Powered by the Wind

Come visit Buffalo Horn Ranch and you won't see a windmill.  We use  electricity for our household, ranching and meat marketing operations.  We need to pump water, keep it from freezing so the bison can drink it in the winter and at any time we need 3 to 7 deep freezers running to store the bison meat we sell.  It has always been our goal to keep our environmental footprint to a minimum and we are always looking for ways to reduce our energy consumption. 

We have looked at installing windmills and solar panels to generate electricity on the ranch.  Currently the cost to do this on a small scale is too high, but may become more feasible in the future.  We lobbied our energy supplier a few years ago to allow us to buy wind credits through the Pembina Institute.  Instead they came up with another plan.  Our electricity is provided by the Central Alberta Rural Electricification Association, CAREA.  Last year they introduced a plan by which there 8000 member rural households could buy wind power credits to supply all or part of their electrical needs by wind power.  It costs us an additional $15 a month to supply all of our needs 100% by wind energy.  At this point wind power is still more expensive than coal fired power, so it costs more if you choose this type of energy.  We felt that it was a worthwhile expenditure to switch to clean energy this way and not invest the thousands of dollars in our own power generation system. 

After the program had been running for a year we contacted CAREA to inquire about the number of households who had decided to switch fully or in part to wind power.  We were shocked to find out that only about 50 of the 8000 customers had chosen this option.  It is unfortunate that so few people are really concerned about the environment.  They are simply thinking about the here and now, tomorrow is far off and they would rather invest in something they can enjoy today as opposed to investing in their future and that of their children and grandchildren.  Our business is ranching as any change in climate could drasticly change our ability to continue raising bison.  We have already experienced three years a of drought in 2001 to 2003.  This even nearly cost us our ranch and herd.  I am not sure if we could survive another even like this again.  So I feel that it is our responsibility to reduce our carbon footprint and do what we can to prevent climate change.