“[As] much as distance has fractured communities compared to traditional times,” he explains, “farmers still tend to form a community,” coming together for community events and “fighting for causes.”

Fighting for causes happens to be Hansgen’s other job. As president of the Ontario branch of the National Farmers Union (NFU), he lobbies government on behalf of family farms. The union is a vocal opponent of Highway 413, the Ontario government’s proposed 52-kilometre throughway that will pave forests and agricultural land around the outskirts of Toronto.

The province argues that the new highway would fight congestion in one of North America’s fastest-growing regions, but Hansgen and the NFU see it differently. They are concerned that the highway’s construction will destroy hundreds of acres of nature and farmland in the Greenbelt – two million acres of protected land in a region known as the Golden Horseshoe – and contribute to urban sprawl along its route.

“[The 413 is] going to threaten a whole bunch of natural heritage features,” Hansgen says. “We’re talking about loss of ecosystem diversity, loss of climate change mitigation, loss of protection to our waterways.”

And, according to Hansgen, it won’t make traffic any better, as the province claims; rather, it’s only going to make gridlock worse. “Every traffic study on highways verifies that when you build a highway, the cars are soon to follow. And that is exactly what’s going to happen here,” he says.

Real solutions to the root problems

Hansgen was born in the eastern Ontario town of Lanark and, at age 14, got his first job picking and processing organic garlic. Back in the mid-1990s, the term “organic” wasn’t in common usage, and Hansgen says he “didn’t even understand what it meant.” That is, until he spent two summers apprenticing on a biodynamic farm that produced goat’s milk, eggs and pork.

Today he and his wife grow carrots, onions and about 4,000 heads of garlic on a small plot of pesticide-free land surrounded by wildlife, including sandhill cranes, trumpeter swans and, one time this summer, a bear.

Hansgen shares his passion for protecting the Greenbelt with thousands of other farmers who are members of the NFU, an organization that works for not only environmental protection but social justice. “We’ve supported other unions, other disadvantaged people, because lots of farmers feel like they work very hard for little profit,” he says. “We feel like we’re at the social margins already and so have sympathy for other people who are on the margins of society.”

Right now, a top priority is saving the Greenbelt, which is too precious to be sacrificed for another highway. It contains “some of the best-quality farmland in the world in one of the most forgiving climates in the world,” he says.

If the province were serious about tackling congestion, it would expand mass transit, make better use of current highways and increase densification within municipalities’ present boundaries. These solutions, Hansgen suggests, get at the problem’s root cause. “If we took that money [allocated to the 413] and poured it into proper infrastructure for public transit, that would probably solve all of the domestic traffic issues right away,” he says. “[And] if we could bypass trucks along the 407 – which is a very underutilized highway except for peak times – it would get rid of most of the commercial traffic immediately.”

But will farmers’ recommendations find a receptive audience in Ontario’s legislature? Hansgen thinks they will.

“Agriculture is one of the biggest industries in Ontario, so we’re a huge financial block,” he says. “We tend to be employers. We tend to be fairly large spenders at local businesses . . . And since we’re spread out across the province and we’re well connected and well funded, I think that’s enough justification to say we should be listened to.”

Gideon Forman is a transportation policy analyst at the David Suzuki Foundation.

The post This Ontario farmer is leading a movement to stop a highway appeared first on Corporate Knights.

How developers made direct requests to a minister’s chief of staff to take properties out of the Greenbelt.  

That government complied, making formerly protected areas available for development.  

For me, the sad thing is how the Greenbelt is conceived.  

Investors and politicians see it as land parcels, dark circles on a map, numbers tallied on a chart. Where is the childhood memory of walking the Bruce Trail in spring surrounded by a flowering of red and white trillium?  

On August 9, provincial Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk released a 95-page assessment of Ontario’s plan to remove from protection 3,000 hectares (7,400 acres) of farmland, wetland and forest. Written in response to a request from three opposition parties, it explains in exquisite detail the removal’s financial and environmental consequences.    

Few will be surprised by the AG’s discoveries – little at Queen’s Park is shocking, these days – but she presents them with admirable assurance. Her findings are damning and definitive.    

