My Clean Break column in this week’s Toronto Star looks at the way public money is being spent on green energy initiatives in Ontario. I basically give a thumbs up on grants that help to link up the province’s schools with new made-in-Ontario clean technologies that help reduce energy use or promote renewable energy. The money is well spent: it helps schools become greener and lower energy bills, and it helps local companies without a product track record get some experience in the field that can be leveraged in the marketplace.

I’m less keen on the way money is handed out for fairly straight-forward energy retrofits. For example, the province has committed $550 million to help public schools become more energy efficient over the years. But rather than simply hand over that money, why wasn’t it set aside in a revolving fund that instead offers low-interest loans to school and long-term payback terms. The idea here is that schools could pay off the loans over several years through energy savings, keeping the fund in tact. Over 10 years, such a fund could invest three times its original amount. In other words, it’s not a one-time gift but instead the gift that keeps on giving.

When we’re dealing with such low-hanging fruit — i.e. energy efficiency projects using well proven approaches and technologies — why can’t we be more creative with public money, especially when it’s being spent on municipal, hospital, school and other public buildings?

The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers has come out with its latest forecast of Canadian crude oil production over the next 15 years. Today, Alberta’s tar sands put out 1.5 million barrels of oil a day, or 54 per cent of total production output. That will rise to 2.2 million in 2015 (67 per cent of total output) and 2.9 million in 2020 (74 per cent of total ouput). In 2025 the tar sands will reach 3.5 million barrels a day, or more than 81 per cent of total output. You can so where this is going. In 15 years we see conventional production in Canada falling nearly 40 per cent and tar sands production well more than doubling alongside CO2 emissions.

Will there be any meaningful amount of carbon capture and storage in the oil sands by 2020? By 2025? Don’t bet on it. The first demonstration projects will be related to coal, and even then, they will be small and few.

Canada is on a very dangerous path unless it can figure out how to substantially offset these emissions by making dramatic reductions in other areas. Greening Alberta’s electricity sector would be a good start, but that doesn’t appear to be on the radar of those with the power to take the province in that direction. Also, it doesn’t do much to solve the major water issues in Fort McMurray.

A story of mine published this week in MIT Technology Review takes a look at a new robotic device being designed by researchers at the Electric Power Research Institute, a non-profit research organization for the utility sector. Tens of thousands of kilometres of overhead transmission lines stretch across North American, bringing electricity from central power stations to population centres. The system we have is aging and in need of upgrade, while expansion is also on the horizon as states and provinces move to connect remotely located wind, solar and geothermal power sources. At the same time, past methods of inspecting the condition of transmission infrastructure is getting trickier. Many of the workers skilled in this area are nearing the age of retirement, threatening to create a skills gap in the coming years. It’s for this reason that robot inspectors are beginning to attract attention, with the idea being that one day we might have fleets of inspection robots moving along the nation’s power lines 365 days a year.

The folks at EPRI have designed one two-metre long prototype that looks kind of like a small solar-powered car — you know, like one of those high-tech solar cars you might see on the Discovery Channel. The robot, which is likely to be much smaller when commercialized, moves on rollers that clamp onto the shield line (there to attract lightning strikes) located just above the transmission lines. It crawls along the shield line at about 2 kilometres an hour. A high-definition camera snaps digital images of the surrounding infrastructure, making sure vegetation (trees) below isn’t interferring with lines and benchmarking the state of equipment and lines so they can be compared to future inspection runs. The robot will also have sensors that can detect electromagnetic interference, measure temperature of equipment and spot faulty line connections, among other things.

The data and images collected are transmitted back to a central office via satellite (in more remote areas) or cellular linkup. A lithium polymer battery powers the robot. In the picture above, it appears that the device is lined with solar cells, presumably to charge the battery. That was an older design. Andrew Phillips, head of transmission research at EPRI, said the latest prototype charges the battery by harvesting energy from the transmission lines below it. The transmission lines give off electromagnetic energy, and this is collected in the shield wire through induction. The robot taps into that power flow in the shield wire during the evening to recharge the battery. There’s still a small solar cell, however, for limited backup power.

So how are transmission lines currently inspected? Typically, crews are dispatched with helicopters that visually inspect vegetation and the basic condition of equipment, as well as collect data from sensors previously attached to transmission equipment. It costs a lot of money — both in helicopter and labour costs — to cover so many thousands of kilometres of infrastructure. EPRI figures that its robots can do the job at 70 per cent of the cost, collect better data, and do it without the safety risks that come with flying helicopters close to high-voltage wires.

Seems like a great use of technology — I can even envision these robots playing a grid security role as well, particularly as the electricity system becomes an even more strategic asset in an age of electric transportation.

The headline speaks for itself, but I wanted to point you to this article in Nature News that talks about how the economic problems in Europe are causing countries to rethink their funding commitments to the ambitious and uber-expensive ITER project. I don’t blame them, actually, given the rollercoaster ride in budget estimates this project has faced over the past two decades, as the chart to the left demonstrates. The range of estimates — $4 billion to $18 billion — is eerily similar to the cost of building a front porch on my house, minus six zeros. If they want a less expensive option, maybe they should toss a few tens of millions to the guys at Vancouver-based General Fusion, who are aiming within the decade to build a prototype fusion reactor for $50 million or so.

What’s life after the lithium-ion battery look like? Is it supercapacitors? All-electron batteries? Something we haven’t dreamed up yet? The New York Times has a great overview (courtesy of ClimateWire) of lithium-air batteries, which represent a class of batteries called metal-air that two decades from now could be the dream battery we wish we had today. Scientists say lithium-air batteries could pack enough energy to rival the range of vehicles that burn gasoline. There’s one not-so-small problem, however. They can explode when exposed to water. Personally, I see greater potential in zinc-air batteries, which sacrifice a bit of energy density in exchange for safety and resource abundance.

Anyway, check out the NYT article. It’s a month old, but I thought it was an informative read.