Tyler Hamilton
Energy Reporter

Toronto city council is peeling back a layer of red tape that has delayed or halted the development of small green-energy projects throughout the municipality. Its approach: create a new bylaw that overrides other bylaws.

Forty-three existing zoning bylaws make it illegal for anyone to generate electricity then sell that power onto the provincial grid, creating a hurdle for Torontonians wanting to take part in the province's "standard offer" programs.

The Ontario Power Authority created the programs – one for renewable energy projects and one for low-emission "clean" energy projects – as part of an effort to reduce the province's dependence on fossil fuel power generation. They're the only programs of their kind in North America.

Rob McMonagle, a senior energy consultant at the City of Toronto, said the municipality's zoning bylaws were never designed to anticipate the potential for small-scale distributed generation projects, let alone those that feed the larger grid with emissions-free electricity.

As a result, the rules discourage renewable projects at a time when the province wants to promote green power and the city is trying to move forward on a comprehensive climate plan.

He said the city, rather than amend all 43 zoning bylaws, decided to create an overarching bylaw that permits developers of solar, wind, geothermal and co-generation projects to sell and transmit the energy they produce "in all zones or districts of the City of Toronto."

"It's just another piece of the puzzle getting solved as we get into renewable development," McMonagle said.  "It seems like Toronto is the first (jurisdiction in Canada) to take this on and try to come up with a workable solution."

A city planning committee approved the proposed bylaw earlier this month. The public will get a chance to comment on it in mid-February, after which it will go back to committee and then through a full council vote. McMonagle isn't expecting any roadblocks along the way.

Kristopher Stevens, director of policy and communications at the Ontario Sustainable Energy Association, said he is encouraged by the action but would like to see Queen's Park extend the bylaw across the province – similar to its recent decision to override bylaws that forbid the use of clotheslines. "There just needs to be leadership and direction from the top down," Stevens said.

Debbie Boukydis, an official with Enbridge Gas Distribution, said the proposed bylaw is a "very positive step" that will help the company advance a fuel-cell project that has been caught up in "municipal confusion" for the past nine months.

Enbridge wants to build a large fuel-cell system in the parking lot of its Toronto headquarters as part of a co-generation project that could generate 2.2 megawatts of clean electricity for the city.

The fuel cell would occupy 12 parking spaces on a 6.1-hectare parcel of land that currently has 1,000 parking spaces, but Enbridge could not get approval to build the system because of the existing zoning restriction.