Involving cleantech in infrastructure renewal
My Clean Break column in today’s Toronto Star takes a look at some of the barriers to deploying certain renewable technologies, such as low-temperature geothermal, on a wide scale. A report came out last week saying Canadian municipalities would need to spend $123 billion to repair, upgrade, and overhaul public infrastructure. The question is: How are they going to spend that money? Seems to me there could be a huge economic upside, including potential for high-skilled, high-paid job creation, if we planned now to include clean technologies in any infrastructure renewal program.
There’s also the question of updating thousands of buildings built before the 1970s so that they’re more energy efficient. The column, in fact, looks at the role banks could play in making this happen, by providing easy access to capital while making a healthy return on their investment. Geothermal is a prime example, and you’ll see why if you read the column.
Tyler Hamilton is senior energy reporter and 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 cleantech market. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005. It is not an official blog of the newspaper. Tyler can be reached at tyler@cleanbreak.ca