Author Archives: Anca Pascalau

SP Annual Event and Partnership Recognition Awards

The 2nd Annual Sustainable Peterborough Event and Partnership Recognition Awards will be held at Market Hall on Thursday, April 20th, 5:00-8:00 pm.  

In order to recognize the numerous sustainable achievements that our partner organizations have accomplished in 2016, Sustainable Peterborough is again hosting the Sustainable Peterborough Partnership Recognition Awards.   Thank you for all the nominations submitted!  Winners will be announced at the event.

We have much to celebrate, please join us as we share our collective accomplishments with our partners and our community at the SP Event and Partnership Recognition Awards on April 20th! 

For full event details please see the event invitation and program..

Peterborough Utilities offers advice with cap-and-trade set to kick in on Jan. 1 in Ontario

For anyone who hasn’t been paying attention to the Ontario government’s new approach to combatting climate change, it’s time to start.

New Year’s Day is the day of reckoning. The price of gasoline is going to jump four cents a litre and every other form of energy will follow suit.

Electricity, natural gas, propane, heating oil … the province is tacking a premium on them all in what amounts to the official kick-off of Ontario’s cap-and-trade program.

The purpose is to put a price on carbon. Make carbon more expensive and people will be inclined to use less of it. Less carbon use means lower greenhouse gas emissions. Fewer emissions slows the pace of climate change.

Cap-and-trade essentially creates a carbon market. The province is capping the total amount of carbon that can be produced and assigning individual cap amounts to large industries and businesses. Those that are over their cap will have to buy carbon credits, those that are under their cap will be sellers.

Homeowners, tenants and smaller businesses aren’t directly involved in the cap-and-trade market but still have a large stake in how it works.

That’s because cap-and-trade and higher prices on fuel and home heating are just one element of Ontario’s Climate Change Action Plan. They are the penalties that create a financial incentive to use less energy; they also produce revenue, revenue the province is promising it will use to help people buy greener cars and trucks, more efficient heating and cooling systems for homes and businesses, and to install alternative energy sources.

When cap-and-trade is running full out in 2020 the province expects to take in $1.9 billion annually to invest in those programs.

But higher energy prices are already here. For anyone interested in reducing both their carbon footprint and their energy bills some programs already exist.

The most comprehensive programs are for low-income tenants and homeowners. Those who qualify can get free upgrades for insulation, programmable thermostats, indoor clothes drying racks, possibly even new appliances.

Cathy Mitchell, conservation technical co-ordinator with the distribution arm of Peterborough Utilities Inc., says the local electrical utility expects to provide up to $85,000 in subsidies this year to low income households. The target is to increase that to $110,000 in 2017.

Enbridge Gas and Union Gas have an equivalent Home Winterproofing Program.

Other subsidy programs are available regardless of income. The Heating and Cooling Initiative will provide up to $650 to replace older furnaces and air conditioners, and anyone can print out on-line coupons that bring down the cost of everything from LED light bulbs to clotheslines and weatherstripping.

All those incentives and programs are explained on a central website: www.saveonenergy.ca.

The PUI program is funded by the Independent Electricity System Operator, a non-profit agency that oversees Ontario’s electricity market. It was created in 1998 as part of the breakup of Ontario Hydro.

Small business owners can also take advantage of conservation incentives. Mitchell says she worries that smaller companies that don’t have enough staff to dedicate someone to energy management tend to focus on replacing equipment only after it breaks down.

As a result they often aren’t aware of incentives that can make upgrades pay for themselves while reducing energy consumption, she said.

PUI’s target is to have the subsidy programs it oversees result in 39 gigawatt hours of electricity conservation by 2020. That would be the equivalent of taking every home in Lakefield off the electricity grid.

As cap-and-trade and the provincial Climate Change Action Plan go into full swing those subsidy programs will expand. The province and local utilities are working on pilot projects now, Mitchell said.

The province has made it clear that retrofit programs now available only to low income households will expand. The federal government will also feel pressure to fund home energy conservation initiatives.

Higher energy prices have arrived. It only makes sense to take advantage of the incentives that are the other half of Ontario’s climate change reduction equation.

This is one of a series of articles commissioned and paid for by Sustainable Peterborough and published in partnership with The Peterborough Examiner. By Jim Hendry, Peterborough Examiner, original article published Saturday, December 31, 2016.

Ontario begins cap-and-trade Jan. 1

From the moment Stone Age man discovered more than 500,000 years ago that a fire could be lit and controlled, carbon has been the engine of civilization.

Carbon is nature’s basic building block, found in every living thing, plant or animal. Over time nature recomposed a lot of that carbon into fossil fuels: coal, natural gas and crude oil. Pulled out of the ground, they fuelled a carbon-dependent, energy-consuming society.

Which means that putting the brakes on the amount of carbon we burn is a big, complex project.

Ontario has adopted a five-year plan to cut reduce carbon consumption, the Climate Change Action Plan. Peterborough has its own plan, one that covers both the city and county.