Notwithstanding government claims, opening the Greenbelt was never necessary to meet provincial housing goals. Lysyk learned this from city planners working in the regions where the protection designation would be scrapped. Even Ontario’s own Housing Affordability Task Force “determined that a shortage of land was not the cause of the province’s housing challenges and that the Greenbelt and other environmentally sensitive areas must be protected.”  

Lysyk offers a precise picture of land-removal profits. The scale is staggering. It’s one thing for tree huggers to make this point; it’s quite another when proclaimed by the auditor general. She writes: “Developers/landowners could see a $8.28 billion increase in the value of their land after the removal of 15 sites from the Greenbelt . . .” (Ontario wants the private sector to build “affordable” homes here.)  

Most Ontarians refuse to see the Greenbelt as land whose potential is only achieved when it’s monetized. 

The consultation process was poor. Interested parties had just 30 days to weigh in. Indigenous communities were not adequately engaged. And Housing Ministry staffers didn’t have enough time to assess public comments. Government received 35,000 submissions, which were “overwhelmingly negative.” It didn’t matter. Queen’s Park did not change its plans.  

I’m struck by Ontario’s very conception of the Greenbelt. In its response to the AG’s report the premier’s office defends itself, saying it’s “unlocking lands” to build housing. The words are telling. In this worldview, protected green space is seen as imprisoned. Here nature is not in need of preservation, but liberation – in the form of development. When woods and fields become a subdivision, they’re set free. Such is the perverse vision guiding our decision-makers. For Queen’s Park, the Greenbelt is a commodity no different than tin or pork belly. It’s this impoverished notion of creation that troubles so many of us.  

Earlier this summer, I walked the protected Niagara Escarpment near Tobermory. There in a field I saw for the first time a pair of sandhill cranes. I jumped the fence and put binoculars to my eyes. They were bowing their heads, spearing grain as herons spear fish. These were not abstractions. I experienced the birds and escarpment as a personal gift. I’ve loved this landscape since adolescence. I have dreams about its limestone sinkholes.  

I’m not alone. Most Ontarians refuse to see the Greenbelt as land whose potential is only achieved when it’s monetized. Our relationship to it is one of intimate friendship, not commerce.  

This, to its peril, is what the government cannot comprehend.  

Gideon Forman is a policy analyst at the David Suzuki Foundation. 

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Earlier this year, the David Suzuki Foundation circulated an open letter calling for the protection of southern Ontario’s greenbelt, citing the proposed Highway 413 north of Toronto as a major threat. It would run 52 kilometres from Vaughan to Milton and pave over more than 400 acres of the  greenbelt’s invaluable forest and wetlands, as well as more than 2,000 acres of Ontario’s most productive farmland.

The fact that the David Suzuki Foundation is urging the preservation of nature may hardly be news. But what distinguished the open letter — along with the signatures of author Margaret Atwood and former Toronto mayors — was its inclusion of a number of business leaders, among them Jonathan Westeinde, the Ottawa-based CEO of Windmill Developments.

I was intrigued at the idea of a land developer coming out publicly against the highway. Everyone knows the expressway’s construction would cause a staggering increase in the value of properties along the route.

But Westeinde, as I discovered during an exhilarating discussion this summer, is not like other developers. In fact, he’s better understood as an environmentalist or social activist than the builder of a billion dollars’ worth of real estate projects.

He got his start in the sector early. His parents ran one of Ottawa’s largest construction firms. “I’ve been on construction sites since I was 11,” he says. “But by the time I was 18, I didn’t want to have anything to do with construction as a career path…I saw the friction, lack of innovation…”

He hails from a family of engineers, but he “felt the need to be a contrarian,” so he completed his undergrad degree at Western University in economics. He considered doing graduate work in marine biology — “I’d always had an interest in the environment, particularly the oceans” — but he eventually did an MBA and worked briefly as a venture capitalist.

The year 2003 was a turning point. Westeinde began to see the business case for renewable energy after reading Natural Capitalism and started planning Windmill. “It was a real influencer,” he says of the classic volume on environmental economics. “There was a real focus [in the book] on real estate and how it’s one of the few industries that, if worked on properly, can be a net positive…And I also saw if we really focus on sustainability, it can be the core driver of innovation in the industry.” Here, ecological thinking is not an afterthought but a central organizing principle that feeds land developers’ creativity and success.

