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...

28 July, 2009

According to a New York Times report of a speech by Microsoft chairman Bill Gates in New Delhi last Friday, Canada's liberal immigration laws have led the software giant to create many jobs here. Moneyquote: [Gates] was also critical of Congress’s stance on immigration, and said he would like to see immigration exceptions for “smart people.” Canadian laws are more favorable, he said, because they allow immigrants to work if they are offered a high-paying job. Microsoft has created “a lot of jobs in Canada for that reason,” he said. Less admirably, Gates would like us all to carry government issued...

27 July, 2009
In contrarian's view, the strongest arguments put forward by environmentalists in the NSP biomass application hearings dealt with wood supply.  The UARB gave them short shrift. Black River Wind Ltd. argued that pressure to supply the proposed plant would encourage NewPage to adopt unsustainable forestry practices. The Ecology Action Centre praised recent improvements in NewPage's forest management practices. It argued that a smaller biomass generator, designed to run on wood waste generated by NewPage's existing forestry operations, could be a useful component of the campaign to wean NSP and its customers off dirty coal, but concluded that a boiler of the size proposed would overtax Eastern Nova Scotia's wood supply. The UARB concluded that harvesting practices were beyond its jurisdiction, adding,  "The Board assumes that other authorities who have responsibility for the harvesting of the forest will ensure appropriate regulations and guidelines with respect to harvesting biomass are in place."
22 July, 2009
The UARB says any decision to implement feed-in tariffs will have to come from government, not the board. Feed-in tariffs would guarantee pre-set, above-market rates for alternative power producers who want to feed surplus power into the NSP grid at will. It is strongly advocated—surprise, surprise!—by companies like Neal Livingston's Black River Wind, which have not been able to compete with large commercial wind producers in NSP's bidding process, but stand to profit from guaranteed access to the grid at above-market prices.
22 July, 2009
Given UARB Chairman Peter Gurnham's frequent criticism of NSP during hearings on the biomass project, it is no surprise that today's decision aims strong language at the utility. Written by Gurnham, the decision calls NSP's application, "incomplete [and] poorly documented." Gurnham acknowledges the urgency of reducing NSP's carbon output, but adds, "the progress of this project has likely been delayed because of NSPI's action."
22 July, 2009
Seminal environmentalist (and sometime Cape Breton summer resident) Stewart Brand promotes a series of environmental heresies in this surprising talk. In 1968, Brand created the Whole Earth Catalog, which Apple founder Steve Jobs described as the conceptual forerunner of the World Wide Web. A counter-cultural touchstone, the Catalog helped inspire and galvanize the environmental movement. Today, Brand calls himself an ecopragmatist. This talk previews Whole Earth Discipline, a book he will publish this Fall challenging contemporary environmentalists to reconsider objections to nuclear power and genetically modified foods. Brand is pro-city, pro-genetic engineering, pro-nuclear, and so profoundly worried about climate change, he believes geoengineering will probably be necessary. After the jump, some excerpts from the talk.
14 July, 2009

[caption id="attachment_1356" align="alignright" width="150" caption="Malcolm Gladwell"][/caption] The New Yorker's Malcom Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point and Bink, takes on Wired editor Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail and Free, in today's edition. Free is essentially an extended elaboration of [occasional Cape Breton summer resident] Stewart Brand’s famous declaration that “information wants to be free.” The digital age, Anderson argues, is exerting an inexorable downward pressure on the prices of all things “made of ideas.” Anderson does not consider this a passing trend. Rather, he seems to think of it as an iron law: “In the digital realm you can try...

06 July, 2009
Pills - 1 - strip
Skeptic magazine documents our current (somewhat frail) understanding of placebos:
We not only know placebos “work,” we know there is a hierarchy of effectiveness:
  • Placebo injections work better than placebo pills
  • Capsules work better than tablets
  • Big pills work better than small
  • The more doses a day, the better
  • The more expensive, the better
  • The color of the pill makes a difference
  • Telling the patient, “This will relieve your pain” works better than saying “This might help.”
05 July, 2009

Here's how a really cool national postal service communicates. Hat tip: Bessy N....

02 July, 2009
In his latest Herald column, the normally estimable Ralph Surette drinks the feed-in tariff Kool-Aid. Moneyquote:
Check out how they’re doing it in Ontario and other out-front jurisdictions, where "feed-in" laws or "standard offer contracts" are in effect — in which the utility is required to take power produced by entrepreneurs at a fixed rate, no haggling. Wherever it’s been tried, there’s been an explosion of energy entrepreneurship and new jobs. The [Nova Scotia Power] system of calling tenders one project at a time didn’t work elsewhere, and it hasn’t worked here.
Ralph makes a few good points in the column, but these two paragraphs contain more foolishness than enough.
ralph_surrette-cropped-small
Ontario passed a bill authorizing the Minister of Energy to permit the use of feed-in tariffs just six weeks ago, and the regulations haven't been written yet. So it hasn't produced "an explosion" of anything yet, except perhaps hyped expectations among the uncompetitive producers who have been pushing for such a law here. As for other jurisdictions, in North America, Ontario is it: the first state, province, or country to pass a feed-in tariff law. As for tendered contracts not working, that will come as news to generations of good governance experts. Elsewhere in the same column, Ralph rightly criticizes NSP's attempt to win Utility and Review Board approval for an untendered biomass project.
29 June, 2009
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