OPEN LETTER TO:

Premier Kathleen Wynne,  Mr. Tim Hudak,  Ms. Andrea Horvath,   REA

Being landowners who were fraudulently scammed into signing an option/lease for wind development in 2011, the terms and conditions of which we remained unaware until October 2013 when we were first given the document, then officially threatened with legal proceedings and financial ruin coercing us into signing the NextEra lease in February 2014, we would like to outline our experience of meetings with Company contacts (CanAcre for NextEra) in the last three weeks.

As yet, we have not received a copy of the lease complete with a NextEra signatory as we should have by now. May 6^th a representative arranged to meet to discuss the location of a collection line . .. part of NextEra’s design for our property for which we were offered no opportunity to give input. The point of this meeting was unclear as no concerns of ours were taken into consideration, the placement of the intended line would most surely harm and possibly kill a mature windbreak of spruce and cedar and at the meeting conclusion, we were informed that in the next few days a “survey” and the planting of stakes would take place.

The lease states that the Lessee (that’s NextEra) shall consult with Lessor with respect to siting the Works and to act fairly and reasonably in so consulting. We had never been consulted. Ever.

In response to our written objection, the CanAcre representative scheduled “another look”. This meeting on May 12^th lasted another 2 hours. Our concerns were discussed with construction personnel although the location of the collection line as related to the windbreak remained unresolved. We learned that no documents are provided to landowners without a specific request and from experience we can state they are often not provided after being requested. Another meeting was scheduled for May 21^st to which they promised to bring documents as requested.

Again at this 3^rd meeting the requested complete Lease was not produced. However a map we had not seen before indicated archaeological finds had been made, new information to us, finds made without our authorization to enter the land in the summer of 2011, a flint point credited with the qualities of those used 10,000 years ago. Now we could see that the electrical conduit placement was intended to avoid a large area around where the flint had been found and as a result endangered our trees. We finally understood that the NextEra layout designed in Florida was nonnegotiable and actual locations unknown by anyone until GPS points were staked. .. what CanAcre had been calling “surveyed”. Stakes would be a huge inconvenience during planting and a major problem for managing these organic fields needing scuffling through the season. Since the Goshen Project has not received REA approval and construction cannot begin until it does, we would not agree to the completion of the survey at this time. It had been repeatedly stressed that planting be allowed without the impediment of these stakes.

The next day the CanAcre rep phoned to indicate he would deliver our requested lease at 10 am. May 23^rd and would be accompanied by an “expert in leases”…. !! On May 23^rd he did not have the lease. The ‘lease expert’ turned out to be a CanAcre manager who had his own agenda, that being to spend another two hours reviewing our concerns indicating cooperation and the best possible outcomes before stating flat out that unless we allowed the survey to proceed, the proper care and attention to our concerns could not necessarily be given! This argument was lobbed strongly and repeatedly at us and capped off with his assurance that he would continue to harass us until verbal permission for the survey is given.

Since June 2011, we have been swindled, deprived of documents and information we should have been given, lied to, told one thing and then the opposite by CanAcre reps, and wasted endless hours. Of greater significance is the Horrendous Deception throughout…. that there are no health effects attributable to these Turbine farms, that they are Green, that they do not affect property values, that they will not interfere with farm operations……

And we know all that to be UNTRUE. The Ontario Government and REA need to close this system down!

Sincerely,

Bev Teeter

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As renewable energy production has surged in recent years, opponents of government policies that have helped spur its growth have pushed to roll back those incentives and mandates in state after state.

On Wednesday, they claimed their first victory, when Ohio lawmakers voted to freeze the phasing-in of power that utilities must buy from renewable energy sources.

The bill, which passed the Ohio House of Representatives, 54 to 38, was expected to be signed into law by Gov. John R. Kasich, who helped negotiate its final draft.

It stands in marked contrast to the broad consensus behind the original law in 2008, when it was approved with virtually no opposition, and comes after considerable disagreement among lawmakers, energy executives and public interest groups.

