OSEA advocates community ownership of clean, green power
As an advocate of sustainable, clean energy generated and owned by communities throughout Ontario, OSEA acts on behalf of all residents of the province who want to breathe clean air and protect the environment. OSEA does this by educating people about the benefits of community power-skilled jobs, a source of local revenue and a reduction of greenhouse gases—and helps them establish community power groups. OSEA also advocates government policies and programs that will advance the generation of sustainable energy and resolve the administrative and regulatory hurdles that are obstructing the development of community-owned sustainable energy projects.
The Ontario Sustainable Energy Association (OSEA) with your help is developing a Roadmap to 2020. As a starting point, we need to reconfirm and/or revise the Vision. What follows are samples from the original vision elements and space for you to add your own important signposts and actions.
On this front, OSEA has been extremely successful with the passage in 2009 of Ontario’s Green Energy and Green Economy Act. As a founding member of the Green Energy Act Alliance, OSEA played a major role in the creation of this legislation, which, with its program of advanced feed-in tariffs, is the most progressive in North America.
In its campaign for a Green Energy Act, OSEA pushed hard for a system of feed-in tariffs. These premium prices for renewable energy are credited with spurring the rapid deployment of renewable energy in Europe. Characterized as the best mechanism for combating climate change, feed-in tariffs act as financial incentives for everyone to produce electricity from green energies such as solar, wind, biogas and run-of-the-river hydro power plants that is fed into the provincial electricity grid.
