Don't Just Pass the Wind

Though I’m sure residents of Toronto have noted the large installation standing 91 metres tall at Exhibition Place’s Dufferin Gate entrance, I wonder if they’ve thought about what’s fuelling it? It’s something they can’t see and it’s something that most wouldn’t consider technology.

The ExPlace turbine, an installation that produced its first watts of electricity on January 23, 2003, relies completely on wind to operate. It is the first of its kind built in an urban location in North America and creates roughly 1000 megawatt hours of power each year; roughly enough for 200 homes.

The turbine, which is owned by a co-op, for-profit, company called Windshare took five years to create and about a day to install.

Maybe I’m just too young, but I don’t remember much of a deal being made about this structure. For those of us commuters who travel in along the Lakeshore each day, the ExPlace turbine is something I have often wondered about. I was never sure whether it actually produced energy or was more of an art piece designed to draw attention to the Ex itself.

I’m happy to say that now I know. The next time I’m driving into the city with a group of friends and someone asks, “What is that thing anyways?” I’ll be able to recite my new found facts on Windshare and the help it has brought Toronto Hydro.

Though the turbine takes less than one per cent of the pressure off of Toronto Hydro (who buy the energy from Windshare), the real help goes to the environment.

On Windshare’s website it states that this turbine alone, “helps displace up to 380 tonnes of carbon dioxide annually, which is the equivalent of taking 1,300 cars off the road or planting 30,000 trees each year.”

Imagine how much clearer our air would be, how smog-free our sunsets if more of these turbines were installed in urban areas. Though it is hard to find urban areas that have enough wind to produce energy, the waterfront is often a great place. Cities like L.A., New York and Miami could drastically change their pollution climate by installing, at the least, one of these turbines.

This technology is using an invisible resource (wind) to turn our city a little greener. I don’t think enough people in Toronto realize how helpful the turbines could be if more of them were installed.

They are beautiful to look at and to all those sceptics saying they are too tall I’d argue that they don’t compare in size to the new buildings going up in Toronto every year.

In Denmark, a co-op just like the one here has installed 80% of the country’s turbines, “which now account for 10% of the entire country's electricity needs,” says Windshare’s website. It also says that by the year 2030 some 50% of the country’s power will come from wind.

More people need to educate themselves on the new technologies that are going to help reverse some of the damage we have done to our cities and the environment. Something like wind, something that we can’t see, and often don’t pay much attention to (except when it’s bringing a wind chill to our already frigid days) can really help us.

So the next time you’re driving on the Gardiner or Lakeshore take the time to look up and decide whether you like the look of our (quasi-new) 30 storey piece of technology. Tell your friends that besides being beautiful it is helping to clean our air, and slowly helping to reduce the energy crisis. We need more turbines around because this is one technology that could truly save all of our lives.