Well, the headline speaks for itself: The Cleantech Network has continued its expansion by acquiring Inside Greentech, which is not yet a year old but has managed to attract 150,000 unique readers in just 10 months. Inside Greentech will be rebranded Cleantech.com and represents the flagship publication for Cleantech Media LLC, a new company within the Cleantech Network group of companies. Fellow Canadian journalist Dallas Kachan, founder of Inside Greentech, becomes managing director of Cleantech Media.

The timing is interesting, given that Greentech Media is preparing to launch in early September, with former Red Herring reporter Jennifer Kho leading editorial. Greentech Media appears to be a direct competitor to Cleantech Media (this also, BTW, perpetuates the cleantech versus greentech debate). Competition is always a good sign, and the same applies here. What we’re seeing is two newly created media organizations going head to head with cleantech coverage, and this promises to raise the quality of reporting and analysis.

Good luck to both.

Finavera Renewables says it has received an “Investigative Use Permit” from the B.C. government allowing it to study the feasibility of a wave-energy project for a period of two years off the coast of Vancouver Island, near the beautiful town of Ucluelet (which, by the way, is located in one of the most stunning places in Canada). The company will use the permit to study everything from the potential impact on fishing activity in the area to the height and frequency of waves to the economics of deployment and connection to transmission. The project proposed would begin at 5 megawatts with plans to expand to 100 megawatts — quite substantial. In total, Finavera now has five wave projects proposed or under development in a number of countries, including Canada, the United States and South Africa. The company also has a number of wind projects on the go.

Finavera’s technology is called AquaBuOY and is described as follows on the company’s Web site:

Clusters of these small, modular devices called AquaBuOYs are moored several kilometers offshore where the wave resource is the greatest. The power plants are scalable from hundreds of kilowatts to hundreds of megawatts… Energy transfer takes place by converting the vertical component of wave kinetic energy into pressurized seawater by means of two-stroke hose pumps. Pressurized seawater is directed into a conversion system consisting of a turbine driving an electrical generator. The power is transmitted to shore by means of a secure, undersea transmission line. A cluster of AquaBuOYs would have a low silhouette in the water. Located several miles offshore, the power plant arrays would be visible to allow for safe navigation and no more noticeable than a small fleet of fishing boats.

Now, two years just to study the feasibility is, well, a long time away from actually producing megawatts of power — but it’s a start. One has to also wonder how a company with virtually no revenues and big quarterly losses is going to convince investors to finance these projects when a predictable revenue stream is still a couple years away, at least. I wish them luck.

BTW: there’s a good overview of renewable energy alternatives, including wave and in-stream tital power, in a recent article appearing in the latest issue of the Electric Power Research Institute Journal. It’s worth a read for an update. And check out the renewable technology development chart that appears on page 15.

Finavera Renewables says it has received an “Investigative Use Permit” from the B.C. government allowing it to study the feasibility of a wave-energy project for a period of two years off the coast of Vancouver Island, near the beautiful town of Ucluelet (which, by the way, is located in one of the most stunning places in Canada). The company will use the permit to study everything from the potential impact on fishing activity in the area to the height and frequency of waves to the economics of deployment and connection to transmission. The project proposed would begin at 5 megawatts with plans to expand to 100 megawatts — quite substantial. In total, Finavera now has five wave projects proposed or under development in a number of countries, including Canada, the United States and South Africa. The company also has a number of wind projects on the go.

Finavera’s technology is called AquaBuOY and is described as follows on the company’s Web site:

Clusters of these small, modular devices called AquaBuOYs are moored several kilometers offshore where the wave resource is the greatest. The power plants are scalable from hundreds of kilowatts to hundreds of megawatts… Energy transfer takes place by converting the vertical component of wave kinetic energy into pressurized seawater by means of two-stroke hose pumps. Pressurized seawater is directed into a conversion system consisting of a turbine driving an electrical generator. The power is transmitted to shore by means of a secure, undersea transmission line. A cluster of AquaBuOYs would have a low silhouette in the water. Located several miles offshore, the power plant arrays would be visible to allow for safe navigation and no more noticeable than a small fleet of fishing boats.

