User talk:Mmacmillan1

Welcome!
Hello, Mmacmillan1, and welcome to Wikipedia! My name is Elysia and I work with the Wiki Education Foundation; I help support students who are editing as part of a class assignment.

I hope you enjoy editing here. If you haven't already done so, please check out the student training library, which introduces you to editing and Wikipedia's core principles. You may also want to check out the Teahouse, a community of Wikipedia editors dedicated to helping new users. Below are some resources to help you get started editing. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me on my talk page. Elysia (Wiki Ed) (talk) 22:25, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

Zaigham's peer review for Biofuel in Canada
To my knowledge I think you are just working on the Bio-Fuel section of this article. Given that, I will look over this section only and review it.

The lead is very well done and easy to follow with well informed information about what bio-energy and biomass is. The structure of this section is great however I feel that maybe adding some sub-headings would improve the quality of the article even more. The sub-headings would allow for the reader to be directed more easily to sections that are relevant to what they are looking for. The balance of this section is good but I would personally add some more information on the different products that were mentioned such as wood, solid wastes, agricultural substances etc. This would add more clarity and more information to the section. The content in my opinion is very neutral so that is a positive. The sources provided are from reliable sources like Statistics Canada which is good. However one thing I will say is that there are only 3 sources used for this section. More sources could help improve the quality of the article as well as provide more neutral information.

Overall, this section is fairly well done with only minor tweaks needed as explained above.

Zaighamalavi (talk) 19:05, 18 February 2019 (UTC)Zaigham Alavi

Reply to Zaigham Alavi's Review

Thank you for your feedback. As I continue to develop the content of the article, I will be adding further sections on the different products in which biofuel can be made (i.e. solid waste, agricultural waste, and wood as you mentioned). I will continue to keep the content of the article neutral and include more sources to give a an better overview of biofuel.

Again, thank you for feedback and I will definitely have your suggestions in mind as I continue to develop the article.

Mmacmillan1 (talk) 02:54, 8 March 2019 (UTC)

Vince's Peer Review
Hi, this is my peer review on Biofuel in Canada. I would just like to first mention that I understand that the article was in existence before Matt began his edits, so some of my comments may be relating to other people's work, but I felt it may be helpful anyway to include these comments. I will focus on the section about biofuel, as Matt has mentioned that this is the section he is working on, however I will still mention a few other parts of the article that I feel may need some help.

Lead section The lead section of the page mentions a handful of informative stats regarding Canada's renewable energy status. It indicates that some quantites are lacking in the lead section, so perhaps finding a resource for how many photovoltaic power stations would be informative and useful. The page mentions how much renewable energy was part of canada's GDP in 2016. Maybe if there is information on how that has changed in 2018 or 2019 could be useful, as it is a very fast moving industry.

Structure Good background of each of the 4 types of renewable energys. The Bio-energy section has a sentence saying that Canada "has an abundant amount of biomass products available". I'm not sure exactly what is means by biomass products, or how many, so maybe re-wording or quantification would be helpful here. Also it would be interesting to compare Canada to the USA in this section, simply for seeing how Canada's bioenergy compares relative to that of the USA. That is, I find it hard to conceptualize how much 2,043 MW of bio-energy actually can power.

The language used in the article is good, it uses terms that could be understood by those of many backgrounds. However it discusses direct-photosynthesis and indirect-photosynthesis. Either elaborating on these two types of photosynthesis would be informative, or just saying "a product of photosynthesis," for the sake of clarity and not to confuse a reader that isn't familiar with different types of photosynthesis.

There is a good mix of peer-reviewed references as well as news sources. "Canada's current installed capacity" is a great resource, and maybe it could be implemented in the article as an image, as it is a useful infographic. Using Statistics Canada and other governmental websites is good for the credibility of the article, as government websites require strict fact checking.

The ethanol section that you intend to add is very well researched. You explain policies that exist and what that requires for Canada to do to achieve these policies. You mention subsidies for reducing GHG emissions, maybe you could elaborate on what the subsidies are and what measures are being taken to reduce GHG emissions. Maybe consider changing "Canada is considered to be a major biofuel producer in the world. [4] Canada produces over 250 million L per year." to just "Canada is considered to be a major biofuel producer in the world, producing over 250 million L per year." and give a context as to how much this actually is. I.e what can we do with 10L of biofuel, and what is the cost of that? You mention the contribution to today's economy from biofuel (2 billion). What was this number 5 years ago? Ten years ago? It would help drive the context of the growing sector of biofuels.

In the next section you indicate a few environmental concerns. It would be worth expanding on it, i.e how much land usage and habitat loss has been at the cost of devloping the biofuel sector? For example "x-million acres of land has been redeveloped into biofuel producing plants." (That's a hypothetical figure but it would be interesting to research that and find out the actual number). You mention that you intend on developing the policy section, so as I mentioned above it might be helpful to you to divide the existing part into a few smaller parts, focusing on biofuels at each level of government.

The portion on biofuels is well written and leaves me with a good understanding on Canada's contribution to Bio-energy. It was good to see a section on indigenous efforts. It was interesting to see how the indigenous folk have high ownership in some energy companies. Maybe it would be good to put this part at the top of the indigenous efforts section. The policy section is interesting however quite long, maybe it could be broken into sections. The title of the section is "Local policies" however it goes into talking about provincial and federal policies, so maybe having separate sections for local, provincial, and federal would make it easier to read.

Well done and a great start to the article!

Elasticat (talk) 02:09, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

Reply to Elasticat's Review

Thank you for your very detailed review. I will be attempting to add the most recent information to demonstrate the latest trends of the biofuel industry in Canada. I intend to add further sections on other products that can be used to produce biofuel such as wood, and solid waste. I will continue to keep the content of the article neutral and include more sources to give a better overview of biofuel. I plan to further elaborate on the topic of the indigenous in relation to biofuel production. Furthermore, I will also expand and separate the content in the policy section into local, provincial and federal to give a better idea as to what is going on at these different levels of government.

Again, thank you for feedback and I will definitely have your suggestions in mind as I continue to develop the article.

Mmacmillan1 (talk) 02:54, 8 March 2019 (UTC)