Westeinde’s original plan was to create an “ecosystem” of partnering businesses. He brought together some of Canada’s greenest architects and engineers as seed investors, but he wasn’t wholly satisfied with the results. “It worked in theory for a bit and then they all got bought by larger firms and lost their souls.”

He persevered and soon Windmill bid on its first major request for proposals, Dockside Green, a massive housing development in Victoria, B.C., which was one of North America’s first LEED platinum communities. Westeinde still seems astonished that he was successful. “You can imagine as an early start-up with not much capital base behind us bidding on a $750-million project; it was a big leap.”

Central to Westeinde’s philosophy is a commitment to regeneration. The goal isn’t merely to minimize damage but to improve things.

There was a real focus [in Natural Capitalism] on real estate and how it’s one of the few industries that, if worked on properly, can be a net positive…And I also saw if we really focus on sustainability, it can be the core driver of innovation in the industry.

-Jonathan Westeinde, CEO of Windmill Developments

Regeneration can also have a social dimension. Westeinde proudly tells me about a community called Parkway House he’s planning along Ottawa’s national capital bike path. The site is currently occupied by a disabled adults’ housing facility that, unfortunately, faces bankruptcy.

“We have structured a deal with them where we’re able to monetize their land to get them a brand new facility, get them an annuity that will not have them worry about funding again and give them a very healthy place in the community while creating an intensified development there.” This sounds like urbanization at its best: sensible density married to active transportation and social justice. “Instead of the value of that land going into someone’s pocket to buy themselves a bigger house, it’s going to create a brand new facility for these [disabled adults] and long-term safety net.”

Our conversation turns to the greenbelt. I ask Westeinde, naively, if there could ever be an organization called Developers for Greenbelt Protection. I say part of what makes southern Ontario attractive to new homebuyers is its wild spaces. He’s skeptical. “You’re looking at a situation where you’ve got a field that’s either worth nothing or it’s worth tonnes of money, based on it being in the greenbelt or not…. Unless someone is told they can’t [develop it], unfortunately, the thinking is just short-term.”

Nature will be protected, he suggests, not by corporate good will but regulation. “When I started in the industry, I was always in favour of carrot versus stick, in the sense that developers would do the right thing if incented accordingly. Increasingly, unfortunately, I’m falling on the side that it’s just got to be a stick.”

Yet Westeinde remains optimistic. Recently, he’s seen signs that the real estate industry is embracing sustainability. The driver, surprisingly, has been funders. “In the first 15 years of Windmill… the conversations in the room were [with] the architects, the engineers. Capital was not there. Capital just saw [sustainability] as friction… [But] in the last two years, capital is now driving a lot of the agenda.”

He gives the example of Quebec’s titanic pension-plan manager, Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, which funds a number of real estate operations and aims to be net-zero by 2030.   “They said to all their operators, ‘Because we’ve got to meet these goals, unless you can come back to us with a plan to show us how you’re also going to meet those goals, we’re not going to fund you anymore.’ So, now, these operators are going, ‘Shit, we gotta figure this out.’”

That, says Westeinde, is “changing the conversation. That part I’m extremely encouraged by.”

I come away with admiration. Here’s a developer who could make much more money if he compromised his principles. He won’t.

“We’re turning down projects that have a fantastic financial return, but we just can’t see the way [to make them sustainable].”

The post Meet the land developer trying to stop a highway through Ontario’s greenbelt appeared first on Corporate Knights.

“That’s a fact,” barks Jerry Dias, national president of Unifor, which represents workers in Canada’s automotive assembly sector.

Dias doesn’t drive an electric vehicle but is quick to add, “I will get one when my members build one.”

That day is approaching.

This past fall, Dias and his team finalized agreements to bring EV production to Oakville and Windsor, Ontario. In a wide-ranging interview, the head of the country’s largest private-sector union tells me how he lobbied key players to secure deals worth $1.95 billion at Ford and up to $1.58 billion at Fiat Chrysler.

Dias relishes telling the story. He stresses that the investments were the product of a remarkable alignment. “You had the federal government looking at major infrastructure spending, you had a pandemic, [and] the whole discussion of what does ‘build back better’ really look like.”

