Clean Break

The debate, hosted by Toronto Greenhouse and moderated by yours truly, took place this evening. Please come back after noon on Wednesday for access to a transcript of the event and to post any followup questions you may have. Candidates have been invited to visit this site and answer questions. Stay tuned.

UPDATE: After a sincere attempt to transcribe last evening’s Green Government debate, I have decided to not proceed because certain parts of the debate were inaudible on my digital recorder. It would be unfair to post a transcript in which the comments of certain candidates are not accurately recorded. My apologies. I will, however, soon have access to a link where people can watch the full video of the debate.

In the meantime, I will post here the four questions I asked and candidates have the opportunity, if they choose, to respond more clearly and concisely on this blog. Their responses can be sent to tyler@cleanbreak.ca and will be posted soon after they are received. (NOTE: Sarah Thomson has replied. Read below for her comments.)

Question #1: What are the top three environmental issues facing the city today and how do you plan to address them?

Question #2: Building on past efforts, how can a major municipality like Toronto do a better job of reducing its greenhouse-gas emissions?

Question #3: Can the green economy be a future economic engine for Toronto? If so, in which areas should Toronto focus its efforts and how would you, as mayor, support emerging green businesses?

Question #4: Where does each candidate stand on the use of energy-from-waste technologies, both as a way to manage municipal waste and generate electricity for the city?

Here are some links to coverage of last evening’s event — the Toronto Star, the Globe and Mail, and the National Post (and here).

Also, check out Toronto Star columnist Catherine Porter’s account of the evening on Twitter.

If you attended the debate, I welcome your comments. Who won? Which particular responses stood out?

To read candidate answers received so far click for more…

Reply from mayoral candidate Sarah Thomson

Question 1: Top 3 environmental issues are

1. Transit – build an expanded subway system. Surface transit adds to congestion which creates more pollution. Expanding our subway through 4 funding models : Rush hour road tolls on the DVP and Gardiner Expressway; Win back the provincial funding with popularity of subway expansion plan; work with developers to help pay partial cost on subway stations; and create a subway bond to help pay for expansion quickly.

2. Achieving 70% waste diversion – through green bin program in apartments. Greenlane landfill will last for next 100 years if we are able to get Toronto to divert 70% of our waste.

3. Green Economy: Buying green, supporting locally green production, and talent. We must stimulate a green economy in Toronto. Toronto needs to take advantage of the great reputation we have and use the buying power of the city to support local green businesses.

I have 3 initiatives

Time shifting: I will bring large employers together to create options for employees – shifting start times or creating satellite offices. Time shifting processes can include the accelerated development of at-home knowledge workers, time differentials for arriving and departing employees, and the creation of work centres in high-priority neighbourhoods outside the city’s core.

My administration will encourage alternative energy solutions for businesses. My administration will work with Toronto Hydro to create a financing program that will enable businesses and residents to install solar rooftop systems.

Hybrid Taxi’s: We must change the bylaws in Toronto to allow taxi’s to buy smaller hybrid vehicles. Currently taxi’s have a 5 year lifespan. If we extend the lifespan for hybrid taxis to 7 years Cab Companies will buy into the program

Yes, Toronto can use its large buying power to help local green businesses. We have lost a lot of manufacturing from Toronto, and green product manufacturing could be a way to create more jobs and give more stability to our economy.

Toronto can offer tax reductions to local green manufacturers who set up in high priority neighbourhoods in our city. I have called for use of local green building products and local talent in city projects wherever possible.

I have called for the opening up of green options to encourage energy savings through white roofs, solar roofs and green roofs. The current bylaw requires green roof on any new development, it is not bad in concept but does narrow the focus to only one form of green technology. We must open up options for white, solar and other energy saving techniques as this could restrict green production in Toronto.

I believe that we must be open to the use of energy from waste technologies. This does not always include incineration and I do not want to fall into that limited view. There are companies based here in Ontario like EWS with technologies like the reverse polymerization process that uses high-energy microwaves to break down materials to their chemical components. Sault Ste. Marie is installing a tire reclamation plant that will be using this new technology and I believe that Toronto should be open to new technologies like this.

My administration will unlock the doors of our city and invite our innovators, our entrepreneurs, and our creative people back into the role of guiding our city forward. We must be open to new technologies, to innovation and entrepreneurs with proven solutions.

