Opposition to solar plan heats up

Ontario Farmland Solar Development faces pushback over land use, solar farms, and Green Energy Act rules, as residents challenge Recurrent Energy projects, feed-in tariffs, and loss of food-producing acres across Simcoe North.

Opposition to a California company's plans to install solar panels on 10 farms around Barrie and Orillia is heating up.

A local group, Ontario Farmland Preservation, was developed to fight the plan to convert 800 acres of local farmland into electricity-generation farms, as the Ontario solar business expands rapidly across the province.

Bernard Pope, who lives in Oro-Medonte Township where many of the solar initiatives are planned, similar to the third solar farm in Northumberland proposals elsewhere in Ontario, launched the fight. The plan, he says, will see a conversion of the use of these properties from farms to industrial production facilities.

"Leave the land for somebody who can farm it," argues Pope, who has Simcoe North MPP Garfield Dunlop on his side.

The farms, on which Recurrent Energy proposes the installation of thousands of solar panels, have been designated low on a food production scale.

And that, says Dunlop, is where the problem begins.

"The big discrepancy is in the very complex program they have, as seen when tempers flared at a solar farm meeting in another community, to determine which farms are allowed to have them," and how much generation can be placed across the province, Dunlop said.

Seven of the 10 farms proposed are in Simcoe North and all of them, says Dunlop, are food-producing land which have supported generations of families.

Part of the problem, he says, is that the Green Energy Act governs the process and no municipal approval is required.

"It should have always gone through the municipality. This is really an industrial use of the land," he said. "I don't want good farmland wasted.…"

Dunlop plans to raise the issue at Queen's Park, noting that a project expects go-ahead by April in a separate case.

Producers of solar energy can generate up to 80 cents per kilowatt hour by selling the power back to the grid through long- term contracts, a model some farmers use to grow power on their land, officials say.

Pope says that pulls the property out of food production for 20 or 30 years, depending upon the contract.

"I can see pretty clearly how this is not so good for the land," said Pope.

Pope argues that the installation of a bank of panels on a farm isn't an issue, but he's fighting against covering an entire farm with panels.

The Ontario Power Authority with- drew a contract awarded to a solar project proposed by Recurrent Energy on an 85-acre farm near London.

The company had argued its project was proposed on Class 3 farmland, but the opposition group insisted it was Class 1 and 2 farmland, making it ineligible for solar development.

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