Thank you very much for your question.
As you know, the Government of Canada is a strong supporter of renewable energy technologies. We're committed to the objective of having 90% of our electricity needs provided by low-emitting sources by 2020.
The ecoENERGY renewable power program introduced by this government is investing $1.5 billion over 14 years. It has been a great success. The goal was to encourage 4,000 megawatts of renewable power capacity, which is enough power for a million homes. To date we have signed projects for 2,736 megawatts of new renewable power as well. It's a combination of wind and solar and hydro.
The amount of $500 million in contribution funding for new projects is still available under the program. In the department, we are continuously taking a look at the projects to ensure that they are being reviewed and to make awards.
It has been a very successful project. It is anticipated that we will have exhausted the funding about a year and a half earlier than anticipated. That has caused great concern for the wind energy folks. They have been discussing that matter with us. We're ensuring that they understand our commitment to renewable energy going forward, having not anticipated that it would be so successful.
The positive aspect is that, having put the program in place one year ago, in 2008, we're seeing the projects coming online now. It's really gratifying to see the wind projects in Chatham and in other areas. It's very positive to see that we are adding those new megawatts.
To sum up, the program is still there. We still have applications. As I indicated, we've made commitments to 51 projects already, and there are another 22 projects that we're taking a look at, with a further 13 projects after that. It's a remarkable success story. It has added to our overall plan to make sure that in electricity, 90% comes from low-emitting sources by 2020.