Electricity

There's plenty of juice available from the winds and tides, if we choose to use it.

by Liza Morris

Electricity. Energy. Power. The stuff without which our modern, convenient, western lifestyle would come crashing to a halt.

Canada's largest wind farm will be able to supply 16,000 households in Quebec.

These large gas-fired power plants have raised serious concerns among investors and among grass-roots groups for their negative ecological impacts.

by Seth Dunn, Worldwatch Paper 151, July 2000

Anyone who operates digital equipment will wryly agree with the Worldwatch Institute's new report, which argues that today's giant power plants, especially coal and nuclear, are failing to provide the high-quality, reliable electricity needed to power the new digital economy.

The future and forms of energy continue to change.

by Don Malcolm

Scattered throughout the watersheds in the eastern part of Canada and the United States are countless ancient mill sites. Their locations are marked by the presence of old dams on many of the creeks and rivers. Water backed up from the dam became a millpond from which it was channelled through a millrace to turn a large wooden mill wheel.

Northwest Cascade Power Inc wants to divert all 8 of the Upper Pitt’s main tributary streams into large pipes, totaling over 30 kilometres in length, which would require the park’s boundary to be “adjusted.” Public opposition to the plan is fierce.

by Joe Foy

The thing about power is that you often find it in the

The BC Liberal govern­ment of Gordon Campbell has teamed up with private power companies to sell us unreliable hydro-power we can’t use, can’t afford, and don’t want.

by Joe Foy

A fellow I knew once told me how he spent a sum­mer

by Joe Foy

I am thinking that the so-called run of river private hydro power gold rush is just about over in British Columbia. That’s because the gold rush has turned out to be a fool’s gold rush. 

In a recent report, University of BC professor George Hoberg found that BC is not short of hydro electricity (as BC’s government has been telling us) because, should we need more, we are entitled to a lot of Columbia River hydro electricity. 

I figure all that’s left to do now is to turn off the remaining proposed private hydro power projects still working their way through BC’s approval processes – like the Kokish River on northern Vancouver Island,

How about harnessing gravity to drive electric trains? What if every axle on the train was equipped with a generator that automatically engaged only on the down grades, assisting in braking, while producing electricity? Trains already have axle powered generators producing far more electricity than is required throughout the train, maybe the

Canadian cab operator has been carving out his own niche: he is the (self-proclaimed) world’s first hybridtaxi driver.

by Brendan Sainsbury

Like any self-respecting cabbie, Andrew Grant has a talent for small talk. But when the conversation turns to his prized 2004 Toyota Prius, things get a bit more animated.