Gleaners Food Bank (Gleaners) in Belleville, Ontario, announced on November 8 that it will now sell green energy to the province. In the last two years, Gleaners, the Quinte area’s destination for individuals and families in need of food, information, job training, drug addiction prevention, and affordable housing, has made an effort to help the environment as well. The organization’s latest green initiative is the seventy-two 15 kW solar panels recently installed on the food bank’s rooftop. This installation will generate revenue from the more than 20,000 kW-hours of green electricity it will add to the province’s power grid each year. The installation will also create temporary and long-term employment for Ontario’s certified solar workers.
The solar installation is one of several green retrofits Gleaners has made to the food bank building. Over a year ago, the organization took part in the Veridian Energy Lighting Retrofit program, which helped Gleaners replace old lighting, heating, and cooling equipment with more energy efficient technology. Later, the Ontario Trillium Foundation helped Gleaners install a better-insulated roof, and the non-profit added a rain harvesting conservation and solar energy organic system to the garden near the food bank’s warehouse. The rooftop installation joins several other solar projects in the Quinte-Belleville region, along with hundreds of new projects creating green energy and jobs for certified PV workers across Ontario.
FIT, MicroFIT Help Create Green Jobs, PV Training Certification Opportunities
Ontario is home to North America’s first full-scale feed-in tariff (FIT) program. The FIT and its companion program for projects under 10 kW, the microFIT, pay producers of renewable energy to tie into the grid. The programs’ goals are to diversify the power supply and help phase out coal-fired power in the province by 2014. In addition to clean electricity, it has also created a wide array of green jobs and educational opportunities like solar PV training courses. The microFIT encourages homeowners to be part of the solution by paying them some of the highest rates for green energy – up to 80.2 cents/kW-hour for residential-scale rooftop PV installations. The programs’ high rates allow projects like the Gleaners solar set-up to profit from progress.
“Hunger has no season and solar energy is the future of Gleaners sustainability,” says Susanne Quinlan, Gleaners’ Director of Operations. “We decided to pursue solar energy to create a healthy and sustainable environment for residents and families we serve, and to help greatly offset power costs.” Gleaners Food Bank will help both the environment and Ontarians for years to come, all under, and over, the same roof.