Unifor had long supported electric cars, but not all decision-makers were receptive. “[In 2018] you had Trudeau talking about greening the economy and you had Doug Ford saying the total opposite.” But in spring 2020, word leaked that Ford Oakville was planning to discontinue the Edge SUV. “So I contacted Dearborn [Ford’s headquarters in Michigan] and said, ‘What’s going on?’” Dias discovered the Edge would indeed be phased out in Canada.

“So then we really started to push the narrative,” he recalls. “I spoke with the Prime Minister’s Office, with [Infrastructure Minister] Catherine McKenna, with [Industry Minister] Nav Bains.” Dias told them EVs are the future. “About 3% of the world market is electric vehicles, but by 2040 it will be 50%.”

He believes Ford had little choice. “They weren’t going to close the only assembly plant in Canada. There would have been a war!” he says. “I got a call from Jim Hackett, who was the outgoing CEO from Ford, and then I got a call from Jim Farley, the incoming CEO, telling me [that] we’ll find a solution.”

While the Ford and Fiat Chrysler deals are seen as environmental victories, Unifor’s agreement with the third of the Big Three is problematic. In November, GM announced it will invest up to $1 billion in its Canadian operations to build traditional pickup trucks. I ask Dias how this squares with his climate commitments.

“We needed to get people back to work. If it’s 50% EV by 2040, it’s still 50% [internal combustion] … the key thing is to have your hands in both pots. This was about a short-term solution with a vision to the long-term.”

Dias is a bridge between conflicting worlds. He calls himself an environmentalist but represents oil workers. He acknowledges the planet is moving away from fossil fuel but thinks a complete transformation in 20 years is “too aggressive.” He sees values in nuclear power as a climate solution but feels the technology gets a free pass while wind is unfairly criticized.

“We have a wind turbine on our education centre [property],” he says. “There is not an issue that creates more dissent with our union in the community than that wind turbine. You’ve got a nuclear power station 10 miles down the road that if it went sideways would blow up the entire community. But there’s no debate on that; the debate is about my one turbine.”

Dias was born into a union family in 1958. His father worked at De Havilland Aircraft, becoming president of the local in 1967. Dias began his own career at De Havilland, spent a year at York University (“I hated it”), then returned to the company in 1978 and became shop steward. “My parents come from Guyana,” he explains. “In Canada they say, ‘The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.’ In Guyana they say, ‘Goats don’t make sheep.’”

Perhaps Dias’s leadership is best demonstrated by his participation in a January 2020 picket line at Regina’s Co-op oil refinery. There to support locked-out workers fighting for pensions, he was arrested for mischief and sent to jail – a situation no Canadian labour leader had faced since postal workers’ president Jean-Claude Parrot rejected back-to-work legislation and went to prison in 1980. “I would never expect our members to stand up to the police on a picket line without doing it myself,” Dias says. “You have to lead from the front.”

Dias’s worldview is, finally, pragmatic. In 2024, Fiat Chrysler’s Windsor plant will indeed produce electric vehicles – but also internal-combustion vehicles. “This is all about options,” he argues. “You can fly two kites at the same time.”

None of this detracts from his role in launching Canada’s entry into the major leagues of EV manufacturing.

Dias doesn’t drive a Tesla. He’s driving something greater.

Gideon Forman is a transportation policy analyst at the David Suzuki Foundation.

The post Jerry on the job appeared first on Corporate Knights.

It turns out he’s also a sailor.

Sitting in the book-lined boardroom of his Queen West office, we’re meeting to discuss his recent environmental ventures. The conversation turns to teen climate activist Greta Thunberg and her crossing of the Atlantic, on her return to Europe from North America in November. It’s hard not to be impressed by his nautical knowledge.

“I’m following her day by day,” he explains with gusto. “She’s on a 48-foot catamaran. She just passed north of Bermuda. The winds look great. If anything, too much wind. She’s running 20 knots.”

Iler has steered many activist campaigns himself, dating back to the mid-1970s when he became counsel — and later joined the board — at Greenpeace Canada, just a few years after the group’s founding. “I acted for them in all the arrests that happened out of Darlington [nuclear power station, near Toronto], the big 1980 demonstration,” where an activist parachuted from an airplane into the plant site.

