This week (April 15-19) a City of Kitchener committee voted to spend $8,000,000 dollars chasing the Ghost of Green House Gas Emissions GHGE targeting to lower current city levels by 8% over 8 years. Add this to the $15,000,000 wasted on low impact (2500kw) solar project and the $21,000,000spent a 600kw waste water biogas project which can NEVER pay for themselves or have a significant impact in either energy efficiencies or lowering GHGE, to be added to the amount of money being spent on various staffed departments and similar projects by the Region of Waterloo, it’s cities and townships the amount chasing the GHGC Ghost will potentially cost taxpayers over $100,000,000 in the Waterloo region alone.
Multiply this $100,000,000 by the number of Regions, cities and towns across the Country doing similar projects and we are looking at BILLIONS of dollars being wasted chasing a GHOST, which even if caught, the impact of catching it would be equal to a grain-of-sand on the global beaches in the battle against global warming given the entire country of Canada accounts for only 1.6% of GHGE. Yet almost ‘zero’ significant money is being spent on protecting the most important resource for which we can actually have a serious impact and which we are the greatest wasters and polluters….water.
WHY is this money being spent chasing the GHGE Ghost?
This money is not being spent so much as to have a significant impact on GHGE reductions as much as it is as a ‘moral salve’ for administrative staffs and politicians, whose ‘hearts’ are in the right place, but have little if any, ‘dirt under their fingernail’ experience in the enviro-energy fields.
I asked two of our team’s Ph.Doctorate enviro-energy specialists (alternative fuels and energy management programming) to evaluate the much hyped 17,357 word report (according to Word) ‘COMMUNITY ENERGY INVESTMENT STRATEGY FOR WATERLOO REGION’ (http://theengineeringgroup.ca/energy/) which is, in various forms, ‘duplicated’ by the municipalities, including Kitchener, across the country’. Their responses: one “generously” gave it a 5 out of 10 …10 being high… the other gave it a rating of 4.5 out of ten with the comment “it reads like a third year university student report trying to impress their prof with word count.” Both agreed a 750 word analysis would have covered it all.
Not one local politician I asked or administrative staff could name the local company which is internationally recognized by the governments of India, Austria and Honduras as the globes leading bio-mass energy operation. Nor did any of them know a local inventor/developer had sold the patents and prototype for a green-fuel which has been successfully used on cars, trucks, buses and airplanes, to the Saudis. The Saudi’s sent a private jet to pick him up to fly him to the contract signing. Funny the Saudi’s knew about his development but no Canadian governmental official at ‘any level’ would even talk to him about the project. None knew about the $20,000,000 XFactor ‘carbon capturing’ program….need I go on?
Is Global Warming threatening our existence….it ABSOLUTELY IS. Our team agrees with Dr. Stephen Hawkin’s 100 year extinction thought. Is GHGE the cause of Global Warming…..YES.
For $8,000,000, Kitchener’s goal of an 8% GHGE reduction over 8 years is pathetic. Our Energy Management Platform software program has never resulted in less than a 12% increase in energy efficiencies and GHGE reductions and often hits into the 20%. Our software program alone, not only exceeds Kitchener’s 8 year targets but does so at a fraction of the cost with an 18 month total repayment structure. And at ZERO taxpayers dollars for financing.
Our business network targets for 70% reductions starting at the ‘off grid’ strategies. These differences in goals reflect a difference in professional knowledge, skill and application levels between our team at ‘The Engineering Group’ and the City of Kitchener’s team.
When the Kitchener staff presenter was questioned by a Councillor about how it was possible that an increase in efficiencies would result in a higher cost, the staffer did not have an answer. This is a knowledge gap. By definition higher levels of efficiencies result in lower operating costs, with that definition expanded to also include lower GHGE.
This knowledge gap shows a major lack of understanding of not only the relationship between increased efficiencies and lower operational costs but also shows a basic failure to understand the ‘financial principle’ that all investments in increased efficiencies will pay for every project, regardless of size. All that ‘fluctuates’ is the ‘time frame’ it takes for the project to pay for itself.
Failure to understand this financial principle is why city officials also fail to understand that in today’s economies private sector funding is available for enviro-energy projects and can be structured in such a way as to not have to be recognized as a capital expenditure thereby removing funding barriers. For many types of projects, we have insurance packages ensuring we ‘hit our targets’. Worse case scenario for our clients is they get their entire project for free if we don’t hit our targets. However, our overall target is for our clients to make money through savings as soon as we ‘throw the ‘on’ switch’.
Failure of city officials to take advantage of what is ‘common practice’ in the private sector is why they have to ‘beg for money’ from a higher governmental level instead of being able to undertake major projects totally financed by private sector financial structures. The federal money pool will dry up almost instantly if the Conservatives win the upcoming election. Provincial money already has dried up.
For most part the $8,000,000 committee meeting was a ‘love fest’ with no hard core questions (excluding the one not answered) and therefore no clarity on important subjects.
If taxpayers are going to have to shell our hundreds of millions to billions of dollars to lower GHGE it must be centred on lower emission levels by increased levels of energy efficiencies, which is the ONLY route to their goal. All energy efficiency projects lower GHGE.
The ‘dramatic shift’ in terminology from ‘increased efficiencies’ has been replaced by a more ‘hip’ terminology centred on Green House Gas Emissions is because politicos have come to understand, that anything that resembles the terminology coming out of the Paris Accord will get them money.
If political operations at any level want to have a significant impact in lowering GHGE they must invest in advanced carbon capturing research and technologies. place immediate focus on more direct environmental problems such as plastic pollution, the chemicalization of water pollution, in bio-mass, co-generation and hydrogen system. They must strive to be ‘A Beacon of Light’ and restructure their goals. ( http://theengineeringgroup.ca/wr-a-beacon-of-light/
Wasting million of dollars on proven ineffective and expensive systems like solar and wind technologies, is just ‘that’…. a waste of resources that could be used on important projects.
It’s time for political operations to elevate their knowledge, skill and disciple level in the enviro-energy sciences.
Maxwell