To register for the next event or for more information, click here.
Contact: Todd Latham, 416-444-5842, ext. 111

At just over $114 billion, the total of Canada’s Top 100 Projects has increased by 18 per cent over last year’s total.

In total, $47 billion was invested in energy infrastructure projects, $15.3 in health care projects, and $445 million on education. Roughly a third of the projects on the list were added this year, worth $30 billion in infrastructure investments.

Out of 100 projects, 60 are in urban centres, with 77 per cent ($39.4 billion) of funding for those projects coming from provincial governments and 13 per cent ($6.9 billion) coming from municipalities.

The country’s new biggest project is Toronto’s Eglinton Crosstown LRT Project, which increased in scope, sending it from number four last year (at $4.6 billion) to number one this year at $8.2 billion.

For project details, visit top100projects.ca. For the full list, click here. To receive a copy of the report, contact doug@actualmedia.ca.

In this year’s edition of Water’s Next, you’ll read about the people and ideas that are making a difference in Canada’s waterscape and beyond—from Josephine Mandamin’s personal pledge to raise awareness of Great Lakes protection, to iDUS Controls’ second generation of efficient irrigation technology, to Clearpath Robotics’ unmanned monitoring robot, to WEHUB’s online water data dissemination program.

Congratulations to the featured nominees for their hard work and commitment to making safe, healthy water resources a priority! For the full list of honourees, see below. For more details and all profiles, visit Water’s Next here.

People

Josephine Mandamin (Ontario), First Nation elder and founder of the Women’s Water Walk

Brent Wootton (Ontario), director and senior scientist of the Centre for Alternative Wastewater Treatment, Fleming College

Terry Rees (Ontario), executive director of the Federation of Ontario Cottagers’ Associations

Kevin Freedman (Manitoba), founder of the 25-Litre Water Challenge

Karen Bakker (British Columbia), Canada Research Chair in Political Ecology, University of British Columbia

Innovation

Advancing Canadian Wastewater Assets (Alberta)

The iDUS G-100 (British Columbia)

The Snug Cove Wastewater Treatment Plant (British Columbia)

The ROC Barrier (Ontario)

Education for Water Stewardship Program (Manitoba)

Business

Clearpath Robotics (Ontario)

Vinci Consultants (Quebec)

Golder Associates (Global)

Aquality (Alberta)

Coca-Cola Corporation (Global)

Projects

The National Water and Wastewater Benchmarking Initiative (National)

Algoma Orchards (Ontario)

The POLIS Water Sustainability Project (British Columbia)

The Water and Environmental Hub (Alberta)

Toronto’s Wet Weather Flow Master Plan (Ontario)

Regular Water Canada subscribers will receive a print version of Water’s Next 2012 with their copy of the January/February issue, hitting mailboxes the week of January 9. Not a subscriber? Sign up here.

Actual Media researcher Douglas McCallum interviews a TTC employee at the first launch site for Toronto's Eglinton Crosstown LRT, one of ReNew Canada's Top 100 projects.

This year’s list of Canada’s biggest infrastructure projects is set to be the biggest ever. Since 2007, ReNew Canada has been researching the cost, key players, and funding/financing information for 100 projects (ranked by cost). This year’s total is the biggest yet, with new projects pushing certain sectors into the lead.

Three Ontario courthouses made the list this year–all delivered through a P3 model. Health Care construction continues to boom, as does investment in transit and transportation work.

For the first time this year, a wind development broke into the top 40.

Look for the 80-page Top 100 supplement to circulate with ReNew Canada’s January/February edition, with extra stats (and honourable mentions!) in the issue itself.

But according to a new report released by Actual Media Inc. on September 6, the now-controversial incentive is only responsible for only 800 kilowatts of the nearly 1,600 megawatts of wind power online in Ontario—that’s less than one per cent of installed wind generation in the province.

Through a review of data from a wide variety of sources (including information published by the Canadian Wind Energy Association, the Pembina Institute, Ontario Power Generation, Ontario Power Authority, consultant reports from Wind Concerns Ontario, Sierra Club of Canada, the Independent Electricity Systems Operator, the Government of Ontario, academics and other media sources), the report, Wind in Ontario, provides a unique perspective on the social, legal, economic, environmental and political issues surrounding wind energy in the province of Ontario.

