Reuters had an article today talking about solar energy in China and how excitement in the sector could result in up to five solar IPOs within the next 12 months, all in the wake of the successful Suntech IPO late last year. Of interest is the mention that a Chinese company called Canadian Solar Inc. is likely to become the first of these five companies to go public. Huh? Turns out Canadian Solar Inc., or CSI, is actually a Canadian company with two headquarters — one in Jiangsu, China, and the other in St-Laurent, Quebec. It was apparently spun off of ATS Automation in 2001 and now manufacturers solar modules ranging from 5 watts to 300 watts. Other than that I don’t know a heck of a lot about the company, or why it’s passing itself off as a Chinese company even thought it has “Canadian” in the name. I’m assuming it was a group within ATS who decided to buy a piece of Photowatt and focus on cracking the Chinese market. Not a bad gameplan. I’ve got an interview with a vice-president of CSI next week and I’ll let you know how that goes. It will be interesting to see which company has its IPO first — ATS’s Photowatt/Spheral Solar group or CSI. Also curious to know where CSI plans to list, and who’s underwriting the IPO.

This is a couple months old, but Sustainable Development Technology Canada has a great report here that analyzes different types of renewable energy and gives readers a sense of the near-term and long-term business opportunities. Worth checking out.

BTW: SDTC just released a list of seven companies it has funded that have completed their projects in 2005. The list includes Carmanah Technologies, DynaMotive Energy Systems, Enerkem Technologies, Highmark Renewables, Hydrogenics, Mikro-Tek, and Paradigm Environmental Technologies. 

Funny the extent to which some fossil fuel companies are trying to show how green they are — guess we can’t complain. Royal Dutch Shell, for example, has just finished construction of an offshore natural gas platform in the U.K. that is powered entirely by wind and solar power. “The tiny platform, powered by two wind turbines and a pair of solar panels, cost 80 million pounds to develop and is expected to produce gas at a rate of some 3 million cubic feet a day for the next 15 years,” according to the Independent Online.

Canada’s Talisman Energy is working on another offshore project, which initially will locate two massive wind turbines — with a combined capacity of about 10 megawatts – within its Beatrice offshore oil field about 25 kilometres off the east coast of Scotland. The turbines will be connected by undersea cable to the Beatrice platform and will provide up to 70 per cent of the platform’s operation. If the project is successful, Talisman will consider along with its partners whether to expand it into a full-blown offshore wind farm.

These are terrific projects, but it’s a tad ironic that these energy giants plan to use clean, emission-free renewable power to extract dirty fossil fuels. I wonder if it would be more efficient to just pump that clean electricity to the grid and use it to power electric cars or to produce hydrogen for industrial and transportation use…

Funny the extent to which some fossil fuel companies are trying to show how green they are — guess we can’t complain. Royal Dutch Shell, for example, has just finished construction of an offshore natural gas platform in the U.K. that is powered entirely by wind and solar power. “The tiny platform, powered by two wind turbines and a pair of solar panels, cost 80 million pounds to develop and is expected to produce gas at a rate of some 3 million cubic feet a day for the next 15 years,” according to the Independent Online.

Canada’s Talisman Energy is working on another offshore project, which initially will locate two massive wind turbines — with a combined capacity of about 10 megawatts – within its Beatrice offshore oil field about 25 kilometres off the east coast of Scotland. The turbines will be connected by undersea cable to the Beatrice platform and will provide up to 70 per cent of the platform’s operation. If the project is successful, Talisman will consider along with its partners whether to expand it into a full-blown offshore wind farm.

These are terrific projects, but it’s a tad ironic that these energy giants plan to use clean, emission-free renewable power to extract dirty fossil fuels. I wonder if it would be more efficient to just pump that clean electricity to the grid and use it to power electric cars or to produce hydrogen for industrial and transportation use…

Joel Makower has produced a clever 4-minute flash movie about global warming that I encourage you to view. “It’s a ‘documentary’ from the future — 2056, to be exact,” Joel wrote me in an e-mail. “It tells what happens in 2006 — ‘the year that everything changed’ — when people came together on the Internet to take action on climate change. You’ll see fun references to McDonald’s, Ford, even Martha Stewart.”

The Web address for the movie is www.renewus.org

The movie is part of a project with Stonyfield Farms, a U.S. yogurt company, and two non-profits. While it’s geared specifically at an American audience, Canadians and others will no doubt find value in the message. Just as Joel asked me, I ask you to spread the movie around to your friends and colleagues. The more who view it the better.

Actually, any politicos who have the ear of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, would you do me a favour? Sit the man down and tell him to watch this movie before he decides to embarrass the country further with more cuts to our climate change programs.

As for the movie, you can get more details on Joel’s blog, Two Steps Forward. It’s fun to watch, but also hits the point home that we have to start doing something about climate change now. After watching the movie, viewers can register to get information about climate change and what they can do to curb their own greenhouse gas emissions and contribute their voice in an effort to spark change.