I see by the CBC that Nova Scotia Power wind turbines have laid waste to a Digby Neck emu farm, decimating a family's livelihood in the process. Twenty of Debi and Davey VanTassel's 27 emus succumbed to the lethal noise produced by NS Power's murderous machines in the three years since they began slicing the salt air over Digby. Or maybe it was 30 of their 38 birds—the CBC story gives both sets of figures. In any case, the emus were as hapless as they were flightless, no match for the death-dealing, green-power monsters. How do we know this? Because Debi Van Tassel, voice choked...

Here's the view this morning from the second storey of the Nova Scotia Power building on Lower Water Street. Photo: David Rodenhiser. Click image for full sized version. Of course, you can't see the NS Power building from this photograph, but I will take this opportunity to note that it is the most under-appreciated architectural marvel in Nova Scotia—a magnificent structure with many interesting features that combine to make it an exceptionally beautiful and functional workplace. The ground floor of the defunct coal-fired generating station is accessible to the public from the boardwalk side. If you are in the neighbourhood during business hours, you really should...

I'm a friend and admirer of Jamie Baillie from long before he ran for office, but his recent foray into energy policy makes me nervous. Granted, the climate of public (and media) hostility to Nova Scotia Power makes the utility an almost irresistible target for politicians aiming at the premier's office, but Baillie's demand for easing up on renewable energy targets sounds to me like a short-term anaesthetic for long-term pain. The Pictou Bee, an NDP-flavored blog, sees it the same way, calling it Baillie's "unforced error." [O]ddly, Jamie Baillie and his Conservatives have decided that attacking renewable energy is good politics...

A recent story by Andrew MacDonald in the online journal AllNovaScotia.com included the following sentence: NSP has begun slowly moving its 500 workers out of the Barrington Tower office to a new $54-million HQ on the Halifax waterfront, dubbed the Bennett Bunker for NSP ceo [sic] Rob Bennett [emphasis in the original]. The phrase, "dubbed the Bennett Bunker," is noteworthy for having been cast in passive voice, a grammatical form journalists often decry as a way for politicians and similar miscreants to evade responsibility for their actions. Who exactly "dubbed" NS Power's office building "the Bennett Bunker?" Why, AllNovaScotia, that's who. It invented...

A few weeks ago, I posted a critique of an opinion piece in the August 25 edition of AllNovaScotia.com [subscription required] by Prof. Larry Hughes of the Dalhouse University's Computer Engineering Department. Hughes is currently toiling as a visiting professor of Global Energy Systems at Uppsala University in Sweden. Shockingly, Contrarian is not yet daily reading in that particular corner of Scandinavia, so he only recently learned of my comments. Hughes writes: Contrary to what you have written, [my article in AllNovaScotia.com] has nothing to with NSP's existing 2010 or 2013 requirements.  The article is about NSP's new 25% renewables...

Two weeks ago, AllNovaScotia.com, the excellent online journal run by daughter-father team Caroline Wood and David Bentley, ran the latest in a series of occasional pieces by Larry Hughes, a computer engineering coordinator at Dalhousie University. Hughes is something of an energy policy gadfly. He expects energy will soon be in short supply globally, so he places a lot of emphasis on energy security, by which he appears to mean energy produced within Nova Scotia. Nevertheless, Hughes opposes Nova Scotia Power's plan to mix wood waste with coal to burn in its thermal generating plants. His piece, in the August 25 edition...

2:35 NSP President Rob Bennett has wrapped up the session with a brief thank you to the consumer participants and expert panelists. The session ended about an hour early to give participants time to get home before Hurricane Bill hits. Before leaving Truro,  the consumer participants will fill out a questionnaire touching on various energy issues. They filled out an a second survey before coming to the session. Comparing the two will give NSP policy planners some insight into whether and how an informed discussion can move public opinion on energy issues. 2:25 One of the consumer breakout groups expressed alarm about the...

9:15 [caption id="attachment_1952" align="alignleft" width="303" caption="Roberta Bondar poses with charmed NSP flacks."][/caption] My old Daily News chum David Rodenhiser, now laboring in NSP communications, asked Bondar if she had any startling revelations in space. Many of them. One is that Buck Rogers was a myth. We romanticize space. It's a very difficult environment. It's very hard. It's hard on the body. But you can't beat the view. 8:40 p.m.: A surprisingly witty keynote speech by Roberta Bondar began with several slides of Hurricane Bill. These days Bondar makes her living as a professional speaker, but this isn't shaping up to be a canned speech. Moneyquote: The...

In a post yesterday Monday, contrarian observed that a little noticed NDP campaign promise would advance Nova Scotia Power's renewable energy targets by five years. Today Tuesday, the new government made that promise official government policy. NSP must generate one quarter of its energy from renewable sources (hydro, wind, tidal, wave, solar, biomass, biofuel, or landfill gas) by 2015. It's certainly a laudable step, but how big a step is it? The answer to that is incredibly complicated. It's complicated because various stages of the renewable energy requirements imposed on NSP define renewable energy three different ways: as overall generation from renewable sources; as...