It’s a painfully cold December afternoon and about 40 people are cheering and clapping at the base of a partially constructed wind turbine at Toronto’s Exhibition Place along the waterfront. They’ve waited all day for the wind off Lake Ontario to die down so crane operators could finish the job and safely hoist the turbine blades into place. Now, after five years of working toward this moment, the blades are finally going up and the crowd can hardly contain itself.

Bryan Young remembers the moment vividly.

“We didn’t know what the weather was going to do and we had a 15 minute window when the wind stopped blowing. It was touch and go,” recalls the former executive director of the Toronto Renewable Energy Co-operative (TREC).

In fact, Young saw the blades go up from the window of a taxi while driving through the Princes’ Gates. Impatient with the wind, he’d left the site and gone back to the office to get some work done.

“I’d barely got my mittens off when I got a call saying ‘The baby is being born,’” says Young, obviously still electrified with the moment.

TREC, the group behind the project, waged a long, hard battle to see the turbine go up in Toronto. Back in 1996, members of the North Toronto Green Community, a neighbourhood-based environmental group, began toying with the idea of a renewable energy demonstration project. The group had already pioneered a number of successful environmental initiatives, including a recycling program in apartment buildings, and wanted an energy project that would not only produce emissions-free electricity, but also act as a model for other communities worried about global warming.

So with a $5,000 grant from the Toronto Atmospheric Fund, the group hired Young. When his research pointed to a wind turbine, the group created a steering committee, which would eventually become TREC.

Eight years ago, not a single commercial turbine rose above the Ontario landscape. Today, there are 10 utility turbines churning out slightly more than 14.5 megawatts of energy annually — enough to power 4,350 homes. One of those is TREC’s 750-kilowatt (0.75 megawatt) turbine.

But Ontario is only beginning to embrace green energy sources. The question now is, is the province moving fast enough?

“The temperature is going up. We’re losing control of our natural systems and there’s an urgency to all this,” says Young.

Youngâe(TM)s enthusiasm for wind power is contagious. “Why did we build the turbine? Pure in-the-gut passion. I think all of our (co-op) members know they put up the biggest ad Toronto has ever seen for wind energy.”

Wind power matters because generating electricity is the number one cause of air pollution in North America. Burning fossil fuels like coal and oil sends greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, which trap the sun’s heat and contribute to global warming. Other toxins are also released when fossil fuels are burned, and the resulting air pollution contributes to respiratory diseases like asthma.

While nuclear energy does not poison the air we breathe, it creates dangerous waste that remains radioactive for thousands of years, and there is still no safe way of permanently disposing of it. The answer may be blowing in the wind. In fact, windâe(TM)s potential for displacing pollutants is enormous.

According to a recent report put out by the Pembina Institute, an Alberta-based environmental research and education organization, every unit of electricity generated by wind power means a nearly 100 per cent reduction in gas emissions that contribute to the greenhouse effect.

Despite the obvious benefits of wind power, Ontario currently gets less than one per cent of its electricity from non-polluting sources. The potential is much greater. The Ontario Wind Power Task Force says 2,000 to 6,000 megawatts could be generated annually, representing between 3.5 per cent and 11 percent of the provinceâe(TM)s energy demands.

Globally, wind-produced power is increasing at an average rate of 25 per cent per year, a trend driven largely by dramatic improvements in wind technology. In Canada, we generate just 250 megawatts of energy from wind, mostly in Alberta and Quebec. Natural Resources Canada estimates that our country has almost 30,000 megawatts of developable wind resources, enough to supply 15 per cent of this country’s electricity needs.

But Deborah Doncaster, executive director for the Ontario Sustainable Energy Association (OSEA), an umbrella group for green energy producers, believes 15 per cent is a conservative figure. Doncaster says that with the kind of accurate wind maps now available in Germany, we could build turbines at strategic locations all over the country. There would almost always be a turbine turning somewhere, and we could meet significantly more than 15 per cent of our needs.

“Most people still see wind as a supplementary form of power. In some places in Germany, some installations supply 90 per cent of a municipality’s electrical needs,” says Doncaster.

Despite the potential, the Canadian Wind Energy Association (CanWEA) says it would be happy to see wind power meet even five per cent of Canada’s electrical needs by 2010.

But community groups worried about turbines in their neighbourhoods have voiced concern over noise, visual impact and the effect of turbines on birds. While TREC will study the impact of its turbine on birds during fall and upcoming spring migrations, most studies show that turbines kill an average of two birds a year — fewer than are killed by house cats.

As for noise, an average conversation is louder. Young measured the noise of the turbine at Exhibition Place at about 45 decibels. “If I’m standing at the base of the turbine during tours, if I’m raising my voice, it’s because of the ambient noise of traffic,” he says.

