NEWS HIGHLIGHT
New Energy Tool Available Online
The Government of Canada has unveiled a new resource to help farmers
reduce their dependence on conventional energy sources and improve farm
sustainability. The Integration of Renewable Energy on the Farm (IREF)
website is a complete repository of technical information and online
tools for analyzing the potential for integrating renewable energy
sources onto individual farms.
The IREF website launch was announced at the Growing the Margins Conference, held in London, Ontario in early April.
“We’ve taken the best information available on renewable energy technology for the agricultural sector and made it easily accessible through the Internet,” said Mr. Joe Preston, MP for Elgin-Middlesex-London, on behalf of the Honourable Gary Lunn, Minister of Natural Resources . “The IREF Web site also provides online tools that will help farmers assess viable options for using renewable energy and determine the exact return on their investment.”
IREF is the result of a four-year partnership between Natural Resources Canada (NRCan), Agriculture Canada and more than 20 agricultural and energy organizations across Canada, and represents an investment of $1.2 million by the Government of Canada.
The Government of Canada's ecoACTION plan is investing more than $3.6 billion through its ecoENERGY initiatives to make clean energy readily available and more affordable for Canadians.
This new IREF Web site will include links to the ecoENERGY for Renewable Heat and ecoENERGY for Biofuels programs. It is expected that some farms will benefit from these programs and use renewable energy technologies to save energy and possibly produce surplus energy that they can sell to power utilities.
The IREF project was led by researchers at NRCan’s CANMET Energy Technology Centre — Canada’s largest science and technology research organization dedicated to clean energy research, development, demonstration and deployment.
The IREF Web site can be found at www.farm-energy.ca .
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