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Nothing about Yves Gagnon telegraphs the ambitions of an environmental reformer. Not the 65-foot, paved driveway that leads to his two-car garage. Not the multi-thousand-square-foot home he shares with his wife, Mylene, and 12-year-old daughter, Gabrielle. Not the expanse of perfectly manicured lawn or the conspicuous absence of windmills, solar panels, compost heaps and any of the other accoutrements you typically associate with a dedicated, lifelong friend of the earth.
No, standing here today, on a glorious, cloudless May afternoon in suburban Dieppe, N.B., the close-cropped, clean-shaven, middle-aged man bedecked in a blue oxford button-down, khakis and sensible sandals might just as easily be your dentist pondering his next tee-off time. That he is, in fact, professor of mechanical engineering and K.C. Irving Chair in Sustainable Development at the Université de Moncton and, inarguably, Atlantic Canada’s leading and most vociferous exponent of renewable energy only serves to remind you that all is rarely as it seems on the front lines of the ecology movement these days.
“I must confess,” he smiles. “This is a pretty nice place we have here.”
He’s a soft-spoken gent whose waistline betrays a certain fondness for the finer things in life. (Indeed, his professional rap sheet declares he enjoys “cooking gourmet meals with his spouse.” Incongruously, it also says he is an avid hiker “with numerous expeditions under his belt, including one to Mount Everest’s base camp”). But his gentility – the product, perhaps, of an untroubled youth, academic success, and years spent in happy pursuit of scientific principles – masks a hard-boiled determination to change the world, or at least his small corner of it.
“There are a lot of misconceptions about renewable energy,” he says. “Too many people here think wind, tidal, solar and biomass alternatives to oil aren’t actually feasible or viable in our modern society. They think they are either too expensive or too unreliable. But these technologies and processes are being put to work and to good effect in other parts of the world. And the lesson in this is that respect for the environment and economic prosperity are not mutually exclusive concepts.”
This may be as close to a unified statement of principles – a holistic philosophy of life – as you’re likely to get from a man who is committed to merging renewable sources of power into the mainstream of everyday life on the Canadian East Coast. It explains why, in 2007, after months of research, he and his team of scientists at the Université de Moncton released to the public a New Brunswick wind resource map, which showed definitively, and for the first time, how the province’s steady breezes can be harnessed as commercial commodities. It also illuminates his objection, last year, to the New Brunswick government’s ill-fated attempt to sell NB Power to Hydro-Quebec without consideration for the economic potential of home-grown energy alternatives. And it underscores why, this summer, he’s working in France, under the auspices of the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, on “smart grid” technology, which seeks to solve the intermittency problems that weaken wind’s economic value to large transmission systems.
In fact, “Mr. Wind” is Gagnon’s nom de guerre if only because he knows this renewable energy resource, above all others, is closest to achieving widespread practicability. On one recent day, for example, Spain posted a wind power production record, registering 27 per cent of national consumption, or 10,032 megawatts. By the end of last year, the total capacity of all wind-powered generators in the world was 159.2 gigawatts, while the actual energy produced from these was about 340 terawatts, accounting for about two per cent of planetary electricity use. As of May 2009, 80 countries deployed wind commercially, including Denmark (where off-shore breezes supplied 19 per cent of stationary power production); Portugal (13 per cent); and Germany and Ireland (each, seven per cent).
By comparison, the amount of electricity wind generates in Canada – where hydro and coal remain dominant – has been miniscule. By January 2010, natural bluster was supplying only 1.1 per cent of the nation’s stationary power largely through 99 wind farms, which represented approximately 3,319 megawatts of capacity.
Still, according to The Canadian Wind Energy Association – which has called for installed capacity of 55,000 megawatts by 2025, meeting 20 per cent of the country’s energy needs – the current circumstances belie more promising developments. “Wind energy is one of the fastest growing sources of electricity in Canada as governments seek ways to meet increasing energy demand, reduce greenhouse gases and stimulate rural and industrial economic development,” the organization states in a recent report co-authored by Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters. “Canada’s wind energy industry scored a record year [2009] with 950 megawatts of new wind energy capacity installed in eight provinces – placing Canada ninth globally in terms of new installed capacity. [This] represented more than $2.2-billion in investment.”
