Lois Lindsay has had a tenant on her roof now for five years. It is not a raccoon or a squirrel scratching into the attic. It’s flat, shiny, made mostly in Canada, and helps pay her electricity bill.
“These solar panels are kind of like permanent Airbnb guests,” explains Lois. “We could have used our money to invest traditionally or to finish off the basement, but we wanted to be environmentally responsible homeowners too, so we went instead with panels to take pressure off our wallets and lighten our ecological footprint.”
And it’s been paying off. Every month, Lindsay gets two letters from her local distribution company. One is a bill, the other is a credit from the energy her “tenants” generated and sold back into the grid. Spread out over 25 years, her forecasted return is 9 per cent annually after taking out the initial cost of investment.
In 2011, Lindsay and her husband installed 12 235-watt panels on their roof. The Ontario Liberals were aiming to phase out coal while championing the speedier uptake of renewable energy, and a Feed-In-Tariff program was established. On a commercial scale, organizations can apply to participate in the FIT program. For individuals who can generate renewable energy on their property (10 kilowatts or less), the program is called microFIT.
Lindsay was guaranteed that she could sell her renewable energy into the grid at a fixed price; this guarantee put a stable price on an emerging technology, giving homeowners the opportunity to actively participate in the transition to a cleaner economy.
Logging into their hydro account, Lindsay can look at an online dashboard to figure out how to eke out more efficiency on the energy consumed in her home.
However, Ontario’s Feed-in-Tariff programs are now being recalculated and scaled back. While successful applicants to the latest round of contracts — FIT 4 — were recently announced, details of the next round are still being worked out. As FIT evolves, a lack of assurance around the resale price leaves people who want to put their money where their values are wondering how they can help herald in a greener energy intensive economy.
Enter the Minister of the Environment and Climate Change, Glen Murray, who recently tabled a bill to address weaning us off those ingredients that contribute to climate change.
The bill tackles in broad sweeps those sectors where he can get the biggest gain for his bucks: commerce, transportation and industry. Ontario has also pledged to spend up to $600 million to help homeowners install low-carbon technologies such as geothermal and heat pump systems, solar thermal and solar generation systems for heating homes and water.
But the bill does not offer much for eco-minded consumers who are looking for direction on how they can take steps to live a more carbon-neutral life. Many already go beyond the simple tips the ministry provides (its website suggests: chose local, travel cleanly, use tap water, conserve at home), but “biking to work, taking shorter showers, unplugging the beer fridge in the basement, caulking drafts, shopping local, wearing your clothes more often before washing them, and eating less meat” can only take one so far.
“A lot of resources used in the city come from the countryside,” Lindsay reflects. “As urban dwellers, we didn’t want to drag down the rest of the planet with our consumption; we consciously want to be on the plus side of the eco-equation.”
People who think like Lindsay but don’t have the roof available to take on solar tenants can consider putting their energy into a collective effort that delivers more clout. SolarShare, for example, is an Ontario community power co-operative that develops grid-tied renewable energy projects. In essence, solar projects are developed and then refinanced using “solar bonds” that are sold to the public.
Such projects, like many infrastructure investments, are capital-intensive up front and pay back over a longer period of time. For SolarShare, the rate of return for investors is 5 per cent annually for a five-year bond, with 6 per cent for Solar Bonds locked in over 15 years. SolarShare’s projects to date generate 5.25 million kilowatt-hours of clean electricity annually, resulting in an annual greenhouse gas emissions reduction of 585 tonnes.
“Admittedly, there are a lot of moving parts and complexity to the energy sector, which is so tied to our economy,” SolarShare general manager Chris Caners says. “Canadians are more aware of the implications of the use of fossil fuels on our environment. At the same time, the advent of disruptive technologies such as smart metering, electric vehicles, and batteries are all factors in finding a way of decoupling our economy from the combustion of fossil fuels.
“To the socially minded citizen wanting to make a positive infrastructure impact in their community, a solar bond is a way to make them feel good about their investment while getting a decent return.”