————————–

Still waiting for Ford, Smitherman, Pantalone and Rossi to reply…

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A new report from Friends of Earth is taking aim at several companies — including Canada’s Kimminic Corp. of Mississauga — for buying up land in Africa and clearing it so biofuel crops can be grown. The group claims that Kimminic has purchased 13,000 hectares of land in Ghana that will be used to grow Jatropha, which produces an oil that can be used to make biodiesel. “Non-edible agrofuel crops such as jatropha are competing directly with food crops for fertile land. The result threatens food supplies in poor communities and pushes up the cost of available food. Farmers who switch to agrofuel crops run the risk of being unable to feed their families. While foreign companies pay lip service to the need for ‘sustainable development’, agrofuel production and demand for land is resulting in the loss of pasture and forests, destroying natural habitat and probably causing an increase in greenhouse gas emissions,” according to the report. It also warns that these fuel crops are consumer water in regions that are already struggled with water scarcity.

Biofuels can be a good thing and part of the fight against climate change, but not if produced irresponsibly.

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I meant to review Joe Romm’s most recent book Straight Up a few months ago but didn’t really dig into it until I started research for my own book. Also, I’ve been regularly following his blog, www.climateprogress.org, since it was started and much of the content in the book — a compilation of his best climate-related posts with commentary and updates — isn’t new to me. But if you’re someone looking to expand your knowledge of climate change science, policy, and the technologies needed to address global warming, then I highly recommend Romm’s reliable and passionately written compilation — and his blog for that matter. You may disagree with him occasionally — I do – but he cuts through the crap in a way no mainstream media outlet has or will. In fact, my favourite posts are when he regularly attacks the mainstream media for its pathetic coverage of the climate issue.

Before Romm even got into blogging he authored the book Hell and High Water, which I was first to review. Before that he wrote The Hype About Hydrogen, which effectively let the air out of Jeremy Rifkin’s Hydrogen Economy balloon.

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My Clean Break column for this Monday acknowledges Home Depot for selling the first sub-$20 LED lightbulb for a standard household light socket. It was only months ago — weeks, even — that the $40 pricepoint was being tossed around. These lower prices can’t come any faster. I respect the compact fluorescent bulb, I really do, but it just doesn’t cut it for me. Mercury. Premature blowouts. The light quality has gotten much better, and the price has come a long, long way — $1.50 a bulb in most places compared to $11 or $12 a decade ago. But LEDs are just so much more superior.

As we wait for the perfect and affordable household light bulb, it’s nice to see niche LED markets thriving, such as that for municipal streetlights. Companies such as Halifax-based LED Roadway Lighting are making great headway with products that can lower energy consumption by at least 50 per cent and up to 80 per cent and offer better quality and reduced maintenance.

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Just had my first spin of a Mitsubishi i-MiEV today and quite enjoyed it. I’ve driven the plug-in Prius (retrofitted by Hymotion), the Tesla Roadster and a ways back a $1-million fuel cell Ford Focus, and have to say that being a person who lives in a big city and lives in a two-car household, the i-MiEV so far is the best fit for me. It helps that I’ll soon be able to ditch my kids’ car seats. The car has a 100 km to 120 km range, depending on how many passengers you have and how much you use radio/aircon/heating. I now work from home and maybe twice a week do the 15 to 20 minute drive downtown. With my lifestyle, and keeping in mind this is a second car, a single weekend charge-up of the i-MiEV would cover my entire week most times. I’d love to test drive the car for a month in the dead of winter to get a real feel for it.

The car goes on sale in Canada in the fall of 2011. The price will range from $30,000 to $40,000, and that’s relying only on the standard 120-volt charger. The upper range is too expensive for me, considering what the Nissan Leaf is likely to cost, but if Mitsubishi can come in with a pre-incentive cost of $30,000, and if I could get a $5,000 subsidy from the government, then at $25,000 it looks more doable. Will be interesting to see if Mitsubishi can match the GM and Nissan 10-year warranties, and offer good lease terms. Currently, as somebody who will be in the market for an electric car in 2012, it’s a competition between the i-MiEV and the Leaf.

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The Ontario government directed the province’s power authority today to negotiate an agreement to purchase biomass power from Ontario Power Generation, a move that marks the beginning of a three-year coal-to-biomass conversion project at the Atikokan power station about 200 kilometres northwest of Thunder Bay. “Once converted, the plant is expected to generate 150 million kilowatt-hours of renewable power, enough to power 15,000 homes each year,” according to a government press release. “The annual fuel requirements for the plant, made up of dried wood pellets, are estimated to amount to less than one per cent of the total allowable forest harvest in Ontario each year.”

The Atikokan station was built 25 years ago and has a capacity of 230 megawatts. The plant has produced annually as much as 1.5 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity. If it’s expected to generate 150 million kilowatt-hours when burning biomass — or one-tenth of peak annual output — it means the plant will be used primarily as a peaker and for other backup purposes.

