SDTC unveils latest round of cleantech projects
Sustainable Development Technology Canada has announced its 7th round of funding for cleantech initiatives. This time 15 projects will share a total of $42.5 million in funding, with another $91 million being committed by public and private sector participants.
SDTC has committed a total of $169 million to 75 cleantech projects since spring 2002. It hopes to allocate its entire fund of $550 million by 2010. Standouts among the most recent 15 include a project to extract hydrogen from landfill biogas and, as mentioned earlier this month in this blog, a plan by the City of Ottawa and Plasco Energy Group to build a demonstration facility that converts muncipal solid waste into electricity.
One other that caught my eye is a project to commercialize low-cost vehicle monitoring and information systems, presumably with an initial focus on service fleets. The project is being led by an Ottawa-area company called Netistix Technologies.
According to SDTC, the project “targets consumers who wish to reduce emissions, fuel, and lifecycle costs, while improving vehicle reliability and safety. The system will indicate real situations when driving behaviours are inefficient, resulting in more fuel use, or when maintenance is required. The system analyzes both vehicle and driver behaviour data and provides reporting mechanisms to consumers on their driving history.”
I hinted at the benefit of this kind of system in my previous post regarding Blue Line Innovation’s PowerCost monitor. Whether in the home or on the road, having this kind of data at your fingertips can go a long way towards energy conservation.
Over the following weeks and months I’ll hopefully take a more detailed look at some of these latest SDTC-funded projects.
Tyler Hamilton is editor-in-chief of Corporate Knights magazine and a business columnist for the Toronto Star, Canada's largest daily newspaper. In addition to this Clean Break blog, Tyler writes a weekly column of the same name that discusses trends, happenings and innovators in the clean technology and green energy market. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005. It is not an official blog of the newspaper.
