We are an all-volunteer grassroots group of citizens who live in the City of Ottawa or in adjoining municipalities. We focus only on climate change and not on any ideology or any other issues.
In the next few weeks, and for a month or two thereafter, the City of Ottawa is going to make some very important and far-reaching decisions about how the City approves the construction of any given Battery Energy Storage System (“BESS”). Some time later this year, the Ottawa City Council will also consider, and ultimately vote on, new Zoning By-laws about the location and operation of any renewable energy generation facilities in the City of Ottawa.
There is a serious risk that both of these issues will effectively be decided by committees of some fraction of city councillors, whose recommendations will simply be rubber-stamped by the full City Council when the issues come before them.
We cannot let this happen.
Make no mistake: These are climate change issues.
Climate change affects each and every citizen of Ottawa, regardless of what ward they live in. It will affect their children more, and their grandchildren even more.
We need to engage with all of our city councillors and make sure that they are all engaged on these issues.
That’s why the all-volunteer, grassroots group Ottawa Citizens for Clean Energy hopes to provide information on these two issues as information becomes available. We then hope to encourage ordinary citizens of Ottawa who are concerned about climate change to contact their respective city councillors. Ideally, citizens, either individually in groups, will arrange meetings with their respective councillors. Phone calls and emails are the next best things. The purpose of this engagement with our respective councillors is to inform them about these issues and to tell them to vote to prevent climate change.
This is necessary because some councillors in some wards seem to be motivated not to take this action because of what looks strikingly like “Not-In-My-Back-Yard” (“NIMBY”) syndrome. Those councillors must not be allowed to effectively make decisions for all of Ottawa when every Ottawa City Councillor has an equal vote and when climate change affects every citizen of Ottawa equally.
We plan to post more information on this website on the proposed procedure to approve new BESSes very soon after it becomes available, hopefully in the third week of September. We also hope to post information on the draft By-laws about renewable energy generation as soon as they become available.
In the meantime, we would would ask you, please, to complete this form, so that we can contact you with more information when it becomes available and to help coordinate you and others with meeting, calling, or emailing your councillor!
Here is Wikipedia’s definition of a BESS:
A… battery energy storage system (“BESS”)… is a type of energy storage power station that uses a group of batteries to store electrical energy. Battery storage is the fastest responding dispatchable source of power on electric grids, and it is used to stabilise those grids, as battery storage can transition from standby to full power in under a second to deal with grid contingencies.
BESSes are very large, industrial-sized batteries. They can be charged up by taking electricity out of Ontario’s current electricity grid when there is more electricity produced for the grid than is required for demand and they can put the electricity back into the grid when demand is higher. Also, as renewable energy generation, such as solar panels and wind turbines, is added to the grid in the future, they can store surplus electricity generated when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing and later contribute that electricity to the grid when the sun is not shining and the wind is not blowing. In both cases, BESSes reduce our need for electricity from gas plants and nuclear power plants.
Climate change is a very serious problem.
It is caused mostly by burning fossil fuels: Oil, gasoline, so-called “natural” (methane) gas, and coal.
We need to stop burning fossil fuels.
Our society’s energy needs are not going to decrease; they are going to drastically increase.
The only way to stop burning fossil fuels, and to avoid suffering from even worse effects from climate change than we are already experiencing, is to drastically increase our generation and use of electricity – and the generation must not come from fossil fuels. That means no gas plants, or at least the absolute minimum required. That leaves nuclear power plants, which have their own issues and about which you can form your own opinion, and renewables: mostly wind turbines and solar photovoltaic (“PV”) panels, with BESSes to store the surplus generated when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing to be put back into the grid when the sun is not shining and the wind is not blowing.
One might think that, because of our climate emergency, everyone would agree that this clean energy transition is simply common sense and that we should get on with it as quickly as possible, but everyone does not agree on that. There are groups within Ottawa that oppose wind, solar, and BESSes. Moreover, there are Ottawa City Councillors who have an established track record of creating a moratorium on the construction and operation of renewable energy generation facilities, as well as strong opposition to BESSes.
At the same time, several people have learned that many Ottawa City Councillors outside of the wards where the BESSes and renewable energy generation facilities must necessarily be located know very little about these issues. Certainly, the recent voting record of Ottawa City Council as a whole has shown that they have taken no steps to advance these issues, or even discuss them.
We need to change that, and we need your help in doing so.
Ottawa Citizens for Clean Energy is an all-volunteer group of citizens living in and around Ottawa.
1. Climate change is a very serious issue.
2. It is mostly caused by burning fossil fuels.
3. We need to stop burning fossil fuels.
We believe that doing so will require an enormous, rapid transition to renewable electricity. This will inevitably require the development of large amounts of renewable electrical generation and storage. It will include, among other things, the development of wind turbines, solar panels, and Battery Energy Storage Systems (“BESSes”), not just in the rest of Ontario and Canada, but also within the City of Ottawa.
We believe that the transition will also require the rapid adoption of Zero Emission Vehicles and more public transportation for travel, as well as the rapid transition to electrical heating, including heat pumps, for heating and cooling buildings. Both of these changes will require new rules and also significant new infrastructure.
We believe the Secretary General of the United Nations, António Guterres, and the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (the “IPCC”) when they advise us that, if the world is to have any hope of remaining below 1.5oC, or even 2oC, of global warming, we must act faster, and definitely make significant progress before 2030.
We believe that everyone in Ottawa, and especially Ottawa City Council, has a significant role to play in developing the necessary renewable energy generation within Ottawa and in taking action to enable non-emitting transportation and non-emitting heating and cooling of buildings.
We believe that Ottawa is currently not moving fast enough or far enough in making the required transition.
To change that, we are willing to engage in any civil (and not illegal) action that we deem to be useful in increasing the speed and the effectiveness of the required transition.