According to a report from Wired.com, engineers from Atomic Energy of Canada are pitching the idea of producing affordable hydrogen by combining the intermittent power provided by wind with the baseline power that would come from a nuclear plant.

“Using time-varying electricity price data from Ontario and Alberta,” the article states that the engineers ”calculate that their system can produce hydrogen at $2 per kilogram, easily meeting the U.S. Department of Energy’s goal of $2 to $3 per kilogram by 2015. One kilogram of hydrogen is considered equivalent to one gallon of gasoline.”

The article doesn’t explain this process well enough to pass judgement in my view. I think I’m going to e-mail one of these engineers and get a better explanation of their plan… I’ll keep you posted.

I read a few months ago that New York City and San Francisco have both loosened municipal licensing rules with respect to taxicab fleets and new hybrid-electric cars on the market. Public demand is there, but the biggest problem was that most hybrids on the market didn’t meet passenger space — i.e. legroom — requirements. Each city’s council made exceptions for some hybrid models. I’ve even heard there are hybrid taxis running about in Vancouver (click here for testimonial).

A Reuters story today said the first six Ford Escape hybrids have entered the NYC cab fleet. City officials there are apparently saying that the city’s entire fleet of 13,000 taxis could be coverted to hybrids within five years. The Escape hybrid apparently gets double the mileage of the Ford Crown Victoria model predominately used in cab fleets.

Where’s my hometown of Toronto in all of this? Well, I’m disappointed to say that most taxicab companies in T.O. either haven’t given it much thought or are fixated on natural gas (not that there’s anything wrong with that…). About 10 per cent of Toronto’s cabs apparently already run on natural gas.

I’ve made a point of asking the driver of any cab I ride in about hybrids, and few of them have expressed any burning desire to go in that direction. I’ve also spoken with the city’s licensing bureau, and they’re not opposed to hybrids or the idea of changing legroom requirements, which as more hybrid models come out will be less of an issue anyway. But Bruce Robertson, director of licensing, says his department has never really been approached before about changing rules to accommodate hybrids.

Funny, I thought my city was capable of being proactive to encourage change. Am I missing something here?

I’ve spoken with Jim Harris, leader of the federal Green Party about this. His view on the issue is pretty clear cut: “If the Green party was in power, we’d say not one penny of (federal) gas tax is going to any city unless 30 per cent of their fleet are hybrids this year. We’d give double the gas tax to those that achieve 30 per cent.”

There are environmental and economic considerations here. Harris said that kind of decree would create enough demand to maybe convince Toyota or some other hybrid maker (Honda, Ford, etc.) to build a hybrid vehicle manufacturing plant in Canada.

Using a hybrid-electric car, such as a Toyota Prius, in a taxi fleet makes oodles of sense:

* Taxis are often idling as they wait for passenger pickups, even though city bylaws say they shouldn’t be. The Prius shuts down when in a stopped position, meaning no idling. Natural gas taxis don’t do this.

* Taxis spend a lot of their time driving in city streets, or rush hour highway scenarios where they’re always starting and stopping. This takes full advantage of the Prius’s regenerative breaking technology, providing even better mileage. Natural gas vehicles don’t provide this.

* Finally, hybrids overall just provide better mileage, and because they still use gasoline it’s easier for a cabbie to find a place to fill up. Natural gas cars have limited options, particularly when outside the city’s downtown core.

“Taxis produce more smog per vehicle than any other car on Canadian roads,” says Harris. “Average taxis in Canada drive 10 times the distance of normal vehicles. There are 25,000 taxis on Canadian roads, so changing that many taxis is the equivalent of changing a quarter million cars.”

And all it would take is a government mandate that, in the end, would save cab drivers money and reduce smog in city cores. It would also significantly contribute to our Kyoto targets, without much cost to Canadian taxpayers.

Here’s the really interesting thing: Harris suggests that the gas savings of driving a hybrid taxi, particularly with gasolines prices as high as they were this summer, would be enough to pay for the lease of the hybrid vehicle itself — i.e. free car.

I’ve done the calculations, based on my discussions with some cab drivers. I’m not so sure how much a lease would be, but I think drivers would at least save $4,000 a year, possibly much higher. That’s good for the pocketbook, and good for the environment, and I can bet you many riders would appreciate it as well — even suffer through cramped legspace.

It all makes me wonder why somebody hasn’t come out of the thin air to launch a small Green Cab company in Toronto just for downtown shuttling. Remember, Steve Case, founder of America Online, is heading in this direction with the Flexcar autoshare business he just bought in the United States.

The trend seems pretty clear — or green — to me.

Most of the companies I cover in the “cleantech” space have cool technologies, but when it comes to marketing their innovations many of them fall flat. Sometimes it’s simply the nature of their products, other times it’s simply inexperience, and other times it’s intentional — i.e. publicly and vocally touting a product that’s not ready isn’t the greatest strategy and can backfire.

Then there are companies that have no reason to brag or market but go way overboard, showing a desperation for attention that, in the end, frightens reporters, investors and others away.