I know there are concerns within the environmental community, also expressed by Ontario’s environmental commissioner, about the wisdom of using biomass for power generation. The fear is that the biomass that makes up the fuel wood pellets won’t be harvested sustainably, and there is also skepticism related to the “carbon neutrality” of biomass when used as a fuel. Also, particulate emissions are still a concern with burning biomass, so while it may serve a climate change strategy it won’t necessarily address local pollution problems. Obviously, these concerns need to be addressed so that all stakeholders are satisfied, but given the choice, I still believe that biomass is a better option than coal, particularly when it’s only used sparingly and for backup.

What do you think?

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Ontario’s solar market is boomin’ baby.

California-based market research firm iSuppli came out with a report today that forecasts rapid growth of solar PV installations in Ontario, though warns of a bottleneck in production during the first half of 2011 as developers struggle to meet stricter local content requirements. In 2009 Ontari0 had 69 MW of installed PV, but iSuppli said that will grow by 272.5 per cent to 257 MW in 2010. Stricter rules requiring 60 per cent local content will kick in next year, however, and that will create a supply crunch that slows down growth until the last quarter of 2011 when local manufacturing catches up with demand. As a result, we’ll see growth of 75.5 per cent in 2011 as installations climb to 451 MW. In 2012 we’ll see that number climb past 600 MW.

Mike Sheppard, a PV analyst with iSuppli and author of the report, says companies that have set up local manufacturing in Ontario will benefit the most during the 2011 crunch. According to an iSuppli press brief, “Firms like Canadian Solar, SMA, Fronius and Silfab are stepping in to meet the demand for local solar components, building module and inverter manufacturing facilities in Ontario.”

Sheppard acknowledged that Ontario’s decision to shut down all coal plants by 2014 and its introduction of a Green Energy Act and feed-in-tariff program are driving the explosive growth in PV. He called Ontario’s FIT program “North America’s first comprehensive guaranteed pricing structure for electricity production from renewable fuels sources including solar PV, bio-energy waterpower and wind.” The program, according to iSuppli, “could have a major influence throughout North America.”

This is a positive evaluation, but I don’t think it’s as positive as it could be. As I outlined earlier, module manufacturers alone are setting up local production facilities with a combined annual capacity of more than 1,000 MW. Not all will be built, but iSuppli seems to think that actual installations will be limited to between 150 and 200 MW a year. If that ends up the case, we could end up having some major oversupply issues in Ontario by the end of 2011. But given the huge volume of FIT applications being received by the Ontario Power Authority and amounting to potentially several thousand megawatts, I’m wondering if iSuppli is low-balling its forecast.

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ZENN’s third-quarter earnings aren’t looking good, and neither it seems is its relationship with EEStor. I can only speculate, of course, because the company is saying squat, but the language of the press release gives us a few hints:

The company is “developing high-voltage drivetrain solutions that can best take advantage of the unique capabilities represented by anticipated high-voltage energy sources such as EEStor Inc.’s technolog.” In the past, it was all EEStor and nothing but the EEStor. Something has changed, or ZENN is merely trying to prepare itself for possible failure in Cedar Park. It is also pursuing patents for complementary technologies “applicable to both EEStor and non-EEStor energy storage systems.” Here the company is emphasizing alternatives, as well as other technologies beyond storage that it may be able to transition its business around. Personally, it sounds a stretch.

Other comments: “The Company is also actively engaged in opportunities to establish relationships with, or invest in, third-party companies that can provide complementary technologies that will enhance the Company’s overall solutions offering.” If EEStor is for real and does deliver, it won’t need complementary technologies, right?

Final comments from CEO Ian Clifford are also a bit wishy-washy.

“We continue to move forward with investments in engineering and business development initiatives that we believe will deliver the greatest long-term shareholder value,” stated Clifford, who is basically saying Don’t worry, if EEStor falls through we’ll have other pokers in the fire.

What he doesn’t say is where EEStor is at, and what shareholders can expect from that relationship. Given that the investment in EEStor is all there is to ZENN, you’d think it would be incumbent upon Clifford to say much more.

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Last week I spent a few days in Halifax, Nova Scotia as a guest of Nova Scotia Power, which covered the cost of my trip. There I spoke with several N.S. Power executives, N.S. Premier Darrell Dexter, and toured a number of electricity generation sites — gas, tidal, wind. I had heard the province was getting serious about renewables and energy conservation, but I was pleasantly surprised at how serious. My Clean Break column today is about the transition Nova Scotia is making to renewable energy. It’s only the jurisdiction in North America with a hard cap on carbon emissions and by law it has to have 25 per cent of its electricity system supplied by renewables. By 2020, its goal is to up that to 40 per cent through aggressive conservation efforts, development of at least one import-export transmission link (to New Brunswick or Labrador) and an embrace of tidal power. Considering this is a province that gets more than three-quarters of its electricity from fossil fuels — mostly coal — this is a big leap.

