How renewable energy is raising hackles in rural Ontario — and across Canada

Locutus

Adorable Deplorable
Jun 18, 2007
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NAPANEE, Ont. — Canadians know Napanee, a port town of 16,000 near Kingston, for two things. First, Sir John A. Macdonald opened a law office here before he became Canada’s first prime minister. Second, Napanee is the home town of singer Avril Lavigne.


Today Napanee is earning a distinction with which some citizens are less comfortable: very big producer, per capita, of electricity.


Napanee already has the Lennox gas-fired electricity generating station on its waterfront. Next to that plant, TransCanada Corp. is building a new 900 megawatt gas-fired power plant — the very facility that Oakville, Ont., a Toronto suburb, did not want, and that the Ontario government cancelled in 2010, half-built. Napanee also boasts two big solar installations: Little Creek and Sandhurst Shores.


On top of all this, Electricité de France, which calls itself the world’s electrician, has come knocking. The French giant wants to build a 60-megawatt solar project on 300 acres of farmland it will lease from three farmers in Napanee.


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