The protest movements of 1968 had inspired Iler to leave the engineering program at the University of Waterloo and enroll at York University’s Osgoode Hall. “I went to law school thinking there’s a way to make more of a difference in the world as a lawyer. And that turned out to be true.”

Around 1990, after more than a decade of acting as the go-to counsel for Ontario’s cooperative sector, Iler received a call from an engineer who wanted to erect wind turbines in Toronto. This was the genesis of TREC Renewable Energy Co-op, which birthed WindShare – whose turbine still spins at Exhibition Place.

Iler recalls the difficulty – bordering on the absurd – of finding a location for the windmill.  Two sites near the waterfront were suggested, but local opposition shot them down. Then a naturalists’ group proposed Exhibition Place, but the zoning didn’t work. Eventually a helpful city official offered a creative solution: “‘Call it an amusement device.’ That’s what appeared on the building permit.”

Jumpstarting the revolution

Today, Iler is applying that spirited resourcefulness to efforts to retool General Motors’ Oshawa plant to produce electric vehicles for Canada Post. After the 2018 announcement of the facility’s closure, he chatted with the Canadian Worker Co-op Federation (CWCF) and wondered whether employees could buy the factory. “Kind of a long shot,” he admits. “But you never know once you put the idea out there what can happen.”

In spring 2019, CWCF commissioned a pre-feasibility study to look at the possibility of running the plant under workers’ control. “It became clear that . . . it really had to have huge government support to make it work,” Iler explains. “I think the figure was $1.9 billion. But [the study] was able to find examples of this having been done very successfully in other countries. The German post office went out to buy electric vehicles, found there wasn’t anything out there and bought a company to produce their own vehicles . . . And you can certainly have a worker ownership component.”

Iler is an expert on innovative funding models. Thanks in part to his efforts, Ontario has become a hotspot for renewable-energy-based community bonds, including SolarShare (a co-op that floats bonds to finance sun-powered arrays throughout Ontario) and ZooShare (a biogas co-operative). The Centre for Social Innovation – an incubator for more than 1,000 non-profits and social ventures in Toronto alone – credits Iler’s legal chops with securing funding for its hubs, now in New York as well.

If there’s a way to “access capital that sidesteps the traditional Bay Street model and goes directly to people who care about the issue,” as Iler puts it, he will sniff it out.

In GM’s case, he suggests it’s easier for government to mandate sustainability for its own trucks than for privately operated ones. Canada Post can simply say, “We’re going to convert our fleet to electric vehicles within X years, and we’re going to do it through an entity we create.”

CWCF believes Oshawa could produce and sell 150,000 electric vehicles over five years — about 1.4% of Canadian light-duty vehicle sales. Modest, to be sure, but potentially the start of a multibillion-dollar industry. The modelling also predicts significant employment growth — more than 13,000 jobs — and, by the fifth year, CO2 reduction of 400,000 tonnes.

Despite the plant’s scheduled closure in December 2019, Iler is optimistic. “With favourable government policy, we can do it here and get ahead of the curve. We know that GM sold a plant in the U.S. to Tesla. And the price was remarkably low. There’s such potential.”

Among the cars formerly produced in Oshawa was the Cadillac, one of the great symbols of worldly success. Today, with the climate crisis, the very meaning of success has changed. Now vehicles that tackle the emergency are the ones that confer status. Embrace of EVs would only enhance Canada Post’s reputation.

As I prepare to leave, the conversation turns again to sailing.

It’s “not for everyone,” Iler warns. “I’ve certainly been terrified on occasion. [But] the more you sail the more you realize that, as long as you avoid the really nasty stuff, the hurricanes, the boat will cope.” It’s similar to his faith in the ultimate soundness of the progressive enterprise.

“A lot of people get cynical,” he tells me. “I don’t.”

The post The man of wind, water and sun appeared first on Corporate Knights.

As our truck bumped along a gravel path above the former powerhouse, I spotted what looked like a derelict car tire. We stopped the vehicle and got out. It was an adult snapping turtle. Perhaps 30 centimetres in diameter, this was no wee pet shop critter. It snapped open its eagle beak, hissing at us. We were travelling with staffers from Ontario Power Generation, the solar project’s largest equity partner. One of them grabbed the back of the reptile’s oval shell, gently lifted it, and carried it to the side of the road.

