Technology Review has a future-looking story about how the widespread adoption of plug-in hybrids could have a number of benefits on top of lowering vehicle emissions. By requiring that people charge their cars during periods of low demand, power plants can operate at a higher, more level output that leads to greater efficiencies. And because more power is being sold throughout the day a greater incentive may be there for power producers to invest in clean coal and carbon sequestration technologies. The story also talks about how millions of battery-powered cars connected to the grid could stabilize the electricity system, preventing things like blackouts by letting the grid draw from the cars during high-peak periods. And, of course, each vehicle could have intelligent charging systems — connected to the Web with a unique IP address — that charge vehicles when rates are lowest or, in the case of intermittent renewables, when the wind is blowing or the sun is shining.

SunOpta Inc. of Brampton, Ontario, announced today that it is forming a 50-50 joint venture with GreenField Ethanol Inc. (formerly Commercial Alcohols Inc.) to develop commercial-scale processes for the production of cellulosic ethanol from wood chips.

The terms of the joint venture include the construction of ”one or more” commercial plants that would use the newly developed processes.

“The first plant is planned to produce 40 million liters (approximately 10 million gallons) of cellulosic ethanol per year, which would be the first commercial scale cellulosic ethanol plant built and operational in the world using wood chips,” the companies said in a statement. “GreenField Ethanol and SunOpta are actively involved in selecting a site for the first plant in Ontario or Quebec. Subsequent plants will be in the range of 200 to 400 million liters per year capacity.”

GreenField is currently Canada’s leading producer of fuel ethanol. SunOpta, which recently announced it was raising $30 million to fund growth in its cellulosic ethanol business, said the joint venture with GreenField will be the first use of these funds.

The demand for ethanol in Ontario will increase overnight on Jan. 1, when a new mandate in the province that calls for a 5 per cent ethanol blend in gasoline goes into effect. This announcement is encouraging news, mostly because both companies obviously feel that cellulosic ethanol — which uses waste products as a feedstock — can be produced economically on a commercial scale.

I also like the commitment to Ontario or Quebec, unlike Iogen of Ottawa which seems prepared to go to the United States if it doesn’t get the necessary government support in Canada.

For previously posted info on SunOpta, click here and here.

… and as a result, previous links to my Clean Break columns are no longer valid. I’m going to attempt to go back and provide the proper links — at least for the past few months — but my apologies for the disruption. I’m not pleased.

In the meantime, you can find a partial list of some of my columns by clicking here. I hope to have this sorted out over the coming days/weeks.

News.com has done an excellent job covering events at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union, where much of the discussion surrounded evidence and impacts of global warming. Click here for a roundup of their coverage.

Wired.com has an insightful interview with Terry Tamminen, a former secretary of California’s Environmental Protection Agency, who has a new book out titled Lives Per Gallon: The True Cost of Our Oil Addiction.

I found this comment, in which Tamminen says coal is the lesser of two evils compared to oil, as quite interesting:

When doing the “well to wheel” analysis, there is an enormous quantity of energy to extract oil and turn it into anything useful, transporting it, and getting it into your car, and we are going to have to work even harder to get oil in the future. Coal-fired electricity or hydrogen is cleaner and safer, because you don’t have to go anywhere else in the world or kill anyone to get it. There are a lot of problems with coal, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t remember any time when coal has landed on a beach and killed birds and fish and destroyed entire economies.