Like every form of energy, wind power is not perfect. But the current debate in Ontario has framed wind energy as either a blessing or a curse. Some of the resources used by both sides have been taken out of context. In other cases, the research was poorly conducted or has been sponsored by advocacy groups, which has led to accusations of bias in the research.

This report found that the arguments made against wind, specifically the potential impact on the environment, human health, and the economics of wind power, are not supported by the available resources. However, as is the case with most issues, the findings are not black and white.

Key Findings

• Bat mortality rates could be lowered by as much as 60 per cent without having a significant effect on electricity production. A one-month experiment concluded that financial losses from these mitigation measures amounted to between $3,000 and $4,000.
• Assuming an average capacity factor of 30 per cent (the industry standard), Samsung could potentially make $710 million per year from 2,000 megawatts of installed wind resources. Samsung could make an additional $350 million from 500 megawatts of installed solar power, with an approximate capacity factor of 20 per cent. In total, Samsung could potentially make approximately $1 billion per year.
• Fossil fuels cause about six times more avian deaths per gigawatt-hour than wind energy.
• Projects located in internationally recognized Important Bird Areas, as defined by Bird Life International, can have the potential to negatively impact the local environment. While wind power can be of net benefit to the environment and the public, regulators must pay more attention to project locations.

To order your copy of Wind in Ontario, visit renewcanada.net/windinontario or contact Douglas McCallum at doug@actualmedia.ca

ReNew Canada’s report, Top 100: Canada’s Biggest Infrastructure Projects, released in January 2011, listed multiple transit projects funded through Toronto’s Transit City plan. Now that the plan has been scrapped, the entire $8-billion the Province of Ontario allocated to its projects will go toward putting the Eglinton light-rail-transit (LRT) line partially underground. The change takes the LRT Project from number four on the 2011 Top 100 (at $4.6 billion) to number one—a single LRT line has eclipsed a 2000-megawatt hydro complex (Hydro-Québec’s $6.5-billion Romaine A Project) to become biggest project in Canada.

Which other projects on the 2011 Top 100 have gone up in cost and why? Who is financing these projects? Which government funds are contributing to the country’s Top 100 projects? To answer these questions, ReNew Canada compiled a white paper with further details about the Top 100 projects in Canada.

The paper focuses on financing details and political roadblocks for each project, as well as policy, funding allocation, and contracts and agreements. It includes visual breakdowns of sector trends and a comprehensive list of government, business, not-for-profit, and non-governmental organisation sources.

Quick Facts:

The Top 100 Projects represent almost 300,000 direct and indirect jobs.

The Federal Infrastructure Stimulus Fund contributed most (42 per cent) to public transit projects on the Top 100, followed closely by highway, road, and bridge construction (31 per cent).

Provincial governments contributed 62 per cent of the funding for the 19 transit projects on the Top 100.

Public-private partnerships (P3s) were used in 59 per cent of the 20 health care projects on the Top 100—in Ontario, the value of health care P3s on the Top 100 is $3.45 billion.

Provincial governments only provided two per cent of the funding for energy projects on the Top 100—utilities provided 80 per cent.

Order your copy here.

For details, contact Douglas McCallum 416 444 5842 ext. 118

We’ve updated the look of our Water Canada and ReNew Canada websites and we couldn’t be happier about them.

In particular, you should check out the revamped ReImagine section of ReNew — it’s pretty spiffy. And our Water Canada online Buyer’s Guide has never looked better.

Thanks to the web guys and gals at Geek Oracle for all their hard work.

Every year, it gets bigger and better.

The 2011 Top 100 Canadian Infrastructure Projects report is the biggest we’ve ever made. Heck, the Top 100 is a whopping, 60-page monster of a supplement — making this (when combined with our January/February issue) the fattest issue of ReNew Canada ever. A job well done by our team of researchers and editors – take a bow, guys and girls.

Check out some of our early buzz at…

Canoe
The Montreal Gazzette
Canada.com

We also took this opportunity to do a minor overhaul of the website. The biggest new addition is the Top 100 Map, powered by ESRI. It’s the next step from the Google map we introduced last year. This map is faster and loaded with a lot more content. Click the link and check it out.