Mossadiq Umedaly, former co-founder and CEO of Xantrex Technology, former chairman of BC Hydro, and former Ballard Power executive, has become a venture partner at Wellington Partners, a top European venture capital firm based out of Munich and London. Beyond being a great guy, Mossadiq is a Canadian cleantech veteran. Let’s hope his new role at Wellington will bring greater focus on promising Canadian cleantech companies in need of early-stage financing.

A message from Tom Rand:

As part of a continuing push to generate strong public support of the low-carbon and renewable energy sector, MaRS Cleantech Lead Tom Rand has written a book called Kick the Fossil Fuel Habit: 10 Clean Technologies to Save Our World. On behalf of MaRS we’d like to invite you to Tom’s book launch talk at MaRS this Thursday, April 15th at 6 pm, in the main auditorium. It promises to be a stimulating talk. Admission is free, but registration is required. Please click here to register if you would like to attend.

The MaRS Centre is located at 101 College Street in Toronto, just east of University Ave.

Just a week after CIBC said it was forming an investment team at the bank to explore all aspect of green energy and clean technology financing, TD Bank is saying: us, too!

Now, I predicted the CIBC announcement would encourage other major Canadian banks to follow, but TD’s effort is rather half-hearted. The company put out a press release yesterday pointing out that its lending businesses are financing a number of green energy projects approved under Ontario’s feed-in-tariff program. “Small business owners, schools, retailers, agricultural businesses, solar panel manufacturers and installers, utilities, and others are encouraged to talk to TD about their financing requirements for solar power and other renewable energy systems,” the bank said in a statement.

TD is focusing here on the microFIT — that is, projects under 10 kilowatts — so this is an appeal to small business specifically. There’s no indication yet whether TD is prepared to tackle financing for larger projects in a coordinated, targeted fashion. And even with this release, all the company is saying is “come talk to us, we’ll listen.” The first sign this is a half-hearted effort is that TD offers up a quote from its chief environmental officer, Karen Clarke-Whistler. A senior executive, yes, but a person you’d expect to weigh in. What I’d like to see is the president, chief operating officer, etc… somebody at the very top that’s signalling the bank’s commitment to this area. I’d also like to see a sign that TD is preparing to develop a group or team or whatever that’s focused on the opporunities — both small and large.

TD is going to have to do better than this.

Climate blogger and author Joe Romm of Climateprogress.org has a new book out called Straight Up, and it’s largely a selection of his best blog postings over the past few years related to climate change issues. One section is devoted to the Status Quo Media, and is a stinging critique of how poorly the mainstream media has covered global warming and, I would add by extension, the need to embrace clean energy. One repost, dated Jan. 25, 2009, refers to a study by Eric Pooley, former managing editor of Fortune and national editor at Time. Romm pulls the following quote from Pooley’s study:

The press failed to perform the basic service of making climate policy and its economic impact understandable to the reader and allowed opponents of climate action to set the terms of the cost debate. The argument centred on the short-term costs of taking action — that is, higher electricity and gasoline prices — and sometimes assumed that doing nothing about climate change carried no cost.

As Romm later writes: “Although Pooley doesn’t make the point, the problem he identifies is compounded by the fact that the mainstream economic community also overestimates the cost of action and underestimates the cost of inaction.”

This brings me to Globe and Mail columnist Margaret Wente, a talented, award-winning writer who regularly crosses into the realm of fiction when talking about climate change and green energy. She’s a generalist — knows squat, really, about climate change science and the economics or technology around green energy technologies — but she continues to put herself out there as an authority on such issues. As a result, she’s misleading a Canadian public that’s seeking constructive (and truthful) guidance on the tough choices that lie ahead.

Take Wente’s latest column, which appeared on Saturday, titled “Welcome to the wacky world of green power.” In it, she weighs in on the Ontario government’s announcement last week that it has awarded power-purchase contracts to 184 green energy projects representing 2,500 megawatts of power capacity and up to $9 billion in private investment in the province. “Welcome to the wacky world of green power, where misguided governments have sparked a massive corporate feeding frenzy (at taxpayers’ expense) to achieve little or nothing of any social benefit,” she writes.

Let’s deconstruct this latest column: (more…)

I’m trying to get a sense of how the Canadian federal government’s decision to stop accepting applications for EcoEnergy refrofit incentives will affect energy auditors, HVAC companies and installers of solar thermal and geothermal systems across the country, particularly Ontario.  Are you worried the provinces will follow? Do you expect business to slow down dramatically? Are you expecting to lay off staff?

Let me know — e-mail tyler@cleanbreak.ca