Why am I bringing this up? I got a package in the mail the other day that contained a DVD box. On the front it read: “Tox Box… Captures Toxins, Viruses, Bacteria, Dust and Dander… Detoxify the air in your home… Next Generation Electronic Air Purifier.”

It caught my attention.

The DVD inside contained promotional information about this next-generation purifier, a creation of Toronto-based Cimatec Environmenal Technology Inc. It also points to the Web site ToxBox.ca, which is essentially a slick, well-designed online brochure providing details of the technology and telling people they can buy it at Home Depot.

Cimatec’s “media kit” reminded me of the type of creative marketing I witnessed during the dot-com boom. It’s a good sign that the space is maturing, and that marketers are recognizing the mass appeal of technologies/services that can help people clean their air and water, reduce waste, conserve energy and embrace clean power.

It’s not tough to figure out why there’s a market for this stuff. Just today a study was released that reveals “toxic chemicals, such as DDT, PCBs, stain repellants, flame retardants, mercury and lead, are contaminating Canadians.”

According to Dr. Rick Smith, executive director of a group called Environmental Defence, “If you can walk, talk and breathe, you’re contaminated… Canadians are exposed everyday and in incredibly insidious ways to harmful toxic chemicals. We are guinea pigs in a massive, uncontrolled, chemical experiment, the disastrous outcome of which is measured in disease and death.”

Gulp! I’m surprised I’m alive to write this entry. Gotta get myself a Tox Box.

I was delighted to see a press release from Centennial College in Toronto promoting its creation of part-time evening courses in wind and solar technology and installation.

“A shortage of technicians with the right skills has prevented this budding energy sector from growing as quickly as it could,” according to the college, which said the coureses will be focused on urban installations connected to the grid. “Centennial College is addressing the lack of ‘distributed generation’ technicians with two new post-graduate certificates in wind or solar energy generation, conversion and control.”

Herb Sinnock, courses coordinator, says solar-panel installers are apparently having a difficult time finding people with the right skills. Finding the right people is important, given that these systems will be feeding into the local power grid and there will undoubtedly be concerns about their impact on grid stability and integrity of the electricity distribution network.

Centennial isn’t stopping with just these two courses. The college says it is currently putting together a full-time program in “integrated energy systems technology” that could launch by next fall. “The program will introduce post-secondary students to solar, wind, hydro, biomass and other distributed generation systems that can be readily integrated into commercial and residential buildings.”

I’ve been harping on this skills issue for a year now. Fact is, Canada is doing well in the area of renewables (see this new report comparing Canada with other countries), and Ontario is doing better, but much more can be done to capture the momentum. Kudos to Centennial for recognizing the opportunities, both current and future, in this emerging clean-energy sector and assessing the job market in advance of Ontario introducing its much-applauded and highly anticipated “standard offer contract” program. This, of course, will establish feed-in tariffs for small renewable energy systems and blaze a trail for other provinces and states to follow. Expect the program to launch in the first half of next year.

BTW: I’ve also heard the Ontario Centre of Excellence for Energy, established in January, is assessing the skills market in the province to identify any skills gaps in the clean energy sector that will need to be filled.

It was more than a year ago when I first heard about an Oakville, Ont.-based company called Fifth Light Technology. FLT had developed a microprocessor-based dimmer for magnetic ballast fluorescent lighting fixtures, which on their own can’t be dimmed.

Fact is, even though electronic ballast-based fixtures are the future, the majority of lighting in office towers across Canada are likely still based on magnetic ballasts. By giving these older fixtures the capability of being dimmed, FLT was making it possible to connect these lights to energy-management systems — i.e. reduce electricity consumption by up to 65 per cent by automatically adjusting lighting levels for specific situations. At the same time, building managers could extend the life of these magnetic ballast lights before switching to more expensive electronic systems.

FLT received $3 million in funding toward a demonstration project from — surprise, surprise — Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC) back in June 2004. The $9.2 million project involved Toronto Hydro and Great West Life Realty, but beyond that I couldn’t get any information out of FLT. Since then, the company has conducted itself largely in stealth mode.

This Thursday, however, it seems FLT will be having a coming out party. A large office building in Toronto’s downtown core — 33 Yonge St., to be precise — is having its magnetic-ballast lighting system completely updated with FLT’s technology. Vicky Sharpe, president of SDTC, and John McCallum, Canada’s minister of revenue and minister of natural resources, will both be on hand to showcase the project. They’ll be announcing, according to a press alert, a new technology that “promises to dramatically change the economic and environmental impact of commercial lighting.”

Anway, it’s good to know that something has actually come out of this project, and that we’ll soon be learning more about FLT, its technology and its ambitions. All that said, I wonder how long you can survive as a business by upgrading technology that’s already becoming obsolete? My guess is that FLT will have to merge with another “smart lighting” company at some point, such as Markham, Ont.-based Encelium Technologies, which does light-management systems focused on electronic ballastic fixtures, or be absorbed by a large consolidator like General Electric.

(UPDATE: I wrote a more in-depth article on this announcement for today’s Toronto Star.)