Halton Solar Fair, Saturday October 4

Copied from an email sent by the Halton Environmental Network, which is organizing home owners who want to install solar systems (solar thermal or photovoltaic) in Halton region (Oakville, Burlington, Milton, Georgetown areas). (We hope to install a solar water heater at our house.)

The Halton Environmental Network (HEN) is organizing a Solar Fair for Saturday, October 4 from 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon. The Fair will be held in the Auditorium of the Halton Regional Centre, 1151 Bronte Road (Regional Road 25) in Oakville, just north of the QEW.

Eight solar vendors will be displaying and discussing their solar water heating and photovoltaic (solar electricity) systems.

The first series of public meetings for the HRSP is currently underway, with meetings last week in Oakville and Burlington drawing a total of 175 attendees. Upcoming meetings are scheduled for Wed. Oct. 1 at the Milton Sports Centre and Thurs. Oct. 2 at the Georgetown Cultural Centre. Both meetings start at 7:00 p.m.

The Solar Fair on Oct. 4 is a follow-up to the evening meeting series, but people who could not attend the evening meetings are welcome to attend.

An information session will run from 9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m., including an overview of solar power and the HRSP. Guest speaker will be Ken Traynor of the Toronto Renewable Energy Co-op (TREC). Traynor was a key organizer of the West Toronto Initiative for Solar Energy (WISE), which saw 86 solar systems installed in one ward of Toronto in 2007.

The opportunity to hear from vendors will come from 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon. Attendees will be able to move around the room from vendor presentation to vendor presentation every 10 minutes. There will be time for questions.

Energy advisors will also be on hand at the Solar Fair to enable people to sign up for home energy audits. An audit by a qualified energy advisor is required in order to receive more than $1,000 in rebates for solar hot water systems.

For more information on the Halton Residential Solar Project, visit halton.ourpower.ca.

Oakville Climate Change Forum

Tonight, I attended an interesting event. The main speaker was Dr. Richard Peltier, a U of T scientist, and one of the lead authors of a chapter in the IPCC's fourth report (AR4). Dr. Peltier gave the same presentation that he gave to the Bill C-30 committee, which is basically an overview of the evidence that humans are causing global warming. His most salient points were:

* Warming will be amplified at high north latitudes. This means that much of Canada would be greatly affected by unchecked warming.

* A "business as usual" scenario means that the global average temperature would rise by around 3.5 degrees. However, the temperature on the continents will increase by around 5 degress, and around 7 degrees for high-north latitudes.

He then showed this graph, which depicts the likely temperature change under different scenarios (A2 being "business as usual"):


He noted that out to 2040, there is very little variation between the scenarios. But the choices we make in the next 20 years will determine the global average temperature in 2100. He said:

"You might say that you don't care about that - that you won't be around then. But, I know that you really do care."

As for what we should do: We must reduce emissions. In Canada, we produce 3-4% of the world's emissions. However on a per-capita basis we are very similar to the US. The oil sands projects are a major cause of us not meeting our Kyoto targets. We need cap and trade - with hard caps. We must provide a legislative environment that encourages creativity in the business sector in reducing emissions.

Chairing the forum was Oakville Mayor Rob Burton. Bonnie Brown, our local MP, and Jack Santa Barbara also spoke. I'll write about what they had to say in another post.

You can read more about Dr. Peltier's work in this Toronto Star article, and in this interview.