This coming Jan. 1 anyone who hasn’t been paying attention to what’s been going on in the world of carbon control will wake up to the new reality of “cap and trade.”

For most of us the result will be deceptively simple. Gasoline will cost an extra 4.3 cents a litre. You’ll see the evidence on the signs at every gas station you pass.

Heat your home with natural gas, or the water you shower in? Cook with it? You’ll pay 3.3 cents more for every cubic metre you burn. With a current price of about 11 cents a cubic metre that’s a 30-per-cent increase.

Diesel fuel will go up 5 cents a litre, propane 4 cents a cubic metre.

The effect on electricity prices won’t be nearly as drastic. Nuclear plants, hydro dams and alternative energy sources produce almost all of Ontario’s electricity these days. Coal is done and natural gas plants are on their way out.

How much those price increases cost individual consumers will vary, but it’s not hard to come up with some average figures. Natural Resources Canada says that a new, average-sized Canadian home burns about 2,700 cubic metres a year for heating. That translates to an additional $89 a year at 3.3 cents a cubic metre.

If your car use 10 litres of fuel per 100 kilometres and you drive 30,000 kilometres a year your annual cap-and-trade premium will be $115.

While those price hikes are what most of us will experience directly, they are a small part of the overall cap-and-trade mechanism.

Cap-and-trade is one of several ways governments can attempt to force down the use of fossil fuels, and therefore reduce the future impacts of climate change.

The “cap” is a ceiling set on carbon emissions. Ontario has set its 2017 cap at the equivalent of 142.3 million tonnes of CO2 , commonly referred to as greenhouse gases (GHG), released into the atmosphere. Ever industry and businesses that emits GHG gets an individual cap number. Those that release more carbon than their cap allows can buy carbon allowances; those that release less than their cap can sell allowances or bank them.

Each year for the next five years time the cap will be lowered, increasing pressure on everyone to get under their cap and save money.

For 2017 the mandatory cap will apply only to very large industries and institutions that release 25,000 or more tonnes of CO2 annually, a total of 140 province-wide. Industries and institutions that produce less than 25,000 tonnes of GHG can voluntarily register for the cap-and-trade program.

Cap-and-trade also applies to companies that sell energy, including natural gas suppliers Enbridge and Consumers Gas and gasoline distributers. That is where the price increases that affect individuals come in. The province has mandated those increases in an attempt to cut consumption.

In Ontario, cap-and-trade is expected to generate $2 billion a year by 2020. The province intends to put all that money into environmental measures and incentive programs to cut GHG emissions: investment in public transit, bigger grants to offset the cost of buying electric cars, retrofit programs for homes would be among them.

A future article will look at how those programs will work, and how consumers can take advantage of them.

This is one of a series of articles commissioned and paid for by Sustainable Peterborough and published in partnership with The Peterborough Examiner. By Jim Hendry, Peterborough Examiner, original article published Saturday, December 10, 2016.

Trent University grad Jessica Correa aims to spread the Random Acts of Green brand nationally

Jessica Correa is excited by all the Random Acts of Green she has posted on her company’s Facebook page and Twitter and Instagram accounts, but one stands out.

“We really liked the Ultimate Frisbee group,” Correa say. “They do the carbon flip.”

To explain: Correa, 24, has a master of environmental science degree, with a focus on sustainable development. She also runs a business, Random Acts of Green, dedicated to promoting environmental activities in the community.

The carbon flip is an Ultimate Frisbee staple the local league adopted. Instead of flipping discs to see which team gets the choice of starting on offence or defence they do a car count.

“They encourage everyone in the league to reduce their carbon footprint by carpooling to get to the game or use active transportation,” Correa explains.

The team with the fewest cars in the parking lot wins the “flip.” At the end of the year the team with the most flip points gets a pizza party or a keg party . . . “something fun,” as Correa says.

But the impact of the carbon flip is limited if no one knows about it. Post a high quality video on social media and the word gets around, one more pebble on a growing pile that could draw everyone’s attention to the possibilities of developing a sustainable lifestyle.

That’s what Correa and her team do.

“In our minds, if it’s not seen it’s not green.”

During grad school at Trent University, Correa looked at car sharing and how to market sustainable behaviour to her millennial generation. The focus groups she conducted led to a disheartening conclusion.

“I was frustrated with it,” she recalls. “I found that we’re all going to follow the same old formula: get a job, have a family, get a home, get a car. The same formula as our parents.”

She kept thinking someone should use social media to promote an alternative formula, one that simplified sustainability and brought it into everyday life. Not tree huggers or hippies or protesters, just regular people.

One day last December she had a “eureka” moment.

“I kept waiting for someone else to do it. Someone else should change the perception of environmentalism. And then I was like, ‘No one is! No one will!’ And then I was like, ‘OK, I’ll do it!'” When she is fired up, which is most of the time, Correa speaks in exclamation marks, an energetic bundle of mental activity shooting out sparks of innovation.

