1. Attitudes towards new
renewable energy technologies
in the Eastern Ontario Highlands
Stewart Fast and Robert McLeman
Department of Geography, University of Ottawa
Rural Research Workshop, May 5, Ottawa
Source: Ontario Power Authority .
http://fit.powerauthority.on.ca

2. Source: wind concerns Ontario
Eastern Ontario Highlands

3. Selected characteristics
Addington North Ontario
Highlands Frontenac
Median age 50 54 39
Median income ($) 15,651 18,878 24,604
Workforce participation (%) 45.4 49 67
3rd generation or more (%) 78 78 46
Without high school 39 27 22
education (%)

4. Methods
• Self administered questionnaire
• Two follow up focus groups

5. Eastern Ontario Highlands
Denbigh
Ompah
Plevna
Bon Echo
Cloyne
Northbrook
Flinton
Kaladar

6. Response rate for mail‐out survey for questionnaires received
February 23rd to April 7th
Village rural Number of Number Response
route households returned Rate
sent survey
Denbigh 220 53 24%
Flinton 270 60 22%
Ompah 172 35 19%
Cloyne 174 24 14%
Total 836 175 21%
Household heating sources in use in Addington Highlands and North
Frontenac and in Canada*
*from 2007 Household Energy Use Survey by Statistics Canada / Natural Resources Canada

7. Most important energy issues in the future
Focus group participants
Private citizens focus group Governance focus group
male retiree long‐time resident, active in Township Councillors (3)
local hunting and fishing organization
Conservation Authority (1)
male, business owner, has solar panels
Regional tourism association (1)
under microFIT program, recent migrant
from urban centre Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources
(1)
male retiree active in lake association
County (1)
female long‐time resident, active in
community organizations, lives off grid Crown land forestry company (1)
male, long‐time resident, volunteer
firefighter, lives off grid
male retiree long‐time resident active in
local organizations (2)
male retiree active member of County‐
level “green energy task force” recent
migrant from urban centre

8. Focus group and survey comments
“My hydro bill is discouraging!”
“Living in an underprivileged area, with declining youth population
(under 40 yrs) it is imperative that any green technologies that
could produce and maintain economy is beneficial.”
“A lot of people in our area cannot afford the continually rising costs of
hydro.”
“I would think that most people would like to be off the grid mainly for
reliability as there have been numerous outages and most have a
generator as back up.”
The “NIMBY” question

9. http://fit.powerauthority.on.ca

10. http://fit.powerauthority.on.ca
http://fit.powerauthority.on.ca

11. Focus group comments wind
• “I sure as hell know they aren’t going to put one of those wind
farms on my property.”
• “You go to Wolfe Island, and it is almost a disgusting insulting thing
when you look at the beauty and then this thing is just clustered
with (...) it is producing nice energy but you have a huge challenge
and I think it will continue wherever you go with ‘not in my
backyard”’
• “I think it is being maligned…it is popular to believe it is bad.”
• “If you talk about two or three turbines on ____ Lake, there would
certainly be a very different perspective from people that come up
on only on weekends”
Focus group findings biomass
• “We’ve got just incredible amounts of sawdust and
bark and trimmings and wood….to me this is an ideal
opportunity for somebody to come along and open a
pellet plant somewhere within easy distance.”
• “I love the concept over in North Addington [i.e. at the
school ‐ North Addington Education Centre]. I think
that is great, now if we only can get the pellets here”
• “This could be a product that has many many other
spinoffs”

12. Key findings
1. High initial support (cost, local resources)
2. Solar ‐> Wood ‐> Hydro ‐> Wind
3. not NIMBY response
4. Permanent / Seasonal residents
5. Planners can foster positive initial attitudes
Next steps
• Workshop / meeting
• Seasonal resident perspectives
• Analytical statistics
• Talk and discourse analysis using
Habermasian framework
• Continued observations of “public sphere”
• Report and recommendations to community
and local governments

13. Public attitudes towards new
renewable energy technologies in
the Eastern Ontario Highlands
Stewart Fast and Robert McLeman
Department of Geography, University of Ottawa
Rural Research Workshop, May 5, Ottawa