Nova Scotia is out to prove that tidal power can be competitive with other sources. It has the only tidal power facility in North America and one of just three in the world — the Annapolis Tidal Power Plant, which I visited and found fascinating. It’s an old barrage-style facility constructed in the early 1980 and only capable of generating about 20 megawatts. Newer technologies planned for the Bay of Fundy, however, include turbines developed by Ireland-based OpenHydro, which is testing one of its machines near the Annapolis site. N.S. Power sees it quite realist to develop about 300 MW of tidal power in Nova Scotia between now and 2020, or roughly 10 per cent of the province’s capacity. Not bad. Some studies suggest there’s as much as 2,000 MW of development potential there.

In a country where the federal government considers green energy policy and investment a nuisance, it’s refreshing to see yet another province kick its green plans into high gear.

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Where do Toronto’s mayoral candidates stand on green government, green energy, green jobs, climate change and the role of municipalities? We’re about to find out on Aug. 31. I’ll be moderating a debate between the candidates at the National Club on 303 Bay St. between 6:30 and 10:00 p.m., an event put together by Toronto Greenhouse.

Rob Ford, Joe Pantalone, Rocco Rossi, George Smitherman, and Sarah Thomson have all agreed to participate. Ontario Environmental Commissioner Gord Miller will be giving a keynote talk before the debate. The event is open to the public, but tickets are $30 and can be bought online. It should be an insightful evening.

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My Clean Break column today takes a look at some recent comments made by Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates, who has become quite fascinated in the energy scene these past few years. Gates makes the point that those investing in clean energy must be patient, because it takes many years — usually several decades — for a new technology to take hold when it’s up against an existing energy infrastructure and technologies that are slow to change or make room for alternatives. He said investors who made it big during the IT boom were spoiled and are now learning that energy investments are an entirely different beast and don’t obey Moore’s law. I agree, with the caveat that we don’t need to wait for energy miracles to have a dramatic impact. There are many technologies and policy options today that can get us on our way, and while I think we’d all love to see a silver bullet solution emerge, it’s foolish to expect it — and just as foolish to believe it will be a single bullet. We’ve got technologies today that work, and we have to realize that it will take the embrace of all of them to make the impacts we desire.

I’ve heard Gates discuss this issue several times, but there seems to be an inconsistency in his reasoning and messaging. On the one hand, he urges government to dramatically increase its R&D funding for clean energy. On the other hand, he laments the slow uptake of clean energy technologies because of the slowness of existing infrastructure to change and the perceived risks of changing. If that’s the case, wouldn’t it be better to focus on government support for deployment of the technologies we have today, rather than increased R&D funding for new breakthroughs that would still face the same implementation barriers?

Anyway — food for thought. I’m off to Halifax now to visit a wind farm, a tidal facility and a coal plant.

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The Ontario government and its energy planner, the Ontario Power Authority, sparked a big firestorm after announcing last month that they wanted to reduce the feed-in-tariff rate for small ground-mount solar PV projects to 58.8 cents per kilowatt-hour from a very rich 80.2 cents. The move caught many off-guard, and while there was a lot of grunting about the reduced rate, most were unhappy with the sudden and arbitrary nature of the announcement, which undermined the business plans of many companies that were participating in the program in good faith. Bottom line: it undermined confidence in the entire program, even though from a megawatts perspective it only dealt with a tiny portion of green power.

After a brief consultation period it seems the government and Ontario Power Authority took the industry’s complaints to heart, even though my own sources told me just recently that the government was being pig-headed and planned to stick with its proposal. In the end, they caved in to pressure — a very smart face-saving move, I might add. The price reduction will still take place, but it will be reduced to 64.2 cents, not 58.8 cents, and it won’t apply to anyone who applied to the program before July 2, 2010, meaning the OPA plans to honour the original 80.2 cents for those who meet that cutoff. This decision is a big gesture, because the plan under the original proposal was to only honour the 80.2 cents for those minority of projects that had already received a contract or conditional offer. That means the more than 10,000 applications that were going to be tossed out (with project proponents forced to reapply under the new rate) will now be honoured at the 80.2 cent rate so long as they applied before July 2.

There’s a small catch, however. Commercial aggregators will no longer be allowed to participate in the microFIT program, but will still be able to participate in the larger FIT (10 kilowatts and up) program. The government didn’t like the idea of aggregators merely leasing rooftops and then building and owning the systems, saying it defied the spirit of the program, which was to get households, farmers, communities, First Nations, etc… to participate directly on their own. I have to say, I *completely* agree with them there.

