It's 10 to 20 years late, but we're finally getting some realistic talk about what we're facing regarding energy. The government's renewable electricity plan, unveiled a week ago, raises consciousness about this much higher than what we've been used to.

It acknowledges the problems and limitations of the various options -- including its controversial biomass project. It damps down our longstanding Nova Scotian fantasy of an electricity strategy based on exports and does the same with the bizarre and pointless claim cooked up by former premier Rodney MacDonald that we'll be leading the world in green energy by 2020.

Big wind farms in financial or deadline trouble, sometimes being bailed out by Nova Scotia Power, are almost daily fare on the business pages these days. Like much of the rest of the world, we've cast wind as the saviour in our quest for green energy. Here's stuff we should know while we still have time to reset our options.

In Spain, Italy, the U.S. and elsewhere, big wind power scams have erupted, the result of hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies being pumped into wind with little control. Some politicians and entrepreneurs are already in jail.

Like you, I was taken aback earlier by the news that a deal had been struck whereby Hydro-Quebec would more or less take over NB Power. What did it mean, especially for Nova Scotia? Having thought it over, I've found the hidden message: If the deal goes through, offering Quebec's ample hydro power right next door, take it.

We'd be fools not to. It would be a marvellous thing that would save us a great deal of trouble. Depending on the amount, it would allow us to slow down on the option of "big wind and biomass" that we have chosen to deliver 25 per cent of our power by 2015, that's getting more troublesome all the time and that may not work even under the most optimistic scenario.

Oil prices have been stable for a while. When this happens, it always restores our illusion that things are under control. The upcoming world-scale meeting in Copenhagen in December, meant to replace the failed 1997 Kyoto Protocol against a backdrop of continuously rising pollution, finger-pointing among nations and polar ice melting beyond scientists' worst fears, may or may not shatter the fantasy.