Grassroots Initiatives to Bring a Feed-in Tariff to #yeg #ableg
This is renewable energy blog post 5 of 200
Feed-in tariffs are a simple policy with a successful track record of spurring investment and job creation in the renewable energy sector. The policy begain in Germeny and despite the fact that Germany doesn't have much in the way of solar resources (ie. it ain't very sunny) it is by far the largest solar photovoltaic market in the world. The industry generates more than 10,000 jobs in production, distribution and installation and more than 90 per cent of solar PV installations feed into the German electricity grid.
Mike Thomas is an apprentice electrician who's taken the feed-in tariff idea and run with it all the way to a private meeting with Mayor Mandel on March 25. He runs his own blog and you can read his post about meeting with the mayor regarding feed-in tariffs here.
"The city of Edmonton is creating a Renewable energy task force, which I mentioned before and spoke to council about. Part of the duty or mandate of that task force should be to help bring about a feed in tariff for Alberta. Our province has little to no shade issues, extremely good sun exposure year round (better than Australia or Germany for solar energy production capacity), and a workforce suitable to turn this whole damn tar sands anchored place green while making everyone bloody well rich in the process."
He's currently collecting signatures for a petition. If you'd like to get a hold you can email him at here.
I'm going to try and track down more news on Edmonton's renewable energy task force as it could be promising.
If you're looking for an example of a feed-in tariff on a municipal level, the Sacramento Municipal Utility District has been met with an overwhelming response in its first week.
Also, Roger Gagne, who has commented on this blog multiple times, mentioned in the comments of an older post an online petition to bring a feed-in tariff to Alberta. I don't think online petitions are necessarily the most efficacious tools in bringing about change but if you want to learn more and think feed-in tariffs are a good idea you should give that a twirl.