The OPA also announced it will be establishing a new advisory panel that will provide advice on program evolution, including the two-year FIT review process. The advisory panel will be made up of industry, academic and other stakeholders. I should point out that an attempt will be made to accommodate commercial aggregators of smaller projects, but it will be done outside of the microFIT program using a different set of rules to be established partly by the new advisory panel.

“The OPA has received almost 19,000 microFIT applications since the program was launched less than a year ago. More than 6,100 conditional offers have been sent to applicants and almost 800 microFIT projects are now feeding clean energy into Ontario’s grid,” according to the agency’s release today. “The OPA is working to respond quickly to microFIT applicants. Most ground-mounted applications that have been submitted will be processed by the end of September.”

Kudos to the government and OPA for putting meaning back into the word “consultation.” Showing a willingness to listen and change direction restores confidence in the process and the program, and the fact an advisory body has been set up to avoid future surprises can only help.

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Belatedly, the U.S. Department of Energy recognized a news release put out on July 20 by the International Energy Agency that talks about China’s new rank as the world’s top energy consumer. It’s worth repeating: “China’s rise to the top ranking was faster than expected as it was much less affected by the global financial crisis than the United States,” according to the agency, which points out that China has much more room for growth. “Since 2000, China’s energy demand has doubled, yet on a per capita basis it is still only around one-third of the OECD average.” Scary, particularly when the country relies on coal for about 70 per cent of its energy.

The U.S. today consumes about a quarter of the energy produced in the world. If China’s per-capita use was as high as that in the United States (or Canada for that matter), it would consume a majority of global energy. China’s own national energy administration, however, put out a statement today insisting that it’s still No. 2 behind the United States. “IEA’s data on China’s energy use is unreliable,” a Chinese official said.

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Following the manufacturing announcements from Siemens and Canadian Solar, I figured I would investigate who else plans to build (or has built) manufacturing facilities in Ontario to take advantage of the feed-in-tariff program and to comply with associated local content rules. In the previous post I mentioned module maker Solar Semiconductor, inverter makers Fronius and Enphase, and an alliance between Bosch Solar and Sustainable Energy Technologies. Here is a partial list of other plans that are in the works, some more advanced than others, and surprisingly they total more than 1,000 megawatts of annual capacity that, you can bet, will never fully materialize:

1. ATS Automation did say it would bring some of its Photowatt module making capacity to Ontario, and it has delivered. It started making product in May and has built a 100 megawatt line that will be officially announced in a few weeks.
2. A company called Heliene Canada, operating out of Sault St. Marie, is making solar modules as part of a partnership with Helios Energy of Spain. Capacity is reportedly 30 megawatts with possibility of expansion to 80 megawatts. I’m awaiting to hear from the company to see whether they’re actually producing modules yet. UPDATE: Heliene CEO Martin Pochtaruk just informed me that manufacturing starts next month on a 50-MW capacity line “probably increasing during 2011.” He said 45 jobs have been created.
3.  Solar Source Corp. plans a module making plant that will start with 30 megawatts of annual capacity and grow to 120 megawatts. and initially create 150 direct local jobs. It is part of a partnership with HHV of India.
4. Spanish module maker Siliken Group has said it will build a 50-megawatt a year capacity module line that will create 150 jobs. It expects it to be operational before end of 2010.
5. Woodbridge, Ontario-based SolGate, the only maker of solar panels in Ontario that pre-existed the Green Energy Act, has expanded its production line from 6 megawatts to 25 megawatts a year.
6. OpSun Panels Inc. has said it will build a 50 megawatt PV panel production line in Ontario. It already makes mounting systems, but says it plans to begin panel manufacturing by spring 2011.
7. There’s also Everbrite Solar, which wants to make thin-film panels somewhere in Kingston, Ontario. These guys have kept a low profile since announcing plans back in March 2009 to invest $500 million in a 150-MW capacity plant that would create 1,200 direct and indirect green collar jobs. I’m told they’re still targeting a 2012 factory opening, but I’m unclear whether the size of the plant or number of projected jobs have changed. An announcement of some sort is expected “within a few weeks,” I’m told by a source close to the project. UPDATE: Everbrite is aiming for 120 MW capacity in 2013 that will ramp up to 150 MW a year later.
8. Also, a company called Canasia Power Corp. announced just last month it plans to build a 50 MW capacity solar module plant in London, Ontario, that will employ 100 people, with an expectation to expand the plant to 200 MW and eventually employ 500 workers. It hasn’t announced a schedule for the build, but interestingly, plans to export most of its output to Asian markets, though I assume some will be made available for Ontario.
9. Also announced last month, Quantum Technologies (parent of Asola) and Evergreen Power Ltd. have formed a manufacturing joint venture that will see 30 MW of solar modules made in Ontario each year.
10. UPDATE: I was contacted today by another company that has announced plans to build PV module manufacturing capacity in Ontario. The company is Silfab SpA, based out of Italy and supported by strategic partners SAS and PanAsia (Sunrise). The company announced in June that it would build 120 MW of annual capacity in two stages — the first 60 MW completed by the second quarter of 2011 and the second 60 MW finalized by the end of next year. The output wouldn’t just be for Ontario, as distribution is planned for all of North America. “Our facility will employ 70 people initially, with an additional 40 workers at full capacity,” according to an e-mail from Silfab CEO Franco Traverso.

