Wind Farm Environmental Assessment

The City of Summerside owns and operates its electric utility, servicing approximately 6,600 residences and businesses. Currently, the City’s electricity requirements are purchased from out-of-Province sources and are primarily fossil fuels. To comply with the Province of Prince Edward Island’s Renewable Energy Act requiring all electric utilities to have at least 15 per cent of its electrical energy requirements supplied from renewable energy sources by 2010, the City plans to develop a 12.5 MW wind farm that would produce 38.33 GWh of electricity annually to the municipality. This equates to 100 per cent of the electrical power requirements of the City’s residential sector. A preliminary study demonstrated favourable results for the proposed wind farm project. This project is the next step towards implementation. The City will conduct an environmental assessment, as required under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act. In addition, a geotechnical survey will be performed on the site to obtain data for designing the foundations for wind turbines. The City estimates that the proposed wind farm would result in 33.6 per cent of the City’s electricity being generated by renewable energy with emission reductions of 9,581 tonnes of CO2 annually, 157.5 tonnes of SO2 and 105 tonnes of NOx.