HEY WALL STREET: ONE BILLION DOLLARS!

Canadian wind energy seen adding C$1 bln to GDP
Marcy Nicholson, October 24, 2006 (Reuters via Yahoo News)
- Wind energy is expected to contribute more than C$1 billion ($890 million) to Canada's gross domestic product in 2006, up from C$736 million in 2005…

- Canada's current wind energy capacity is more than 1,200 megawatts, up from approximately 700 MW in 2005…Wind energy currently generates approximately 0.5 percent of the country's electricity…

- The recent halt of federal funding for wind energy, however, is causing the industry some concern. In 2001, Ottawa started an incentive program that provided long-term certainty for investors and triggered provincial governments to put their own aggressive wind targets in place…"If you add up all of the provincial obligations, we will be going up to stock capacity of 10,000 MW by 2015. That development is really contingent on the continued strong federal signal that they want to invest in wind and they want to build this industry," [Canadian Wind Energy Association spokesman Sean Whittaker] said…