The above are just related to solar module manufacturing (assembly), and together they total about 715 835 megawatts of annual manufacturing capacity, including plans for future expansion, but this assumes they all pan out. Add 200 megawatts announced by Canadian Solar and 150 megawatts envisioned by Solar Semiconductor and we’ve surpassed well over 1,000 megawatts a year of capacity, just in Ontario. “We’re still waiting to see shovels in the ground,” said one Ontario official who is monitoring the market. “The question is whether these things break ground. If they’re going to supply product by spring 2011, they will have to make that decision soon.” My own view is that 1,000 megawatts is overkill and that many of these factories will never be build. We’ll be lucky if we can get a few hundred megawatts built. Still, it’s encouraging to see such a healthy pipeline so far.

On the inverter side we’ve also had announcements from Magnetek (production by fall 2010), SMA Solar (promising 100 to 200 jobs), and Schneider Electric (which bought Xantrex some years ago). Mounting-system company Schletter has announced plans to manufacture in Windsor as well. I’m sure there are more, but that’s the list I’ve compiled so far.

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Canadian Solar announced today that it plans to establish the country’s first solar module manufacturing facility in Guelph, Ontario, just an hour or so northwest of Toronto. The new facility will be capable of making 200 megawatts of solar modules a year and will create 500 new jobs for the region. The announcement wasn’t a surprise. Canadian Solar told me shortly after Ontario’s feed-in-tariff program was launched that it planned to establish manufacturing here to comply with the province’s local content rules. But the commitment, now official, brings good news to a government trying to justify the high prices ratepayers will end up paying for solar, wind and other clean energy sources under the feed-in-tariff program.

There was more positive job news the day before, when Germany’s Siemens AG announced plans to build a wind-turbine blade factory in southern Ontario — the first in the province — as part of a deal to supply 600 megawatts worth of wind turbines to Samsung C&T, which under a deal with the province of Ontario has agreed to develop 2,500 megawatts of wind and solar projects (2,000 MW of it wind) by 2016. “The implementation of this agreement will create up to 300 ‘green collar’ jobs and up to an additional 600 construction and indirect service jobs over its term,” according to a press release announcing the deal. Like the Canadian Solar announcement, we knew it was coming (even though we didn’t know Siemens would be involved) but it’s nice to finally see some specifics related to job numbers and the kind of manufacturing that will take place.

Here’s the government’s press release, which — no surprise — touts both the Canadian Solar and Siemens announcements and claims that FIT contracts issued to date mean thousands of new jobs. “The 694 clean energy contracts already announced are expected to create approximately 20,000 direct and indirect green economy jobs over five years and about $9 billion in private sector investment,” it reads. Of course, once your start throwing in “indirect” jobs you can pretty much make up whatever numbers you want. Still, there’s a buzz in Ontario and despite some fumbles — such as the lowering of the price for small ground-mount solar systems, which has created a political shitstorm — we are seeing substantial investments (or commitments to invest) in the province. We’ll have a better sense of the true numbers after the first quarter of 2011, when many of these new facilities are expected to be operational and when stricter local content rules for solar go into effect — that is, when local content requirements for solar projects less than 10 kilowatts in size jumps from 40 to 60 per cent, and for larger solar projects from 50 to 60 per cent.

Last week, Austrian electronics company Fronius International announced it was establishing a solar inverter manufacturing site in Mississauga (just west of Toronto) that would produce 50 megawatts of inverters annually and, once operational by the end of the first quarter 2011, will employ about 100 people. “Ontario is one of the most important markets of the future for Fronius,” said Romuald Goure, managing director of Fronius Canada.

Earlier in the year — in March – microinverter maker Enphase announced that contract manufacturer Flextronics would establish a production line in Ontario that would have a capacity of 100 megawatts a year, with a plan to double that by the end of 2011. India’s Solar Semiconductor is setting up a module manufacturing facility in Oakville, Ontario, with plans over the next two years to create more than 200 full- and part-time jobs. Others that have announced plans to come include Sunlink, a maker of solar roof-mount systems, and Grape Solar, which is trying to set up a local manufacturing consortium composed of U.S. and Chinese suppliers.

