The Cleantech Venture Network released preliminary figures on investment in cleantech during the third quarter of 2006. It reported that investments totalled $933 million (U.S.), up nearly 11 per cent over the previous quarter and 120 per cent over the same period a year ago. Energy-related investments captured a lion’s share of the investment with $837 million flowing into energy-focused cleantech companies. Of that, biofuels captured an incredible $512 million.

To put this into perspective, biofuel investments in the third quarter alone almost reached the total amount of investments in *all* clean energy segments during the second quarter. Investments in solar was relatively — and surprisingly — low at $69 million.

Another interesting fact is that cleantech investing, after three quarters, has exceeded total investments of $1.6 billion for all of 2005. This is surely to ignite more commentary about this sector being overhyped and overheated.

Here’s a podcast interview with Jim Harris, former leader of the Canadian federal Green Party, who popped by the Toronto Star recently to talk about life after politics, his new gig at the Cleantech Venture Network, and the rising fortunes of a party now under the leadership of Elizabeth May. Harris is also working on a book about the cleantech market.

I’ve got a triple-play in today’s Toronto Star. First, an article of mine features energy-efficiency guru Amory Lovins talking about the financial and economic pitfalls of nuclear and why Ontario has made a horrible decision by pursuing construction of new reactors. His argument isn’t new, but it bears repeating: If the private sector isn’t interested in nuclear, then it’s simply too risky to pursue.

Accompanying this article is a podcast — basically an audio recording of my interview with Lovins. Keep in mind this was heavily edited down from 55 minutes to 25 minutes, and the quality isn’t that great because I believe Lovins was on a speaker phone. That said, I think there’s some interesting information there beyond what I mentioned in the article.

Finally, if text is your preference, there’s a text version of the Q&A on the site as well. Again, edited for good flow.

In a move that the anti-wind crowd is sure to celebrate, Alberta’s electricity system operator has indefinitely capped the amount of wind development in the oil-rich province to 900 megawatts, or about 8 per cent of grid capacity, citing a lack of adequate transmission infrastructure and a fear that too much instability will be introduced to the system beyond that amount.

What the anti-wind folks don’t seem to appreciate is that the pro-wind folks understand the intregation difficulties associated with adding wind to an electricity system. Just because, at a certain point in time, a system can only handle so much wind doesn’t mean wind technology is garbage or a scam or uneconomic or whatever else they like to call it. The fact is, it can be handled up to a certain threshold — we’ll take what we can get. After that, yes, the entire structure of the grid has to be adjusted to accept more wind, and new technologies such as utility-scale storage must be experimented with to “firm up” wind power. This is why the Ontario Power Authority has hired GE Energy to study this issue, so that we have an action plan in place as Ontario gets closer to this threshold — and believe me, it’s got a long way to go.

So is this cap in Alberta bad news for the wind industry? No, not really. It may be a tad conservative, but it’s not at all surprising. And I wouldn’t read too much into the word “indefinite.” Every jurisdiction has a right to slow down development of something so that it can be more thoroughly studied, and no one has ever lost their job by taking a slow, cautious and balanced approached. That’s all Alberta appears to be doing.

It’s also important to keep in mind that wind power is only part of the energy puzzle, alongside biomass, hydropower, co-gen, combined cycle natural gas, solar and energy-efficiency (i.e. negawatts). No fool believes we’ll be powering the entire world with wind energy. As far as I’m concerned, hitting a 10-per-cent threshold is mighty impressive.

Given that China is likely to build dozens of new coal plants over the years to meet its rapidly growing energy needs, and given that China can’t afford to add more pollution to its already polluted air, and given the world can’t afford to see an exponential rise in greenhouse gases coming from China, it’s nice to hear that this fast-growing economy is interested in joining the U.S. government’s FutureGen clean coal project. India and South Korea have already joined FutureGen, and apparently China’s largest power company joined last year. China likes the idea because the coal gasification technology used will not only generate cleaner power from coal, it will also produce hydrogen that could be used to support the country’s move toward fuel-cell vehicles. Unfortunately, it’s likely that many of those “dozens of new coal plants” will be built on old dirty technology before the fruits of this project are realized…