A Thunder Bay entrepreneur says he’s being forced to relocated a proposed energy-production project to the Greater Toronto Area.
Bob Whiteside, president of Digestic Biogas Energy Solutions, said his application to install a digester to convert food waste into methane gas and then to electricity was turned down under the Ontario Power Authority’s Feed-in Tariff program.
Earlier this month the province awarded 951 contracts province-wide as part of the program, but none in Northwestern Ontario, where Whiteside said he was told the inability to transport the energy to other parts of the province stood in his way.
“We believe we did everything right,” Whiteside said on Wednesday.
“Even in the discussions with the Ontario Power Authority, as we were going forward – and we must have talked to them about 15 times on the phone – at no time did they indicate that we were off bounds with our application being in Thunder Bay.”
Whiteside said the OPA asked for 200 megawatts in capacity. Each digester creates about half a megawatt. All told the contracts awarded represent about 146.5 MW.
“That means almost three quarters of the proposals failed to get through the process,” said Whiteside, indicating the province received about 875 MW in the proposals submitted.
“And they didn’t even reach the target they were going forward on. Maybe all the developers out there can’t read. Maybe the system has become so complicated that nobody can navigate through it. I don’t know. Time will tell what the real story is, but there’s been an awful lot of unsuccessful proposals put through this process.
“And it’s not only in Thunder Bay. There were several applications from Northwestern Ontario. But I know developers in southern Ontario that had their entire portfolios wiped out,” Whiteside said.
Whiteside, who got the support of Thunder Bay city council and the go-ahead from Thunder Bay Hydro, added he plans to apply to build up to 10 digesters in the GTA when the next round of contracts are tendered in September.
An OPA spokewsoman said region is limited its ability to transmit power.
"The transmission system in the Northwest has limited capability to transfer generation resources from Northwest to the rest of Ontario. There is little to no room left on the system to accommodate additional renewable projects. The OPA continues to monitor developments in the region and assess the system for future opportunities as the supply and demand picture evolves, especially for small generation projects," Mary Bernard said in an email response.