Meanwhile, Bosch Solar Energy and Sustainable Energy have committed to developing a roadmap to build modules and inverters in Ontario that would meet 2010 and 2011 domestic content thresholds. They were targeting installations of between 10 and 15 MW for 2010 and between 50 and 75 MW for 2011, though I’m not sure how this “roadmap” has materialized. Of course, we’re still waiting to hear if Vestas will make a move in Ontario by setting up offshore wind turbine manufacturing.

If anyone in the industry knows of other manufacturing plans that I haven’t mentioned here, please let me know.

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My Clean Break column today draws attention to the record heat wave in Russia, as well as flooding in Pakistan and other extreme events in other parts of the world. It may seem like a world away, but we have to keep in mind: it could just as easily be happening here, whether it be cottage country in Ontario or in West Vancouver or Halifax, or wherever. I think the media in North America are doing a terrible job of making the connection with climate change, and that’s partly because they don’t want to be knee-jerk and partly because they don’t understand that climate change is about extremes, not just gradually higher temperatures over time. They don’t want to make the connection between high wheat prices and climate change, and how this is a perfect example of the economic costs that will increase over time.

Shortly after my column appeared online this morning, I got an e-mail from a scientist at Environment Canada who wanted to point me to some information on the government’s Web site that, while not easily accessible or promoted as being available, is there nonetheless. “We may be muzzled,” wrote this scientist, “but there is still a lot of climate science material available on Environment Canada Web pages.”

He said “government scientists were very unhappy” that this science, funded by Canadian taxpayers, was not being made known and easily accessible to the general public.”And yes, I fear reprisals if my name is attached to anything,” he wrote.

Here are two links he provided. The first shows graphically how temperatures are expected to rise between now and 2100 in Canada and throughout the rest of North America. The graphic simulation is based on the Canadian Global Climate Model, and it’s shocking to watch as mean temperature climbs by 4.5 degrees C across much of Canada. The second shows that the national average temperature in Canada this spring was 4.1 degrees C above normal, “which makes this the warmest spring on record since nationwide records began in 1948.” The previous record was in 1998, which was 3.2 degrees C above normal. “This is the second season in a row to set a record for above normal temperatures.”

This data, against the backdrop of the Russia heat wave and Pakistan flooding, should be front-page news.

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One of my recent Clean Break columns looks at attempts to lower the cost of hydrogen production, with specific reference to a project at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology. UOIT professors Greg Naterer and Ibrahim Dincer are attempting to building a machine that can create hydrogen from sunlight and water by simulating photosynthesis, an approach based on research conducted at Virginia Tech. Researchers there, led by Professor Karen Brewer, have developed a super molecule that acts as a photocatalyst. When sunlight is shined on water containing this catalyst, it breaks the hydrogen-oxygen bond and releases the hydrogen for collection. Photocatalysts offer a low-energy approach to breaking this H20 bond, compared to steam-methane reforming or electrolysis, but the problem with past efforts is that the catalysts were consumed in the process. This creates the need for a constant supply of catalyst, which can become costly. The photocatalyst developed by Brewer’s team is not consumed — it can be recycled over and over again, which is why the approach shows so much promise. It has been demonstrated to work in the lab, now UOIT has been charged with building a prototype machine that can demonstrate the technology at scale. It has received $900,000 in funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) and Toronto-based Phoenix Canada Oil Co., which owns the rights to Virginia Tech’s technology. For more detail check out the article.

There are many efforts to turn the sun’s energy into fuel — such as hydrogen, syngas, etc. – and the U.S. Department of Energy recently committed $122 million toward such research. Indeed, Professor Daniel Nocera at MIT has been leading the charge, and is now involved with a company called Sun Catalytix which is aiming to commercialize a process invented by Nocera. If we can figure out how to produce large amounts of hydrogen in a clean and low-cost way it can lead to affordable energy storage and, some day, even fuel for transportation.