Visual impact is harder to dismiss. CanWEA president Glen Estill says beauty is in the eye of the beholder. “I’ve heard some people describe the one down at the CNE as a moving sculpture. But I wouldn’t want it on the bluffs along Georgian Bay,” he says.

Another difficulty is a lack of detailed wind maps. “Maps are vital and they have done some good work at Environment Canada and the models are getting better and better,” says Estill, who also heads up Sky Generation, the company that owns the 1.8 megawatt wind turbine at Ferndale, on the Bruce Peninsula.

Cost is the biggest hurdle, but it is also a bit of a red herring. Estill and others argue the real issue is our long history of government subsidies for fossil fuel and nuclear energy and an accounting system that doesn’t place a value on the environment and human health.

In the case of nuclear energy, not only are there huge subsidies, but as Estill points out, the operators of nuclear plants have limited liability in case of disaster, nor do we know what the full cost of decommissioning a plant is.

David MacLeod, treasurer at TREC’s WindShare, knows the costs associated with wind power. He estimates that a sound business model would see a turbine owner sell power for at least nine to 10 cents per kilowatt hour. But last December, the Ontario government capped the price for homeowners and small commercial users at 4.3 cents per kilowatt hour.

The cap was in response to rising costs in the wake of the government’s deregulation of the energy market. It is designed to stay in place until 2006. The wholesale electricity market, however, is not subject to the cap — it can fluctuate between two and 14 cents per kilowatt hour depending on demand. The cap means many utilities that were planning to develop green power have put their plans on hold. Toronto Hydro, for one, had hoped to offer to home owners electricity from renewable resources, including wind, at nine cents per kilowatt hour.

“For sure it was the price cap that put the brakes on it,” says Toronto Hydro spokeswoman Karen Zeppa. “It’s almost impossible to market energy at nine cents per kilowatt hour.”

Nevertheless, some innovators, like CanWEA’s Estill, are forging ahead anyway. His Ferndale turbine sells its electricity into the Ontario power pool, but that alone is not enough to make a go of it. The cost of building and running the turbine is also offset by something called green tags.

The green tags concept is being hailed as a way to separate the environmental benefit of wind power from the energy produced. In essence, buying a green tag means you’re subsidizing a clean energy source. Green tags could be compared to a kind of currency used in the energy trade to represent the environmental and social benefits — the so-called “non-energy attributes” — of renewable generation.

Environmentally-minded groups in the United States and Europe have sold green tags for years in an attempt to encourage the production of clean energy.

In the case of the Ferndale turbine, the Grey Bruce Renewable Energy Cooperative (GBREC) sells single green tags for $75 each. In buying a tag, people are not buying electricity — they still have to pay their power bills. And buying a green tag does not necessarily mean you’ll receive green energy. It means that more green energy will be introduced to the common energy pool, from which we all draw.

Once in the pool, it is impossible to separate electrons produced by wind from those produced by fossil fuels. By introducing wind-generated electrons into the mix, you are creating a common benefit.

“Imagine six taps pouring dirty water into a bath tub,” says Estill. “Take one of those taps and put clean water in. The overall quality of the water goes up.”

GBREC’s green tags also helped defray the cost of the 660 kilowatt (0.66 megawatt) Port Albert wind turbine, just north of Goderich.

TREC’s 750 kilowatt (0.75 megawatt) turbine was developed in partnership with Toronto Hydro. TREC financed the turbine through sales of shares in WindShare, a separate co-operative corporation set up to build the turbine, and through a three-year purchase agreement with Toronto Hydro.

WindShare may use the same method to finance turbine number two, further east along Lake Ontario at Ashbridges Bay. TREC means for shareholders to earn an annual dividend from the sale of wind produced electricity. The projected dividend in year two is $8 per $100 share.

“We want this not to be just a donation pot for people. We want to prove it works,” says MacLeod.

WindShare’s agreement to sell power to Toronto Hydro was negotiated before Ontario’s retail electricity price cap, and it’s uncertain what will happen after the agreement expires in 2006. Wind advocates worry that the current retail price cap may be extended beyond 2006, making it unattractive for Toronto Hydro to continue purchasing wind power, presumably at a premium.

OSEA is currently overseeing four separate projects: LakeWinds co-operative, inspired by TREC, is searching for community partners and potential sites; Kingston’s TradeWinds project is a joint venture between the community group Hearthmakers and the city of Kingston to build a wind farm on Wolfe Island; WindFall Eco-works is a Markham-based community group proposing a joint venture with the Chippewas of Georgina Island on Lake Simcoe; and Positive Power Co-operative is assessing areas around Hamilton and Lake Erie for a possible wind project.