What we're doing right
River power gets the blue light
26th April 2008
Imagine a tiny wind turbine anchored to the bottom of a river
Photo Credit: Verdant Power
The Ontario government announced this month that it will fund a field of such devices in the St. Lawrence River, near Cornwall, Ont. The proof-of-concept project should generate about 15 megawatts of energy, enough for about 11,000 homes.
Hydroelectric dams, used in Canada for decades, don’t pollute the air, but they can still hurt the environment by flooding upstream ecosystems and destroying terrestrial habitats, while drying out downstream rivers and decimating fish populations. In some cases, they can also displace millions of people. Low-impact hydroelectricity is catching on, with trial turbines recently installed in the East River near New York, tidal turbines being lowered into the sea near Northern Ireland and wave farms in the works off Scotland, Cornwall, Portugal and California.
The St. Lawrence project is small, but Verdant Power, the company behind the turbines, estimates that Canada’s tides, rivers and canals could generate 1,000 times more power, enough for 11 million homes.
Published in The Green Report in The Globe and Mail
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