I got into a little exchange with Prof. Naterer about the potential for hydrogen-powered transportation. In my column I wrote that “Hydrogen-powered cars might not be in the cards for the next two or three decades.” This may be a bit of an exaggeration, but maybe not. Figuring out how to produce hydrogen in a clean and low-cost way is only one of several challenges. There are still massive infrastructure challenges associated with hydrogen-powered transportation, and given that we’re moving rapidly toward battery-powered vehicles I don’t see hydrogen cars coming in the foreseeable future. Naterer took issue with this comment. “Unfortunately this misinformation sets back efforts of many institutions, companies and organizations that are trying to facilitate the promising clean energy carrier of the future for the benefit of future generations and our planet,” he wrote me in an e-mail. He cited Honda and others promising much larger mass production of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles by 2015 “at ranges much longer and prices much lower than most anticipate.” The problem is, we’ve heard that promise before — several times in fact. The date keeps getting pushed ahead by five years. Didn’t we hear this in the late 1990s from Ballard Power? I explained my skepticism to Naterer, who replied: “Once a clean, cheap supply of hydrogen becomes available, the whole situation with hydrogen changes. When the cost of a kilogram of hydrogen becomes lower than a gallon of gasoline, the paradigm shift will occur.”

Certainly, that turning point will happen, but I don’t think the transition will be so quick. In the words of Vaclav Smil, the University of Manitoba professor who has become one of Bill Gates’ favourite authors on energy issues, “Wishful thinking, pioneering enthusiasm, and belief in the efficacy of seemingly superior solutions are not enough to change the fundamental nature of gradually unfolding energy transitions, be they shifts to new fuels, to new modes of electricity generation, or to new prime movers.”

I see low-cost, clean hydrogen production first having an impact on industry and power generation (storage) before having a measurable impact on transportation.

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Back from vacation…

I saw a couple of announcements recently showing that attempts to capture the energy in river flow are alive and well, though I still have doubts about the overall contribution such technologies can make to the clean energy space. Sustainable Development Technology Canada recently awarded a $2.8 million grant to Renewable Energy Research, a subsidiary of Quebec-based RSW that is leading a project to demonstrate modular river turbines in the St. Lawrence River. The Quebec government has also awarded $2.7 million, bringing the total funding to $5.5 million.

There isn’t much information out there about RSW’s TREK river turbine technology. I’ve attempted to get more information from the company but they haven’t been responsive. RSW is an engineering company and, from what I understand, this technology and project are a side venture for them. According to SDTC, “RER and its partners will demonstrate the TREK technology, a modular, covered, self-anchoring and highly robust river turbine. This technology can be used to provide baseload, dispatchable or remote electricity. The project will see the installation of two 250 kilowatt-rated TREK turbines in the St. Lawrence River, near the Old Port of Montreal, by the end of 2010.”

Meanwhile, a spinoff from the University of Michigan is beginning tests on a new river power technology called VIVACE. The company is called Vortex Hydro Energy, and it hopes to start capturing energy from the St. Clair River as part of a three-month trial that begins in spring 2011. VIVACE doesn’t rely on underwater turbines like the TREK technology. Instead, it captures energy through vibrations that are caused by vortices as water rushes past an array of cyclinders installed on the river bed. It’s the same way salmon and other fish harness energy from the water to help them swim upstream, which is why you could categorize this technology as biomimicry. I wrote about the technology in detail in December 2008 in this MIT Technology Review article.

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Earth2Tech has an interesting post here (hat tip to Katie) about a company called Evatran that has developed a system for charging electric vehicles that doesn’t require a plug or a charging cord. The idea is that you would drive onto a parking block, which would sit permanently in your driveway or a parking spot. Once the front wheels are on the block it will establish a wireless proximity link with the vehicle and begin some form of magnetic induction charging. Now that’s convenient, and it would make it far easy for folks to dump their internal combustion engine vehicle and go electric. The only problem is that this form of charging is inefficient, and the idea of one day having millions of cars charging through this method but throwing away 10, 20 or 30 per cent of the energy for the sake of convenience is a non-starter (unless of course we’ve developed too-cheap-to-meter nuclear fusion and have more emission-free electricity than we need — i.e. a non-starter). Still, if we can get 95-plus per cent efficiencies some day it will be a welcome addition to electric-vehicle infrastructure.

BTW: For anyone looking for the latest assessment of wireless power transfer technology, check out this fairly recent and comprehensive study by the Electric Power Research Institute.

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The Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO) has proposed changes to federal patent law that would help speed up the patenting process for “green” technologies. “No additional fee would be required to take advantage of the accelerated examination process,” according to law firm Ogilvy Renault in a blog post. “Applicants would only be required to declare that their application relates to technology that, if commercialized, could help resolve or mitigate environmental impacts or conserve the natural environment and resources.” If approved Canada would join the U.S., which last December began a pilot program for such accelerated examinations. “This accelerated examination mechanism will lead to earlier patenting, thereby crystallizing intrinsic value earlier,” wrote the firm. ”This means financing may be easier to obtain at an earlier stage. As well, patent enforcement steps can be taken sooner to stop competitors who exploit the research and development efforts of others from enjoying first-mover advantages.”

A good idea.

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