Opponents of the mandates argued, in part, that wind and solar power, whose costs have plunged in recent years, should compete on their own with traditional fossil fuels. But the debate has taken on a broader, more political tone as well, analysts say, with disagreements over the role of government, the economic needs of the state and the debate over climate change.

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“It used to be that renewables was this Kumbaya, come-together moment for Republicans and Democrats,” said Michael E. Webber, deputy director of the Energy Institute at the University of Texas at Austin. “The intellectual rhetoric around why you would want renewables has been lost and replaced by partisanship.”

Since 2013, more than a dozen states have taken up proposals to weaken or eliminate green energy mandates and incentives, often helped by conservative and libertarian policy or advocacy groups like the Heartland Institute, Americans for Prosperity and the American Legislative Exchange Council.

In Kansas, for example, lawmakers recently defeated a bill that would have phased out the state’s renewable energy mandates, but its backers have vowed to propose it again.

Jay Apt, director of the Electricity Industry Center at Carnegie Mellon University, said the Ohio battle was “another skirmish in the question of whether we are committed to cleaning up pollution, and people are divided.” He added, “Renewable portfolio standards and other mechanisms of pollution control are not cost-free.”

The Ohio bill freezes mandates that require utilities to gradually phase in the purchase of 25 percent of their power from alternative sources, including wind, solar and emerging technologies like clean coal production, by 2025. While the freeze is in effect for two years, a commission would study the issue.

At the federal level, alternative energy industries like solar and wind have pushed hard in recent years to preserve important tax breaks that they say have helped spur new development and sharply increased the supply of clean energy flowing into the grid.

But the demand for that energy has been largely propelled at the state level by mandates, known as renewable portfolio standards, that generally set goals for utilities to increase the percentage of green energy they include in the power they buy for their customers.

Roughly 30 states have the standards, which can range from modest voluntary goals like Indiana’s target of 10 percent by 2025 to more aggressive requirements like Hawaii’s, which aim for 40 percent by 2030, according to the Department of Energy.

In Ohio, where opponents of the mandate argued that it raised the price of electricity and supporters worried about the loss of economic development and jobs, Mr. Kasich worked to broker the compromise bill, said a spokesman for the governor.

“We rejected the efforts by those who’d like to kill renewable energy altogether, and instead we’re moving forward in a balanced way that supports renewable energy while also preserving the economic recovery that’s created more than 250,000 jobs,” the spokesman, Rob Nichols, said. “It’s not what everyone wanted, which probably means we came down at the right spot.”

Eli Miller, Americans for Prosperity’s Ohio state director, backed by the billionaire industrialists David H. and Charles G. Koch, called the proposed law “a prudent step” to re-examine standards that could be a “potential impediment to job creation and job growth here in the Buckeye State.”

But Gabe Elsner, executive director of the Energy and Policy Institute, a pro-renewables group that sees efforts to weaken incentives and mandates as part of a campaign by utility and fossil fuel interests, said the temporary halt could do away with the law entirely.

“The fossil fuel and utility industry has been caught off guard by the rise of cheap, clean energy, and over the past 18 months they’ve responded in a really big way across the country,” he said. “We’re seeing the results of that campaign now in Ohio.”

Renewable energy still represents a small fraction of the overall energy mix, reaching about 6 percent of net generation in 2013, according to the United States Energy Information Administration. But it is on the rise, representing 30 percent of power plant capacity added that year.

For renewable developers, the outlook is uncertain. Michael Speerschneider, chief permitting and public policy officer for EverPower, which recently won approval to develop a 176-turbine project in Ohio, said the ruling would make it more difficult to find a buyer for the power, dimming prospects for doing business in the state.

“We came to Ohio based on the policies that were in place,” he said. “Changing that now, freezing it, just sends a message that says, ‘Now, we don’t want you here anymore.’ ”