Now, two years just to study the feasibility is, well, a long time away from actually producing megawatts of power — but it’s a start. One has to also wonder how a company with virtually no revenues and big quarterly losses is going to convince investors to finance these projects when a predictable revenue stream is still a couple years away, at least. I wish them luck.

BTW: there’s a good overview of renewable energy alternatives, including wave and in-stream tital power, in a recent article appearing in the latest issue of the Electric Power Research Institute Journal. It’s worth a read for an update. And check out the renewable technology development chart that appears on page 15.

Toronto would get rid of its island airport.

The island would be converted into a place called Cleantech Island Park, which would be a centrepiece of demonstration and deployment of clean technologies from southern Ontario-based companies. This island would be a unique way to show off regionally developed clean technologies to domestic and foreign investors and potential customers visiting from around the world.

The island would be a net producer of renewable/co-gen energy feeding into the provincial grid under the standard offer program — a place for solar farms (Arise; Cyrium), windmills (Magenn; Whalepower; Trillium; Skypower), geothermal heat pump installations (NextEnergy), energy storage (Hydrogenics), and other technologies to be showcased. These systems could be connected through energy management and demand response software produced by local firms. The island itself would be a demand-response aggregator, and its own local grid would be wired for intelligence (Ruggedcom).

All hot water on the island would be provided by a district solar thermal system (Enerworks; Mondial). All cooling would be provided by geothermal (NextEnergy and others) or from a deep-water lake cooling system (Enwave).

The island would have its own drinking water from a small filtration plant based on local technology (Zenon). New construction on the island would be a chance to showcase materials made from plant fibres and based on bio-oils, rather than petroleum and metal. Bio-pesticides would be exclusively used in gardens.

The ferries to the island would run on biodiesel from Biox. Solar-hybrid catamarans could be rented for leisure or commutes.

All residential lightbulbs would come from Group IV Semiconductor. Fluorescent systems would be made dimmable by Fifth Light Technology and automated by Encelium.

Only low-speed zero-emission vehicles would be permitted — in other words, ZENN Motor cars. But nobody would own them. They would be parked at specially created parking lots that provide electricity recharging, and people could drive them between lots for free like people borrow bicycles in the Netherlands. When plugged in, they would act as a power backup in the event of a blackout, letting intermittent solar and wind installations on the island provide electricity 24-hours a day. They would also help the mainland meet peak demand during the summer and avoid importing coal power from the United States.

Waste on the island would be minimized, but whatever is created would be converted into energy with a small energy-from-waste system built by Plasco. The CO2 from that system would be fed to an algae/solar bioreactor built by Menova Energy and the algae would be harvested to create biofuel for the ferries.

Restaurants on the island would recapture waste heat from kitchens (Martin Air Systems). All relevant appliances and power-using equipment would be cycled on and off to maximize efficiency (REGEN).

You get the picture. The island would remain a place for tourists but with a strong educational component — exposing and teaching visitors about the technologies on demonstration and the impact they can have on the environment and climate. All schools in the province would be required to organize class tours, and all jobs would go to students (perhaps as part of course studies). Finally, the companies demonstrating these technologies would be located across the lake in the Cherry Beach waterfront area, which would be designated a tax-free zone called the Southern Ontario Cleantech Cluster, or SOCC. It would be aimed at encouraging local investment and creating local jobs. Cleantech Island Park would be the D&D extension of SOCC.

The companies that located in this zone would be cutely known as Clean Socks. The Cleantech Island Park, because of its uniqueness, would become globally known and would make southern Ontario a global leader in clean technology development and deployment.

Okay now, back to reality…

If you’re curious to know what a garage-scale model of a home-made tornado looks like, click here. It at least gives you the idea of how such a thing is formed using basic convection principles. This, of course, relates to my earlier post on tornado power.

Another addition: Steven Levitt, author of the best-selling book Freakonomics, has written a post about my tornado story on his New York Times blog. Quite a few interesting, and critical, comments.