A battle of solar proportions...

The promising future for solar energy in Ontario is in danger of taking a solid knock backwards in the next few months. A powerful lobby from the agricultural sector is trying to ban solar power development on prime agricultural land. This could very well sink the solar industry in Ontario.

Under the province's ambitious new green legislation, the Green Energy Act, solar energy is being provided with large subsidies under the Feed-In Tariff program. Solar power can be sold back to the electricity grid for nearly eight times the price of normal electricity, making them quite an economical option. Connecting to the grid, a traditionally difficult achievement, is also streamlined and made easier for producers of solar energy.

But one of the best ways to produce significant levels of solar electricity is by building large, dense solar farms. These solar farms, which typically consist of several hundred solar panels, require large pieces of land, usually over 100 acres. Often, the most attractive type of land for these farms are land designated as prime agricultural land: farms.

Farmers and others in the agricultural industry argue that this type of land should only be used for growing food. Concerns over the spoilage of the wonderful, but lessening topsoil from things like stray voltage also add fuel to the fire.

In Canada, and Ontario especially, agriculture often gets the ear of big politicians when it beckons it. In this case, members of the Ontario government, after hearing the case of Ontario farmers, are considering the option of banning all solar development on prime agricultural land in the province. Since these areas are often some of the only economical options, solar developers are cringing at the thought of being banned from these lands.

In response, solar proponents have argued that in order to meet the goals of the Ontario government, only 1/10th of 1% of the province's prime agricultural land would be needed for solar. It is true, this might not be very much land, but food is important and with a growing global population, we'll need to produce as much as we can. Furthermore, the billions of dollars being put towards corn-based ethanol subsidies are already encouraging many farmers to move away from food-intended crops.

With a climate change-focused future, we'll have to make a lot of mutually-exclusive decisions. In this case, it's food vs. green energy. Each option will not be simple. Each will have social and political implications that will always have to be recognized. I guess we'll have to figure out where our priorities really sit.