A Green Machine?

What does Green mean? Maybe its relative and personal. What does it mean to you? I’ll stick with ‘environmentally conscious investment and construction, by making a point to minimize energy consumption’. For this post that’ll have to do…

It’s a fairly broad topic, and I’ve written a post (on my old closed blog) on a small issue with a ‘Green’ development here in town. They came under fire for needing to remove a tree on their proposed site for a Green development. For those of you who remember that, I kind of came down on the protesters for misunderstanding the meaning of greed - oh, i mean Green - and pointed out that Green was not about saving the trees. Well, the development co. is now spending an approximate $100,000 more, and sacrificing at least 2 condo units to keep the tree around. What happened? Well, the tree became monumental. It became a symbol. I’m going to go ahead and say that in some way the co. will make their money back and more by making this move, but the key here was responsibility. It was in fact a good move, and they can market that. So, a round of a applause for the planners, eh?

There’s a new phenomenon that I’m becoming increasingly familiar within my work of land-based consulting, and that’s Run-of-the-River power generation.

Wiki’s description of it is okay, but generally the ones that I know of are small, don’t use damming, and divert water from a stream only only to re-introduce it later after the power generators. There’s many that argue that they are taking advantage of it’s seemingly enviro-friendly methods: that it destroys more habitat than they say it does, and that it can effectively dry out sections of a stream - or river - when the season’s not right and they’ve overestimated the flow of the stream. Generally, they are built at high elevations, nearer the source of the stream as they catch it mid-size, and at point where it takes a big vertical drop - so you can imagine that it can wreak havoc on the lower river if they slack off on their research.

Another havoc-wreaker: (apparently) almost every stream in southwest BC that has been deemed able to generate power (and that’s thousands) has got a lease application on it. That’s a good amount of meddled-with ecosystems. And though it’s relatively minimal per generator, that’s a lot of displaced land and water.

Positives: that’s a lot of employment and contract work for the Native population people who live on, and lay claim to the land. That’s literally an economies builder if the communities are able and willing to accept the work that goes into building the sites and transmission lines - years of work per site.

Another: the companies involved are little more than financed start-ups, some listed on the TSX Venture index (CVE). These penny stocks are worth looking into, as they’ll be selling their power to BC Hydro on a contract basis - but not yet. Really. They run into land (Aboriginal rights), parkland and contract issues often. Furthermore they’re just getting started, so nothing is ever firm with their projects. These land issues are always touch and go.

So there it is, an introduction into the world of apparently-green power generating.

In my opinion it is more Green than not as the waste output is minimal, and it’s renewable - though moderately seasonal. The ecosystem issues and water displacement, well, I’ll leave that to the scientists. I like the elements that build local economies and relations with the Nations: as long as the corporations involved are responsible enough to contract a good amount of the work to the aboriginal workers. Going green, and culturally sensitive (culture=land) is the safer and more responsible route (and it’s marketable!!).