A few good reads
It’s a holiday Monday here in Ontario, so I figured I’d post links to some interesting articles I came across during the weekend:
* This piece in the Boston Globe takes a look at growing interesting in wood-burning (or biomass) power plants as an alternative to coal and natural gas. The story, while recognizing concerns regarding pollution, points out that modern forestry practices and emission-scrubbing technologies make the burning of wood chips and other biomass a feasible option. On a similar note, I wrote an article last week in the Toronto Star about how farmers in Ontario are pushing the idea of burning corn and wheat grains in existing coal plants as a way to reduce emissions from coal.
* Another article I wrote in the Star last week talks about the potential of capturing waste energy from existing industrial and commercial activities. Thomas Casten, CEO of Primary Energy and an expert on combined heat and power systems (and co-generation), visited Ontario’s minister of energy to encourage this approach. Here’s his slide show.
* Newsweek has this lengthy piece about how more big businesses are embracing renewable energies and other environmentally friendly approaches to designing products and doing business. Ultimately, these companies are trying to position themselves — by heavily marketing these good deeds — as stellar corporate citizens in the eyes of consumers who are increasingly concerned about issues such as global warming.
* Matt Marshall at the San Jose Mercury News does a great job providing an updated overview of investor interest in the cleantech or “green technology” market, where former high-tech investors/entrepreneurs are increasingly dumping their money.
* Finally, I’ve got a neat piece in today’s Toronto Star about Big Becky, the world’s largest boring machine that’s about to drill a 10-kilometre hole under the city of Niagara Falls. The goal is to tap additional water flow from Niagara Falls so the Adam Beck hydroelectric generating station can produce more energy. Big Becky was built exclusively for this $1-billion project, which ranks as one of the largest hydroelectric projects in the world today. Check out the article, as there are many interesting factoids about this story.
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.
August 7th, 2006 at 4:57 pm
Re Big Bore article in Star:
Marvy! Hope climate change doesn’t reduce this potential.
People constantly refer to the operation of automobiles as if this is some universally constant metaphor that all readers will relate to. Some readers do not drive, and others like myself who do still get royally ticked at people who automatically jump to the auto when seeking to relate readers/ listeners to some concept. (Those who don’t drive wouldn’t understand / do not matter?) It is similar to speaking about a tall, dressed in bright orange, tile-setter as “the Chinese guy”, even though we know nothing of this persons background, and there are ample other ways to describe the person evident. We see what WE CONSIDER to be their race, first, regardless that we are applying our own assumptions onto them in an area they might be quite obviously sensitive to -their very identity. Hey, I’m ranting! Please keep a critical ear to what people say to you, and suggest / paraphrase for them another approach when they offer the mobile furnace as meta(stacizing)phor. It would be great if you could quickly summon a comparable example that involves public transit, cycling or even walking (or blogging?)!
Aside: Speaking of cars on the brain, wasn’t EEStor supposed to have a big news release back in May?
Cheers
August 8th, 2006 at 12:29 am
Any idea as to how the presentation by Thomas Casten was received?
August 8th, 2006 at 12:29 pm
I didn’t go, but I’ve been told by a couple of people who attended that it was very well received and well attended. Here’s hoping he had the same impact on the minister and the Ontario Power Authority.
August 8th, 2006 at 12:31 pm
Hey, cut me some slack. It wasn’t my choice of analogy — blame the OPG guy. As for EEStor, it has been very quiet. I dropped someone at Feel Good Cars an e-mail a few weeks ago trying to get an update but got no reply. I may try to poke around again this week.
August 12th, 2006 at 12:33 pm
With only five days notice and in the middle of summer holidays, the 175 attendees at the Tom Casten forum were enthused and “regenerated” (pardon the pun) about distributed energy. Distributed energy is a major paradigm shift; many interests will continue to fight it using technical auguments to disguise their financial interests.
August 12th, 2006 at 3:42 pm
Where is the centre – just like the flat earth believers thought that the sun revolved around the earth, the defenders of centralized generation think society should revolve around large central generators.