Continuing along the crackling gravel, I saw something thrust itself through tall grasses ahead of us. A deer galloped up the hillside, tail erect. Then a second one emerged. In the distance rose a buck’s five-point rack.

Nanticoke stopped burning coal in 2013. Three years later, OPG and its Indigenous partners — Six Nations of the Grand River Development Corporation and the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation — gained permission to construct a 44-megawatt solar array of 192,000 panels. It’s OPG’s first ever solar facility.

To visit Nanticoke on this summer day in 2019 is to encounter the age of coal at the very moment of its unravelling. The building that contained the aging powerhouse was so stripped down, I could look through it and observe the lake. It felt like I was witnessing the fall of the Berlin Wall, which signaled the end of communism in the late 1980s.

The last remaining buildings of the old Nanticoke coal plant (right) will be dismantled by September.

The abundance of wildlife returning to the site — rare ribbon snakes and Jefferson salamanders also live here — reflects a broader societal transformation. On this patch of Lake Erie shore south of Hamilton, industry and nature are making peace. The shining panels resembled the undulating surface of a lake.

As executive director of Physicians for the Environment from 2004 to 2015, I worked many years for coal power’s elimination. In conjunction with other advocates, I organized face-to-face meetings so physicians could tell Ontario’s environment minister what smog does to human lungs. One of our doctors said there were days the air was so toxic her patients couldn’t leave home.

Nanticoke once generated 15% of Ontario’s electricity. The last section of the old plant — which resembles an amusement park closed for the season — will be dismantled by September. All that remains is maintenance of the grass that grows beneath the panels. Who could have foreseen that animals would make homes in the vegetation between solar panels on the former coal-plant site? Staff tell me it needs to be tamed so birds don’t nest in it, which could cause the solar array to be obscured and fouled. It’s marvelous problems such as these that give me hope. OPG is looking to solve it through ecological means; the weeding may be done by sheep.

The transition is also an act of economic reconciliation. About a third of the workers who built the solar array are from Six Nations, just a 30-minute drive from the site. The project creates emissions-free power as it employs local Indigenous people.

Matt Jamieson, CEO/president of Six Nations’ Development Corporation, tells me they invested here for several reasons. “First and foremost, it aligns with our core values, which is ensuring we do the right thing for Mother Earth,” he says. As well, projects like Nanticoke Solar support autonomy. “One reason we created the Six Nations Development Corporation was to become experts in partnerships, meet our own needs and get economic clout to determine our future — so we wouldn’t be reliant on government.”

Six Nations’ 15 % equity stake in the project also makes financial sense. “It’s a 20-year project, which is attractive. We have a high degree of confidence that we’ll get a good return, and the risks are pretty low,” Jamieson explains. The contract promises the Six Nations people at least $10 million.

Most of that will go into Six Nations’ Economic Development Trust, helping to purchase such things as fire trucks and to provide housing and elder care. Renewable energy is a long-term solution so it supports residents’ long-term needs. Everyone can see its virtue: The sun produces electricity, which generates revenue, which funds public services.

Tabitha Curley, Six Nations Development Corporations’ communications manager, summarizes the process beautifully. She sees a spiritual dimension: “Ultimately our interests are to harness our Creator’s capital to benefit the community.”

The snapping turtle is a kind of fossil. It struts across the road with the claws and spiked tail of a dinosaur. So, some fossils are magnificent. But here at Nanticoke the noxious ones have been phased out.

Gideon Forman is a climate change policy analyst at the David Suzuki Foundation.

The post Industry and nature make peace at former home of North America’s largest coal plant appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Morgan, who studied engineering physics and applied science at the University of Toronto, began his work at an Ottawa telecom giant. His assignment: exploratory research in fibre optics.

“I’ve always been an inventor,” the founder of Morgan Solar says. “My first patent I got very early in my career. It was my third day on the job. There was a problem with ‘optical noise.’ Twenty engineers were working on it. I proposed this very simple little change which would eliminate it. My colleagues told me, ‘It’s way more complicated than you think.’ But a few days later my boss said, ‘That idea you had, can you flesh it out?’ My innovation ended up going into a lot of products. The patent is still valid today.”

