The Conference Board of Canada came out with a report today that assesses the economic benefits to Ontario of developing offshore wind in the Great Lakes. Here’s my story in the Toronto Star. Specifically, it estimates job creation and the boost to GDP that would occur by developing 2,000 megawatts of offshore wind projects between 2013 and 2016. This, the board said, is a conservative estimate — much more could be developed over time. But even at just 2,000 megawatts, it estimated the creation of at least 55,000 person-years of employment and at least a $4.8-billion boost to the province’s GDP. This amount of offshore development would also attract more than $10 billion in private investment. Mind you, this is all based on a minimum local content requirement of 55 per cent. As of Jan. 1, 2012, Ontario will have a 50 per cent local content requirement for wind — so the assessment isn’t far off reality.

I like the idea of pursuing offshore wind, and here’s why: It’s new. It’s a chance for Ontario to be a true pioneer in North America by establishing an early foothold. With solar and onshore wind we’re playing catchup, we’re competing with Silicon Valley and the Chinese, and we”ll never truly be a centre for innovation and manufacturing. With solar we’re also vulnerable when subsidies dry up, as jobs and manufacturing are more mobile. 

With offshore wind, however, we benefit immediately by our geography. Ontario borders all but one Great Lake. Of all bordering jurisdictions Ontario has the most offshore development potential. Ontario has concrete and steel making, the skills and the infrastructure to support an embrace of offshore wind manufacturing and supporting services. A good deal of the supply chain could be established here. As the conference board report attests, the job creation potential is strong and we can leverage existing industries and also boost the more mature onshore wind market in Ontario.

Ontario already has a feed-in-tariff for offshore wind — the first on the continent — that offers 19 cents per kilowatt-hour, less than half the cost of developing multimegawatt solar projects in Ontario. It’s consistent with what Massachusetts utility National Grid has agreed to pay for offshore wind power from the Cape Wind project (18.7 cents U.S. per kilowatt-hour). This may sound expensive, but as some have said, this is an investment in a modern-day Niagara Falls. It might sound like a lot today, but it’s creating an infrastructure that decades from now will look cheap by comparison. Also, new nuclear power plants aren’t expected to be much cheaper.

Here, by the way, is a brief report on what’s going on in Europe and along the U.S. Atlantic coast, courtesy of Forbes blogger William Pentland.

I want to emphasize that this Conference Board report was sponsored by Vestas SA, which has an interest in entering the North American offshore wind market. The Conference Board, however, has a strong reputation for being independent, non-partisan and objective with its research. I guess such a report wouldn’t have been done had someone in the industry not stepped up to pay for it. I don’t think the Conference Board has anything to gain by writing a pro-offshore report; it would consider its credibility as an organization much more important. With that, I’m willing to trust that its conclusions are completely independent.

I’ve written about Montreal-based CO2 Solution in the past — over the past 10 years, in fact — and I’ve wondered if this company is ever going to achieve commercial success with its novel carbon-capture technology. The company’s technology is based on carbonic anhydrase, an enzyme in the human body and all animals that processes carbon dioxide. CO2 Solution has genetically engineered the e.coli bacterium to reproduce the enzyme for its own purposes.

Here’s how CO2 gets processed as it travels through the body, according to WiseGeek: “Carbon dioxide is produced from aerobic respiration and the breakdown of fats. It is removed from the body by exhalation from the lungs. The carbon dioxide produced throughout the body needs to be transported through the blood to get to the lungs. It is transported in several forms, primarily as bicarbonate (HCO3) with an OH group attached. When the bicarbonate reaches the lungs, it is transformed back to carbon dioxide, so it can be exhaled from the body.”

The carbonic anhydrase enzyme is largely responsible for this conversion from CO2 to HCO3 back to CO2. CO2 Solution has adapted it as part of a solution that extracts CO2 from industrial and power plant flue gases and turns it into an inert bicarbonate, which can then be turned into other products or simply disposed. The company did have a past R&D relationship with Babcock & Wilcox but that arrangement has since fizzled, I believe. Recently, along with strategic partner Codexis, it announced a new joint-development partnership, this one with Alstom SA, the third-largest power-equipment maker in the world.