She is also very bright and highly focused. She finished her master’s program six months ahead of schedule while turning the Random Acts of Green concept into reality. She was soon snapping photos of people “doing green things” and posting them on social media, developing her “brand.”

Her posts started to draw attention. She was shocked when someone approached her for a quote on a green issue but it also prompted a second eureka moment – maybe she could make money at this.

“I just started dipping my toe in the world of the entrepreneur,” she says. She had no business experience but took “how to” seminars through Peterborough Economic Development and the Peterborough Innovation Cluster.

Now she pitches to clients who hire her to help them develop and popularize green initiatives. She posts video and photos of the events on her three Random Acts of Green social media platforms. Clients can put links to the sites on their own sites.

The City of Peterborough and the Peterborough Petes are among her clients.

Growing the business has been a struggle, she admits, but she’s confident the concept will work. Confident enough that she deferred her acceptance to a PhD program at the University of Waterloo.

Correa hopes to grow Random Acts of Green into “the number one green behaviour promoting brand in Canada.”

If that doesn’t happen, she says, she won’t have lost anything and will have gained an invaluable experience.

That’s a sustainable attitude, in any colour of the spectrum.

This is one of a series of articles commissioned and paid for by Sustainable Peterborough and published in partnership with The Peterborough Examiner. By Jim Hendry, Peterborough Examiner, original article published Saturday, November 12, 2016.

Family approach, natural approach at Harley Farms

KEENE – Harley Farm is sustainable from the ground up.

That might sound redundant. Of course their business runs from the ground up. It’s a farm, after all.

But the Harley family is a different breed with a unique approach to livestock farming, meaning the ground they steward – 1,300 acres of soil stretching along both sides of Heritage Line north of Keene – is particularly vital.

All they have is the ground and what grows on it. There are no barns for shelter. Their cattle, pigs and sheep live outdoors, 24/7, 365 days a year.

The operation is also entirely organic. No pesticides. No chemical fertilizer. No genetically modified seeds.

It is, Roger Harley believes, the largest-scale farm in the country that operates on those principles. The Harleys currently have 700 pigs (with plans to double that number next year), nearly 700 sheep and 200 head of cattle.

Innovation makes it work.

Roger and his son, 23-year-old James Harley, explain the ins and outs of the operation as we sit under a bright blue sky in front of the plain, neatly efficient retail store where a small percentage of the meat they produce is sold directly to the public.

Humane treatment of the animals is the key to their marketing success, Roger says.

They are the only farm in Ontario certified for humane animal care by the SPCA (Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) and AWA (Animal Welfare Approved) audit programs.

Animals are happiest and healthiest when they live outside, the Harleys say. But that means selecting the right animals.

They use two breeds of cattle. Belted Galloways are native to the cold, blustery highlands of Scotland; “old style” British Herefords are from the England-Wales border area.

“You can take a Blonde Aquitaine cow (from the south of France) and you can put it outside and say, ‘Oh, it’s looking fine in the summer.'” Roger says.

“At minus 40 it will be shivering in the corner and looking dead. That is not animal welfare, that’s bloody cruelty.”

Their pigs are reddish brown and hairy, not “pink and naked” like pigs in a barn. Some live in the woods. They are, as Roger notes, clean and happy . . . and they don’t stink.

Pigs are social animals so they do have huts. Knocked together out of two-by-fours and plywood, the huts cover about 50 square feet and serve five or six animals. When it’s time to move the pigs to a new field the huts and electric fencing can be rolled up and reassembled in a single day.

Moving the pigs is an essential part of the Harley Farm system. It is, the two men agree, all about rotation.

None of the acreage ever lies fallow. About a third is pasture for the animals. Some is planted in forage crops and vegetables for feed. Ever innovative, the main Harley forage is sorghum, a hardy plant originally from Africa that does well in varied climates.

Pigs are the primary fertilizers so they move twice a year. The rest of the rotation is annual: pigs, then forage crops, then hay, then cattle or sheep, then pigs again.

No animal barns means very small energy bills. There are no buildings to heat, light or cool.

Solar battery packs about the size of a lunch box power the electric fences.

The Harleys buy their tractors from Germany, where strict environmental regulations have resulted in clean, high efficiency diesel tractors that cut fuel costs by a third.

All the family works the farm: mother Julie, daughter Emily and James’s partner, Jessica Farrell. Julie and Jessica are also nurses and Emily is a student in the Fleming College health and fitness program.

Working as a family is rewarding, Roger says, particularly when everyone is committed to the outdoor, all-natural approach.

“Some days when it’s pouring with rain, blowing a gale, you think: ‘What the hell am I doing out here?’ ” he says. “But then you get a day like today, there’s no better place to be.”

This is one of a series of articles commissioned and paid for by Sustainable Peterborough and published in partnership with The Peterborough Examiner. By Jim Hendry, Peterborough Examiner, original article published Saturday, October 8, 2016.