If you’re interested in keeping up to date with efforts in the U.S. to design the first “clean coal” plant (carbon capture/sequestration included), here’s an Associated Press article, via the Charleston Daily Mail, that fits the bill. A list of seven states going after the high-profile FutureGen project will be reduced to a shortlist of finalists later this week. Final selection of the winning state is expected to happen next year, with the plant itself to be completed by 2011.

The Canadian Clean Power Coalition has its own goal of building a demonstration clean coal plant in Canada by 2012. For more information on the technology and various options for using it in Canada, check out this fairly thorough clean coal technology roadmap recently made available through Natural Resources Canada.

If you’re interested in keeping up to date with efforts in the U.S. to design the first “clean coal” plant (carbon capture/sequestration included), here’s an Associated Press article, via the Charleston Daily Mail, that fits the bill. A list of seven states going after the high-profile FutureGen project will be reduced to a shortlist of finalists later this week. Final selection of the winning state is expected to happen next year, with the plant itself to be completed by 2011.

The Canadian Clean Power Coalition has its own goal of building a demonstration clean coal plant in Canada by 2012. For more information on the technology and various options for using it in Canada, check out this fairly thorough clean coal technology roadmap recently made available through Natural Resources Canada.

The deal between BP Plc and Clipper Windpower Plc to co-develop five wind farms in the United States totalling more than 2,000 megawatts could be good news for Canada’s Xantrex Technology. Clipper has traditionally been a loyal buyer of Xantrex’s wind inverter technology and MacMurray Whale, an analyst at Sprott Securities, believes the BP-Clipper deal is likely to translate into large orders for Xantrex, which seems to have turned itself around in the last quarter on the strength of orders from the solar market. Whale believes such an order would be material for Xantrex’s financials. The company releases its second quarter results this Tuesday, so perhaps we’ll get more insight on the impact of the deal and other developments.

Interesting weekend read in the Washington Post looking at how alternative energy has turned former dot-com players into cleantech boosters — venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, even so-called “high-tech” mags like Business 2.0 and Wired. The author of the piece, Slate writer Daniel Gross, says the alternative energy boom could be following in the footsteps of the dot-com boom. That, he says, would be a good thing. “Many of these venture-backed alternative-energy firms will fail, and some of the publicly held ethanol stocks will turn out to be turkeys. But fierce competition will lead to price reductions of energy-saving equipment. The vast sums being plowed into research may lead to incremental improvements or revolutionary breakthroughs. And as more giant companies such as Wal-Mart go green, the industry will gain scale — a development that usually leads to price reductions for all consumers.”

For the dozens of failures that do happen, there will be a Google or Amazon or eBay that will succeed. If the cleantech space follows this path, I agree, this would be a good thing.

Marlboro, Mass.-based Evergreen Solar Inc. has agreed to ship $200 million (U.S.) worth of photovoltaic modules to SunEdison LLC over the next five years, the company’s largest sale to date and one of the biggest I’ve seen. “The sales agreement with SunEdison is Evergreen Solar’s fifth major contract secured since November 2005 and is the largest in company history,” the company said in a statement. “The value of these five contracts totals more than $600 million over the next five years.”

Jim over at The Energy Blog has a posting here that takes a closer look at the technology and Evergreen’s next-gen product.

Not bad for a company with just $44 million in revenues last year. This is phenomenal growth, and reminds me of the kind of deals I saw in the telecommunications market five to seven years ago. It’s further proof that solar is no longer a niche proposition, and that the technology — despite its higher cost today — has gone mainstream and will continue to broaden its presence in the market as costs/prices fall. It also explains Evergreen’s $780 million market cap., SunPower’s $1.7 billion market cap, and Suntech Power’s $3.5 billion market cap. Though I should point out that all three stocks are trading significantly lower than their 52-week highs on fears the solar market is overheating.

That said, more growth appears on the horizon. In Ontario alone, my recent conversations with the Ontario Power Authority tell me that there are some major solar farm projects being considered, at least a couple in the 10 megawatt range as private developers look at ways to benefit from the recently introduced standard offer program. Time will tell if they ever get off the ground, but the very fact these types of projects are being thought about in Canada is a clear sign of progress.