Canada’s House of Commons passed a third reading today of Bill C-311, a bill originally tabled in 2006 that’s also known as the Climate Change Accountability Act. It now goes to the Senate before being passed into law.

MPs from all opposition parties — the NDP, Bloc and Liberals — united together to outvote Conservative MPs, who voted as a block against the bill. The final vote count was 149 in favour, 136 against. The bill requires the government to set a medium-term target to bring greenhouse-gas emissions to 25 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020, and a long-term target to bring emissions to 80 per cent below 1990 levels by 2050.

Specifically, it requires the Minister of Environment — within six months of the bill receiving Royal Assent — to report to Parliament a greenhouse-gas emissions target plan for the years 2015 to 2045 in five-year intervals. Also, the minister must issue an annual statement explaining what measures the government is taking to meet the country’s targets, including regulated emission limits and performance standards, market-based mechanisms such as emissions trading or offsets, incentives for industry, and cooperation agreement with provinces.

“This bill matters because the government’s current greenhouse gas targets fall far short of scientific assessments of the emission reductions needed to avoid dangerous climate change, and because to date the government has not produced a credible plan to meet even those targets,” said Matthew Bramley, director of climate change programs at the Pembina Institute, an environmental think tank. Bramley called it a “ground-breaking bill” and encouraged Senators to show the same kind of leadership as opposition MPs showed today.

We have momentum here… let’s not lose it. It’s time to hold this minority Conservative government to account for its inactions on this file.

Now, executives at companies come and go, but this release just out today from ZENN made me wonder whether the CFO’s departure is the first trickle of a coming exodus. Does it signal potentially insurmountable problems at EEStor? Or, is this just a way for ZENN to conserve its cash? Or, is this really just about an executive who has decided to move on? But why, then, move on when there’s so much good to come?

The drama thickens… (Can you hear the melodramatic music in the background?)

May the 4th be with you.

The Toronto Zoo, the largest zoo in Canada and third-largest in the world, put out a request for proposals yesterday to build a large anaerobic digestion facility that will convert manure from elephants, giraffes and hundreds of other animals under its care into biogas. The plan is to burn the biogas to generate electricity — up to 5 megawatts — and use the waste heat from both the digester and the generation plant to heat zoo exhibits (offsetting more than $1 million of natural gas used by the zoo). This is just the latest biogas project to emerge in Toronto, which also plans to take methane from a large landfill, a major wastewater treatment plant, and two organic waste processing facilities to generate electricity, or alternatively, to fuel city transportation fleets. In all, biogas projects recently approved by the Ontario Power Authority under the province’s feed-in-tariff program, as well as projects in the pipeline, total well over 100 megawatts.

The Toronto Zoo, I should point out, isn’t just taking care of its own business. Only 2 per cent of its waste — a combo of animal manure, beddings and organic waste from on-site restaurants — will feed the digester. The rest will be a combination of organic waste from commercial and retail establishments in the surrounding community. Read the full story in the Toronto Star.

The federal government’s Standing Committee on Natural Resources heard testimony last week from industry experts about the Conservative goverment’s abrupt cancellation of the popular EcoEnergy Retrofit program, which I blogged about in recent weeks. Needless to say, a lot in the industry are — to put it bluntly — pissed off. This includes students who trained to become energy auditors and now find themselves without work. It includes energy audit and retrofit companies, solar and geothermal installers, and HVAC companies that ramped up because of the program and are now going through the difficult task of laying off staff and downsizing. It also includes homeowners who intended to take advantage of the program but are now reconsidering their next move.

Ken Elsey, president and chief executive officer of the Canadian Energy Efficiency Alliance, was among those who gave testimony last week to the parliamentary committee. Elsey had some interesting things to say, so I figured I would post his comments here. But before I got on, let me highlight a few figures Elsey cites.

• The government’s commitment of $750 million to the program represents only 15 per cent of the total retrofit expenditures made by Canadians. In other words, Canadians spent more than $4 billion in total;
• Canadians will save $340 million a year every year going forward based on retrofits done under the program, and that’s money that can be reinvested in the economy every year;
• The $5 billion in total spending — i.e. $750 million from gov incentives and more than $4 billion from homeowners — generated $250 million in GST (goods and services tax) revenue for the government.

Here’s what Elsey had to say:

(more…)

My Clean Break column today begins with a short look at Toronto-based Cavet Technologies, which announced this morning a partnership with contract manufacturer Celestica. Cavet has developed an intelligent lighting controller (click here to see video, and here to read report from consultancy Kachan & Co.) that is easy to install, is relatively inexpensive, and by reducing energy consumption in fluorescent lighting systems by 30 per cent can have a payback of less than 18 months. The controller, called LumiSmart, is aimed at large buildings that would have lighting “zones” composed of up to 140 light fixtures. It works by pulsing the power supply in a way that doesn’t affect light quality but reduces the amount of electricity going to the lights. What’s interesting is that Cavet, which is just ramping up for commercial sales, has already struck a manufacturing agreement with Celestica.

Celestica, like all big electronic manufacturing service providers, operates on scale. It makes BlackBerry devices for Research In Motion, routers for big network equipment companies, and other “electronic” gear in the thousands — the tens of thousands. It has traditionally looked away from small startups. “Come back to us when you can place a big enough order,” is the kind of response Celestica would give. But the company, as well as rivals such as Flextronics, are now taking a different approach. Instead of sitting back and waiting for volume to come, they’re striking deals with promising new clean technology companies early on as part of a strategy to drive volume. Cavet’s partnership with Celestica, in this sense, can be considered a boost of confidence in its technology.

This is an interesting trend, and one that could do a lot to take otherwise niche cleantech products and turn them into high-volume global successes. If you read my Toronto Star column, please ignore the use of the word “revolutionary” in the headline. I do use the word, but through a more skeptical lens.