Buzz Hargrove just doesn’t get it. The president of the Canadian Auto Workers union is fuming mad at Finance Minister Jim Flaherty. Why? Because the federal Conservative government has created a “feebate” program that rewards customers with a rebate if they purchase a fuel-efficient vehicle and, likewise, punishes those who purchase gas-guzzlers. Hargrove says this is unfair because it encourages the purchase of foreign-made vehicles. As a result, he said the country’s most powerful private-sector union will put resources into making sure Flaherty is not re-elected in the next election. Perhaps the union should put resources instead into lobbying its car-making employers to manufacture more fuel-efficient vehicles.

Now, one point that Hargrove has is that the federal program doesn’t reward people who buy flex-fuel vehicles, made in Canada, that can use biofuels such as ethanol. But there’s a reason for this Buzz: this is a rebate that rewards fuel-efficiency, and biofuels have absolutely nothing to do with fuel efficiency; nothing to do with how a car is designed to optimize its fuel consumption.

Put another way, you can put all the ethanol you want into a Hummer but it doesn’t make the Hummer a fuel-efficient machine. So Buzz, stop whining… get with the times. Put your energies into making Canada’s auto sector more competitive, rather than asking for breaks that allow it to continue its energy-inefficient ways.

Global warming = lake warming + increased zebra mussel growth = unusually high algae growth = problem for some nuclear facilities.

Why? Read this story to find out why.

Global warming = lake warming + increased zebra mussel growth = unusually high algae growth = problem for some nuclear facilities.

Why? Read this story to find out why.

Not that this comes as any surprise, but the proliferation of computer servers and data centres is sucking energy out of the grid like a mosquito on a cow’s behind. YouTube, Google, Facebook, you name it — all electricity vampires. According to an EPA report based on research conducted by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (U.S. Department of Energy), data centres and servers in the United States drained 61 billion kilowatt-hours from the grid in 2006. That’s a $4.5 billion electricity bill we’re talking about, and it represents 1.5 per cent of total U.S. electricity consumption. And guess what? It has doubled in the last five years, thanks to remarkable growth of the Internet, and it’s expected to double again by 2011 to 100 billion kWh, costing $7.4 billion annually.

To put that last figure into perspective, that represents two-thirds of all electricity use in Canada last year. The EPA concludes that the U.S. can cut that power use by 25 per cent using existing technologies, should corporations, governments and computer manufacturers choose to do it. Sounds like a dare.

The Canadian GeoExchange Coalition, an industry group developing standards for and promoting growth of geothermal heat pump systems in Canada, hopes to influence public policy in Ontario by studying the cost and grid impact of geoexchange projects that are in place or under development in the province. “The CGC seeks to gather projects and partners for study in order to build greater understanding of the impact and potential of geoexchange applications among policymakers and the public,” according to the coalition. “With input from industry participants, CGC will finalize a project proposal to the Ontario Power Authority for Aug. 31, which touches on technical, financial, and market aspects of geoexchange technology.”

Any project developer that wants to work with the CGC should let them know ASAP. (Sorry for the late notice). Hopefully from this effort we’ll finally see some policy support for geoexchange systems in Ontario. I’m also very curious to see the grid impact analysis, given that such systems typically add a winter load to the grid (when replacing oil or natural gas for heating). That said, they also help to smooth out the peak throughout all seasons.