Wind remains the healthier choice

ONTARIO - The release of Ontario's long-term electricity plan raises anew the debate about coal and renewables' impact on health and the environment.

On one side is the anti-wind lobby. Organizations such as Wind Concerns Ontario say turbines negatively impact more than 100 Ontarians, depriving people of sleep, producing headaches, and even contributing to heart palpitations. They also believe the structures are a hazard to migrating birds and bats. No doubt these groups are displeased by the proposal to raise capital spending on wind to $14 billion.

On the other side are Ontario health professionals who for years have been advocating the coal plants' elimination. They point out these plants are the single largest source of greenhouse gases in the province and are no doubt pleased by the energy plan's commitment to fast-track the closure of two units at the Nanticoke facility originally set to go in 2014, they'll now be shut in 2011.

But in the midst of this ruckus, there's an often-missed and very important distinction to be made: Coal plants are inherently harmful while wind turbines are not.

When you burn fossil fuel, you produce toxic by-products. In fact, at their peak Ontario's coal plants emit the greenhouse gases of 7 million automobiles. The plants also release lead and mercury brain poisons, dioxin an endocrine disrupter, chromium and arsenic carcinogens, and sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxide which cause acid rain.

Even if you capture and store these chemicals - and they'd need to be secure for thousands of years - there's always the possibility they will escape. After all, storage doesn't destroy them, it only takes them out of circulation.

The upshot is burning coal always creates poisons. There is simply no getting around this. Hence the danger in fossil fuel combustion is intrinsic - the technology cannot be made safe.

The situation with wind power is importantly different. The turbines are not, in principle, destructive. They do need to be properly sited and not every location is appropriate.

For example, they need to be set back from homes and schools to reduce noise disturbance. They need to be kept away from "important bird areas" and other significant animal habitats to ensure they don't negatively impact wildlife.

But once these conditions are met, wind power is essentially benign. As Ontario Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Arlene King has noted, "The scientific evidence available to date does not demonstrate a direct causal link between wind turbine noise and adverse health effects."

And with respect to birds, the American Audubon Society is on record as saying: "Audubon strongly supports properly sited wind power as a clean alternative energy source that reduces the threat of global warming."

Wind operations do not produce smog or acid rain. They do not contribute to cancer. They do not contribute to brain damage. They do not contribute to climate change.

They make some noise and sometimes throw ice but these problems can be resolved through setbacks. In other words, the turbines' shortcomings can be satisfactorily addressed. Wind isn't perfect but its problems aren't in its very nature they have to do with where the technology is placed.

Not so in the case of coal. No matter what we do with this fuel we're left with the fact its combustion produces toxic chemicals. As long as we're burning fossils, we're doing something harmful.

Wind is fundamentally safe but can it power an advanced industrial society?

No one argues it can replace fossil fuel on its own but it's a vital component of a smart mix that should include solar energy, Niagara Falls and geothermal power.

It's also worth noting that on some days wind's contribution to the grid is actually greater than coal's. On the morning of September 25, for example, the province received 698 megawatts from the former but only 488 from the latter.

Coal's destructiveness is enormous. In Ontario alone it causes $371 million in environmental harm e.g., the expense of greenhouse gas controls and $3 billion in health damages annually, according to a study done for the Ministry of Energy. This is in addition to its harrowing human cost: 246 deaths and more than 120,000 people made sick e.g., with asthma attacks each year.

Ontario has promised to completely eliminate the use of this fuel by 2014, but a high-profile group of health organizations - including the Ontario College of Family Physicians, the Asthma Society of Canada, the Lung Association, and the Registered Nurses' Association of Ontario - are urging Queen's Park to shutter the plants by the end of 2010.

Doing so will save nearly 1,000 lives and prevent hundreds of thousands of illnesses. And the province has more than enough coal-free power 29,000 megawatt capacity vs. 25,000 megawatt demand to supply all the electricity it needs.

A speedy end to coal would be Ontario's gift to the world, the single largest GHG reduction project in North America and a powerful precedent capable of pushing other jurisdictions into action.

It would prove that industrial societies are ready - not some time in the future but right now - to abandon the planet's most climate-destructive fuel while still keeping on the lights.