tenant profile

Back (left to right): Education Program Coordinator Kelly Park, Office Manager Mary Warner, Education Director Kirsten Vanstone, Executive Assistant Melissa Barbosa, SolarShare Member Relations Coordinator Julie Leach, Development Coordinator Wesley Normington. Front (left to right): Project Manager Matt Zipchen, Executive Director Judith Lipp, TREC Services Coordinator James Law.

Toronto Renewable Energy Cooperative Studio 405

The Toronto Renewable Energy Cooperative (TREC, Studio 405) bears a fitting acronym. TREC has had to trek through its share of uncharted territory in Ontario to establish the foundations for community-owned power. The organization started things off with a single mandate: Windshare , which erected a turbine on the Exhibition Place grounds in 2002 and was the first communityowned wind project in Canada. Since then, TREC has been advocating for policy changes reflected in the Green Energy Act and implementation of Feed-in-Tariffs, they are close to starting the blades spinning at Lakewind a twenty megawatt wind farm outside Kincardine, and have a four million dollar portfolio of solar power generators feeding the grid through SolarShare. Mapping the relationship between the solar, wind, and education arms of TREC is no simple task. Judith shared a venn diagram that we didnt have the space to include so well try to explain it like this: the cooperative is the entrepreneurial arm of a family of organizations. TREC is an incubator, developer, and capacity builder for the other organizations (both not-for-profit and charitable). They contract services and share resources (such as board members and expertise) and the strength of each organization compliments and contributes to the whole. They also all have a shared goal. As Executive Director Judith Lipp explains, the overall purpose is really about enabling Ontarians to participate in the green energy economy in a concrete way. Whether its as an investor 4 on the generation side or by engaging families with renewable energy concepts on the education side those are the two pillars. Whether its wind or solar, direct participation is central to TRECs initiatives. Judith believes that a participatory model is often what really engages people: a whole community power sector was developed out of this one idea: if individuals can invest their money in local projects and keep the profits local, people start to get comfortable with renewable energy and theres a snowball effect. In order to build the sector TREC is looking strategically at how to provide consultation services to new coops starting their own community ownership projects and to deliver education and outreach programs for developers, who often have to deal with hostile communities. One of the ways to become a community power participant by purchasing a SolarShare bond. TREC has been running information sessions in our Meeting Room (Studio 408) with the next one planned for April, or you can visit them in Studio 405 or online at www.solarbonds.ca. Its a great way to find out what investing in renewable energy looks like and how you can get involved. SolarShares plan is to have 750 members by the end of the year and expand their solar portfolio to ten million dollars. People want to invest in something thats doing good and there arent many of those that provide a 5% return on investment. www.trec.on.ca