mississauga in Ontario wants to build out an LRT system to serve its citizens. Needless to say, a lot of other Ontario municipalities also want improved transit systems. Finding the money can be a struggle. Getting it built now? Almost impossible.
In Dresden, Germany, a central city location was used to build a new Volkswagen auto assembly plant: the "Transparent Factory". Why in the centre of a historic city and not on the outskirts? Dresden's convention centre wasn't doing that well, anyway, and that meant the land could be sold. In turn, its LRT system could be used to bring in the parts, keeping trucks off the roads.
Yes, the same rails that run public transit also bring in auto parts, on specially-designed small vehicles that fit well on city streets. The increased economy has allowed Dresden to expand service to its citizens without increased taxes.
Mississauga, in other words, could think the same way, serving its industrial economy and providing for its citizens' needs at the same time. "Join us in the capital investment, and save on your operating costs for years to come."
Canada does have cities with strong forward planning. What is generally still missing is the notion of looking at everything our towns or cities do and ways to leverage it. Vancouver, for instance, is using its Green City approach to work with transit corridors - but it's not looking at how to use those corridors to create jobs, or how to heat or power refurbished zones to make them attractive. The integration across many different sources and disciplines still isn't there.
But it can be, and that's the point.
New Urbanist-trained architects are used to running what they call a charette to bring a community together to help specify what they want and to make sure a multi-block change works for everyone. This same process could be used to identify opportunities and overcome specialization, so that ideas to power our local economies forward can be put on the table.
There's opportunity and free sources of energy all around us. Time to put them to work, and grow our economy, one town after another.
Bruce Stewart, Toronto, ON.
