Conservation often makes the most economic sense...sort of...

I recently saw a presentation by an architect & professor of architecture, Michael Pelken, from Syracuse University, on integrated wind technologies. Among other things, his talk focused on a now notorious offshore wind farm proposed to be built off the coast of Cape Cod in the Northeastern United States. The proposal was met with so much opposition from the local community that external designers (Mr. Pelken's group) were brought in to revamp the project.

The new proposal was quite impressive, though a tad impractical (as conceptual designs always seem to be). But the biggest piece of the design that stuck out to me was the idea to minimize the number of wind turbines (from 130 to 50) and offset the lost power generation with energy conservation measures (better lighting, smart meters etc) in the surrounding communities. Building less turbines would be cheaper and so the leftover cash could be put into the conservation measures.

This is a particularly attractive idea, especially for publicly-owned utilities. Instead of spending millions of dollars, time and other resources trying to site new renewable energy facilities (wind farms, solar farms, small-hydro dams), they could instead use the funds they would have put into the project into conservation measures, as the total energy saved could often equal or surpass the amount of energy that the project would have produced. This can also be a much cheaper process, both in money and time, as you won't have to deal with the same level of opposition that you might if siting a large project.

But it strikes me that this strategy would only be effective for public utilities, such as Peterborough Utilities (which already operates several conservation programs) and the Ontario Power Authority. The problem lies in the private and semi-private power generation companies (such as Ontario Power Generation).

The problem is quite simple. If your business is to produce energy, there is no profit in conservation. You want to build your project, make energy and sell it back to the grid. This is not always a bad thing. After all, it's now highly encouraged to build renewable energy systems.

And from a business and macro-economic perspective, power generation over conservation certainly works into the pro-growth model. And new projects can often look better politically, as people, companies and organizations become impressed with the project, especially in this new era of renewable development. But as we're seeing, unsustainable growth (a model without much conservation) is fraught with problems.

There will always be a hefty demand for energy in Canada, regardless of conservation and efficiency measures (we can only conserve so much), so this is certainly not a call for the cessation of energy projects. And we certainly need more renewables adding to the grid. But if the ultimate goal is to reduce GHG emissions while still being economically viable, perhaps governments should shift a portion of their immediate focus away from the often slow development of renewables and put those resources into conservation. It might not make millions of dollars, but it will certainly save millions of them.