Morgan’s telecom days around the turn of the century were thrilling. He describes them the way atomic scientists spoke of the Manhattan Project – as the richest, most intellectually satisfying undertaking of their lives.

“We kept doing things in the lab in 2001 that were breaking all sorts of prior world records, like the fastest optical router ever made,” Morgan explains. “We were achieving speeds in terms of response times that had never been achieved before in human history. I got it into my head to just go out there and do something no one had ever done before.”

I ask him at what point engineers hit their creative peak. “The time when you invent the most stuff is when you have a lot of knowledge of the space in general but not of the specific problem,” he argues. “People tend to become experts and don’t see the forest for the trees. But when you’re brand new, you look at the problem and can come up with all sorts of new things.”

Hence, his early breakthrough. A recent university graduate, Morgan had considerable depth in general problems of optics but little experience with optical noise. Free from the burden – and biases – of specialization, he came to the problem fresh. “It’s easy to come up with new ideas when you don’t know anything,” he says with a smile.

After a stint in the Democratic Republic of Congo managing logistics for Doctors Without Borders, Morgan returned to Canada. Having seen the value of solar in Africa, he was anxious to support its growth globally. “My first thought was to work for someone else,” he recalls. “I researched other companies. But then I thought I had a much better way to make panels myself.”

He founded the firm with his brother, Nicolas, in 2007 out of a desire to see solar become the world’s most affordable and widely used energy source. Morgan produces panels and the tracking devices that move the panels to capture the sun’s rays.

I ask what contribution he’s made to the industry. “We invented and patented new ways of steering light inside the panels,” he says. “You have light bouncing around and the goal is to get it all absorbed in those cells [which produce the electricity]. You want to dump as much light on them as possible – to deliver more power.”

Morgan explains that, to maximize light absorption, earlier engineers attempted to make solar panels that essentially included a magnifying glass. But their concepts turned out quite thick, bulky and impractical. “Our breakthrough was to make a flat panel,” he says. “We developed optics which are right in the panel, so they’re paper-thin.” Thick panels use too much raw material and that can be costly. “Anything that is to be spread over a massive area has to be thin.”

Those innovations helped Morgan Solar develop SPOTlight (Simple Planar Optical Technology), a new class of translucent photovoltaic sunshades that can be used as windows, canopies, blinds or skylights.

A project in the Netherlands with the SPOTlight panels integrated in Lumiduct, developed by Wellsun, a partner of Morgan Solar.

The company is also an innovator with respect to trackers, equipment that lets the panel follow the sun as it crosses the sky. This technology can maximize energy output by allowing the array to face the sun throughout the day. But the tracker can have a co-benefit. If it’s installed in a farmer’s field it can physically block some light from hitting crops, thereby improving their yield.

“In countries like Japan, the only land is agricultural,” Morgan explains. “So you want to do both: solar energy and crops. We found there’s a synergy between the two where the crops do a little better because of the solar panels. Some crops can improve from partial shade. You can make light levels a little lower to avoid burning plants.”

It’s a brilliant solution. A single field produces both food and electricity and, depending on community need, the Savannah Tracker prioritizes one or the other. “You can dial down the solar output and dial up the light hitting crops, if that’s needed,” Morgan says.

When he started the company 12 years ago, a key objective was cost containment. Today, he says, “Solar panels are (almost) cheaper than plywood.” Right now, panels start at just twice the price, though at one point in California, Morgan recalls, it was less expensive to purchase solar panels than plywood. Considering panels were $500 per square metre when Morgan Solar started in 2007, it’s quite a drop.

The challenge is getting politicians to understand this. “Policy-makers were educated when solar was this impossibly expensive dream, when people said, ‘Can we afford to do this?’ Now the question is, ‘Can we afford not to do this?’ I think solar is going to enable a future where energy is almost zero cost.”

As I leave the Stockyards District, I’m struck by the fit between Morgan and his surroundings: He’s an inventor in a neighbourhood that’s reinventing itself. And I’m reminded of his advice about how invention emerges: “In 2007, I worked 24 hours a day churning out concepts. You have to have the appetite to study a thousand dumb ideas that don’t lead anywhere.”

Gideon Forman is a climate change policy analyst at the David Suzuki Foundation.

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