After almost two years of community discussion and city committee and council votes, a second BESS project is likely to be coming to Ottawa. City Council voted to support a municipal support resolution for the Trail Road BESS project in late 2023, and for the more controversial South March BESS on on June 11th, 2025. Both projects still need to pass through the numerous requirements of obtaining municipal zoning by-law amendments and site plan approvals.
BESS projects will bolster the grid’s capacity to meet Ontario’s growing electricity consumption, help with peak load (so we don’t need to build more polluting gas peaker plants), help balance the intermittent power generation by wind and solar. BESS can also be developed fairly rapidly.
CAFES delegated to the City’s Agriculture and Rural Affairs Committee (ARAC) in support of the South March BESS project after carefully listening to the community and weighing the concerns and benefits. Unfortunately some of the local discussion was filled with misinformation presenting BESS as highly flammable, toxic, air and ground water polluting system. Based on several months of research, the CAFES climate misinformation team produced a Backgrounder with more balanced information which was communicated to residents, councilors, and interested individuals. It is important to differentiate between valid community concerns and questions, and misleading messaging that seeks to instill fear, uncertainty and delay. CAFES has been consistently advocating for better consultation processes so that concerns can be discussed in a constructive way.
CAFES Past Engagement on BESS Issues
CAFES has been interested in the BESS technology since it was solicited in the Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) procurement tender in 2023. Sensing the need for community engagement and public education about our evolving electricity grid, CAFES co-hosted a learning and community dialogue event in Kinburn, West Carleton with the local councillor Clarke Kelly in March 2024. Striking a working group, members of the CAFES network worked out a set of recommendations for the permitting and zoning of BESS installations and submitted this to the City’s official plan and zoning amendment exercise in October 2024. Seeking to connect community and industry, CAFES then convened a BESS Lunch and Learn Event in January 2025 in Kanata North. CAFES delegated at city committees multiple times, and published an op-ed in the West Carleton Online concerning misinformation and poor consultation around the project. In addition, CAFES helped organize the June 10 2025 Ottawa Energy Symposium as a community partner, and conveyed the CAFES position to council with a letter before the final June 11th vote.
Positive Outcomes and next steps
The June 11th, city council vote to award the municipal support resolution to the large South March BESS project by a 20 to 3 margin, was a win for a preferred, less polluting energy technology. It was important and significant that the CAFES network was able to spread the word, combat misinformation, and encourage council to support the project. However, there is a strong sense in the community that a full-some local consultation has still not taken place. The project proponent Evolugen’s project website and February 23 2025 Open House answered some – but not all questions. CAFES has been encouraging the project proponent, community associations, the local MPP, and the local councillor to convene more information sessions on the project and transparently share the results of the project studies with the community. There are still a lot of questions and concerns by neighbours to this project. The project proponent must answer these, identify where there are risks that can be mitigated, or provide information to assuage concerns.
Another area where community dialogue is hopefully in the making around the two proposed principal grid use BESS projects is regarding the significant economic and community benefit packages that the two BESS projects promise to bring — valued at over $250,000 per year. CAFES, in collaboration with a class of Carleton students released a study on Community Benefits Agreements for renewable energy projects, to shed some perspective on these arrangements.
Thank you to everyone who helped in the working group, emailed your councillors, spoke with your neighbours, helped organize or attend events, delegated at committee, and supported the BESS projects.