Canada’s own Lithium-ion play: Holy Moli
Leave it to a U.S. magazine like Red Herring to draw my attention to a Canadian Lithium-ion developer. Maple Ridge, B.C.-based E-One Moli Energy has been around since 1977 — a spinoff, it appears, from a Lithium-ion research program at the University of British Columbia — but I bet few have heard of this 430-employee company. Not sure how Red Herring stumbled across it, but the magazine listed Moli Energy as one of its top private energy companies in North American for 2006. “E-One Moli Energy has developed high-powered lithium-ion batteries that it says are environmentally friendly and safer than competitors’,” the magazine states. “Milwaukee Electric Tools incorporated them into 28-volt tools last year, and the batteries could one day be used in hybrid vehicles.” The magazine also mentioned Moli Energy in an earlier article on Lithium-ion advancements alongside A123 Systems. If Web sites are any measure of potential (which, obviously, they’re not), Moli Energy needs a major online facelift. The company’s site looks quite amateurish.
Tyler Hamilton is senior energy reporter and 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 cleantech market. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005. It is not an official blog of the newspaper. Tyler can be reached at tyler@cleanbreak.ca