CO2 Solutions is among a group of companies, including Skyonic and Calera, that see the future of carbon capture as the mineralization of CO2 into useful products, rather than the simple capturing of gaseous CO2 that is compressed and then pumped underground for long-term storage. These companies, along with CO2 Solution/Alcoa, have received Recovery Act funding in the U.S. dedicated to “concepts for the beneficial use of CO2.”

The goal is to reduce the cost and energy-intensity of capturing CO2 and at the same time turn a “waste” into a revenue-generating product. See this recent article about Skyonic in GreentechMedia, and this article about Calera in the New York Times.

I know saying is not doing, and that’s certainly true in democratic countries that are politically polarized, but when China says it’s going to do something, you can be sure it’s going to try. The world’s largest emitter of CO2 may not be signing onto any international climate treaties, but don’t confuse that for inaction. The country has committed over the next 10 years to building enough renewable-energy capacity that it could serve a country the size of Canada four times over. As we squabble about how to combat emissions and how to move forward in the green economy, China is doing. We can blame China for its current emissions, which are indirectly caused by us, since it’s the insatiable consumerism of western society that’s driving those emissions; or, we can see China’s drive to deploy renewable energy as a reason to up our game. If you want to get a sense of what China has planned, click here. We need to get our collective heads out of the oil sands and start building the future, not basing our future on an addiction to the past.

Earth2Tech has a fair and balanced report that examines some of the challenges and growing pains associated with Ontario’s feed-in-tariff program, with particular reference to the high prices being paid out for solar. Read article here. The article is based on comments made by Patricia Lightburn, an analyst with the Ontario Power Authority. She talks about some of the concerns I have with the program — that  it can’t react fast enough to changes in the market (i.e. solar-module price drops over the past two years) and it didn’t set caps on solar that trigger price reviews. The two-year price review schedule just doesn’t cut it, and while hindsight is 20/20 it probably would have been prudent to have bi-annual price reviews or have reviews triggered when project applications reach a specific cap, which is lifted when new prices are set.

I certainly hope these issues are discussed at the upcoming Canadian Solar Industries Association annual conference in Toronto next week. I also hope that in addition to the celebration of how quickly the Ontario solar market is growing, they also thank Ontario consumers who are making it all possible and offer insight into how long they’ll be asked to prop up an industry that, while bringing jobs and clean energy to the province, must eventually demonstrate it can stand on its own. I’m also guessing we’ll get a believable (i.e. not exaggerated) update on how many jobs in the solar industry have been created so far, and are expected to be created, in the coming years. Next year, by all measures, will be a very important year for the FIT program as we’ll start to see more concrete evidence of this job creation. It will also be an opportunity to make changes to the FIT program that strike the right balance between green energy development, job creation and cost to ratepayers.

On the topic of green energy, Siemens announced it will establish a wind-blade manufacturing facility in Tillsonburg, creating 300 direct jobs. The plant is being built as part of its agreement to supply 600 megawatts of wind turbines to Samsung C&T and its development partner, Pattern Energy. I’m more bullish about manufacturing announcements on the wind side of the equation, partly because there tends to be more permanence  to the wind-turbine supply chain and we can leverage this supply chain and associated infrastructure as we explore the offshore wind market, which is where I think Ontario could establish an early foothold — unlike in solar — and sustained leadership in the North American market.

A shout out to my local ice cream shop. I live in the Beach, a part of Toronto that local folks flood to in the summer to catch some rays, walk kilometres of boardwalk, play volleyball, suntan on vast stretches of Lake Ontario beachfront, and, of course, eat ice cream. It’s a very pleasant neighbourhood, and when it comes to ice cream, it is well served by Ed’s Real Scoop, an area landmark. Ed Francis, owner of the shop, decided recently that solar energy and ice cream were a match made in heaven. After all, business boomed when it was hot and the sun was shining, and that’s when solar panels are most productive. So he decided to have solar-thermal panels and solar PV panels installed above his shop, which supply hot water and simultaneously generate green electricity, which is sold onto the grid as part of Ontario’s feed-in-tariff program. Village Technologies and SolSmart Energy handled the install.

“People in the neighbourhood have started noticing the panels and are excited,” says Ed. “The publicity and buzz is great for my business, but even better is knowing that on sunny days more customers are coming in and I get all my hot water for free, plus (I’m) making additional revenues by selling electricity into the grid.”

Mmm… ice cream. Just wishing, as I write this, it wasn’t snowing outside.