Fuck You Friday

To commemorate zrm's new tradition I'm offering my own Fuck You Friday. Incidentally, also about wind turbines.

FUCK YOU DALTON MCGUINTY. FUCK YOU SO MUCH THAT THE LARGE ARRAY WAKE EFFECT IS NOTICEABLE.

Ontario is canning all offshore wind. There is something like a gigawatt of offshore wind projects currently in various stages of development. At least one turbine manufacturer was so interested that they were considering moving their offshore turbine manufacturing to Ontario. Kiss all of that good-bye.

This is the same government that was going to close all of our coal plants by 2007. The plan now (and there is actual legislation mandating it) is a 2014 closure. I dunno where they're going to find a gigawatt of power generation to replace the offshore they aren't going to build.

Remember this from last year? The thing about being a leader in wind power? Apparently only if someone else does it first.

The Long-Term Energy Plan is to have 10 GW in wind/solar/biogas by 2018. We're currently at something like two and half. Good Luck hitting that target when you drop bombshells like "no offshore in Ontario - period" with no warning whatsoever.

Seriously, no warning at all. A lot of the work I do is with wind farms and no one I know had any clue this was coming down the pipe. Notice the timing of the announcement - 2 PM Friday afternoon. Not on the front page of the Ontario website, but buried as a small text-only link in the newsroom. Not even a Top Story.

Why? You'd think that they would want to trumpet this announcement so that all the NIMBY's and anti-wind folks would hear. Because the plan is not to reduce the amount of wind energy to be installed. That means moar onshore turbines.

Ontario's capacity for renewables generation is limited by the transmission network - meaning new generation has to come online either very close to where the coal plants are being shut down or close to load centres. So that gigawatt of wind power they won't be building in Lake Ontario or Lake Erie is instead going to be built - I don't know where. But it's gotta be close to where people live.

That's why they've buried the news. This announcement is bad for both sides of the wind power argument.

So why are they doing it?

Because they are fucking cowards. Dickless dipshits. Spineless babies that are scared shitless. Cowards. Stupid ones at that.

They are pre-emptively killing an industry because "freshwater" wind power is too new. SRSLY - that's the entire fucking reason for it. They are scared of some nebulous un-explainable something or other. Because apparently, freshwater is somehow more risky than anchoring steel towers in the fucking ocean. You would think that people living in Ontario would have an understanding of the relationship between salt and corrosion, but apparently not the fucking gutless geniuses that make up the Ontario gubmint.

FUCKAWESOME. Way to go there assholes. I don't think you could have done anything more wrong.