Lower Cost Living

Lower Cost Living

How can we plan and build communities where energy is available at a lower cost?

Site for Lower Cost Energy Trial

The Bedford Sackville Connector Greenway Trail is one of many opportunities in HRM to take a walk for exercise or, in my case, to activate the link between moving, breathing, and my imagination. Along the trail, I look across the interchange in Lower Sackville between the 101 Highway and the 102 Highway to a newer housing development with many square meters of roof top suitable for solar panels.

Across the 101 and 102 Highway newer housing development

As I continue along the trail to the baseball fields, I realize the housing development is at a higher elevation than the ball field and the Sackville River. This is an opportunity to use the surplus electricity generated by solar panels on the roof of these houses, on the roof of the DND Bedford Rifle Range, on the roof of the Nova Scotia DOT facility and perhaps in the future after the necessary and planned redesign of the 101/102 interchange over the new bridges and the ramps.

The work of my son to use solar panels on the roof of his travel trailer to provide electrical power for lighting and heat pump heating and cooling, with some on board battery storage, and some excess capacity in his 3Kwatt design has encouraged my exploration of starting by building extra capacity at the dwelling level in solar arrays, after supporting heating and cooling to store in area batteries or to pump local water to storage for use in hydro generation to maintain the community battery capacity.

Net Positive Travel Trailer

Look around. Are you able to identify similar opportunities in the geography around you to use roof mounted solar, community battery storage, and nearby pumped water storage to reduce your heating and cooling costs and charge your EV?

Oils Well that Ends

 An article in the Economist Business section: “On shifting oil sands” asks: Canada’s oil industry is booming. Can it last?

Looser regulations will help with pipelines—but may not boost production

Mark Carney, Canada’s prime minister, is intent on promoting a speedier process that will apply to a new pipeline under development to British Columbia. Lisa Baiton of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, an industry group, has spoken of a “generational opportunity” to rally political and public support behind new oil projects.

Enbridge, an energy-infrastructure firm, has paused construction of a pipeline to the east, citing a lack of commitments by producers to provide enough oil to make it worthwhile.

The unique challenges of the oil sands provide an explanation. Investment in new sites has been virtually non-existent since the oil price crashed in 2014 as demand weakened while America’s shale oil gushed and opec opened the taps. “It cannot be overstated how much that changed the industry,” says Kent Fellows of the University of Calgary. Moreover, projects in the oil sands take far longer to develop than conventional wells. They require enormous amounts of capital that could be tied up for five to ten years before profits flow. Uncertainty over the future price of oil—and the danger that a change of government might lead to the reinstatement of tighter regulations—make for risky bets. (Canada's Oil Industry Is Booming. Can It Last?, n.d.)

References

Canada's oil industry is booming. Can it last? (n.d.). The Economist. Retrieved September 7, 2026, from https://www.economist.com/business/2026/08/20/canadas-oil-industry-is-booming-can-it-last? 

POINT OF NO RETURN

  POINT OF NO RETURN: A STORY ABOUT LOVE, MURDER AND FORGIVENESS

What is your connection to the Island of Newfoundland?

Beyond the Fence

Family, Friends, Hometown, Ferry and Train Travel, Breathtaking Landscape, Unique Culture and more… POINT OF NO RETURN: A STORY ABOUT LOVE, MURDER AND FORGIVENESS is Jerry Rideout’s recent tale of life, love, faith, migration, survival, conflict and murder is brought to life through detailed and descriptive writing about the people, places, and rugged reality of the characters and land in which their stories are told. A compelling story and descriptions of Newfoundland that resonate with my visits to the island and the rugged landscape and unique people... Excellent work!

Not the Lobster Mark

 One of the most moving experiences this Boomer can recall from the time I have spent near Wreck Cove on the Atlantic Coast of Cape Breton is the disc of the rising sun spreading light on the ocean and revealing tens of small crafts of lobster fishers that have been “hauling traps” with the day’s harvest of lobster for hours before dawn.

The recent movie “Little Lorraine” reveals some of the danger and economic returns of this fishery that Atlantic Canada has shared with Maine since my grandfather’s time when the status of this particular catch moved from “poor peoples” food to a high end, high value, offering of the best restaurants.

Fifty years ago my first job, in my novice time as an electrical engineer, was with NB Tel in Saint John, about an hour away from the US border at St Stephen/Calais where you could work in St. Stephen and show your driver’s licence to US Customs and have lunch in Calais.

At that time, the Cable TV from the United States, that NB Tel carried on the microwave network, originated in Bangor. The audience in Maritime Canada came to understand our human connection to Maine as another phase of a much longer relationship of cooperation and competition with New England. The bottom line of my appeal is this: The economic damage to Maine, and perhaps lobster processing in New Brunswick threatens to be great.

The political gain of pinching Trump in an electoral cycle threatening the reelection of Maine US Senator Susan Collins is likely to be at the cost of hardworking American cousins with whom we share life on the Atlantic that can be challenging.

In many ways this tariff will devalue Canadian policy toward neighbours in the same way that Trump has devalued the relationship of the Presidency with Canada as merely a financial transaction.

Meaning in the Chart

What does this chart mean to you? 

Tell us the story?

Name and Mission

 We consider the relationship between the names of economic systems and the mission they are designed to serve.

Wildfires and Climate Change

 The increase in wildfires has the effect of increasing the release of the green house gas (GHG) that is largely responsible for trapping heat in the atmosphere and drying out the boreal forest and making it more vulnerable to wildfire.

Wildfire Cycle

 

This is a positive feedback effect that can spiral out of control.