In our relentless campaign to enlighten our members and the general public about the viability and benefits of renewable and safe power from Sun and Wind and Micro-hydro we had another busy year.

With the co-ordinator laid up after hip replacement surgery in January and subsequent convalescence in Germany, Board members and volunteers staffed our displays at the important Organic Conference at Guelph University. CFRE was represented at many other events in different parts of the province like Ottawa, Barrie, Oakville, Windsor, Hamilton, Toronto, Kitchener and Parkhill.

We conducted four workshops, one in connection with our fifth Annual General Meeting at the YMCA Environmental Learning Centre, Paradise Lake, west of Waterloo. The others took place in Ottawa in April, and Owen Sound and Hamilton in October.

To give Renewable Energy enthusiasts some hands-on experience, a demonstration site tour was hosted by the Solwind Enerco experts in the Goderich area. It was a well attended event. Many not able to take part are looking forward to a repeat in 2002.

We were very honoured when a publication titled "Sharing Our Successes" issued by the West Coast Environmental Law Research Foundation in July featured CFRE as one of the organizations across the country in a chapter called "Providing Progressive Models".

To convince government authorities that conventional energy generation and in particular dangerous and costly nuclear power is unsustainable, CFRE intervened in two licensing hearings of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC), in Kincardine and in Ottawa. The co-ordinator and several members attended open houses and information workshops offered by the private operator Bruce Power in connection with their plan to re-start two old laid-up reactors of the Bruce ‘A' section. The CNSC put out a draft Scoping Document on the Environmental Assessment for the re-start with a short public comment period falling mostly during the Holiday Season. We asked for an extension but were turned down.

One of our Board members, Cindy MacDonald, had to resign for personal reasons, but we were lucky to fill the vacancy quickly when Lisa Chupa from Hamilton agreed to serve. Vitold Kreutzer, our longest serving Board member, took over the post of Secretary from Cindy. Thanks to all of you for giving your valuable time and for your dedication! Our membership remained fairly constant at just over 1,000 members with some drifting away being quickly replaced by new ones. And everyone received our four quarterly newsletters either by mail or e-mail. Both our newsletters and our web site received frequent favourable comments. Thanks to Karen for her help with this!

The Co-ordinator was featured in a front page article of the Kitchener-Waterloo Record in May, but a real highlight for him was to be able to stand on top of a 200 feet tall 850 kW Enercon wind turbine in Magdeburg, Germany - and he has a photo to prove it!!

Wind turbines are beginning to pop up even in this backward province of Ontario! There is renewed hope that clean and safe renewable energy production will gradually replace polluting fossil and nuclear power in 2002 and beyond!!

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