There are many algae technology companies out there, but it’s nice to see these two Ontario companies actually doing something outside of the lab in a way that directly meets the needs of industry. In fact, Pond Biofuels has its sights set on China as well. The company revealed in December that its St. Marys project had been approved as part of the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate program. This means it will get funding to do a feasibility study that will assess the suitability of its technology for the cement industry in China.

On the acquisition front, two more promising Ontario cleantech ventures have been plucked up by U.S. firms. On Tuesday Toronto-based biogas maker Stormfisher Biogas announced it had been acquired by Virginia-based Greenhouse Gas Services. Despite having one of the most boring and uninspiring names, Greenhouse Gas Services is a venture of GE Energy Financial Services and AES Corp., so it has some serious backing. The company invests in and develops projects that reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, and it then sells the carbon credits. So here’s my question: If some of the biggest Stormfisher projects are expected to be in Ontario, and since the Ontario Power Authority doesn’t appear to be letting biogas projects keep carbon credits, then what’s in it for Greenhouse Gas Services? I can only speculate that the power authority has quietly decided to let developers keep credits from methane destruction. Something I’ll have to follow up on.

And just today, Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Calisolar announced it had acquired Vaughan, Ontario-based 6N Silicon, a maker of solar-grade silicon that will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary. “In addition, $22.5 million in funding was raised from existing Calisolar and 6N investors,” the companies said in a statement. “The new funds will be used to increase capacity at the Sunnyvale, California cell manufacturing facility and expand silicon purification operations in Vaughan, Ontario.” It’s sad to see 6N fall under foreign ownership so early in its life, but the good news is that Calisolar is likely to set up some module assembly in Ontario to take advantage of the feed-in-tariff program here. Given that its solar cells will contain 6N’s silicon, the company will be well positioned to meet Ontario’s local content requirements and even supply other cell/module makers.

Finally, I have a follow to my story about Vestas and the possibility it will lay roots in Ontario. I spoke Wednesday to the company’s head of global offshore markets, who spoke highly of the Trillium projects and called the opportunity to develop offshore wind in the Great Lakes “fantastic.” He wouldn’t say if Vestas plans to establish manufacturing in Ontario — which isn’t surprising — but given the potential in the Great Lakes, the liklihood of Trillium’s projects moving forward first, and the positive policy and regulatory environment in Ontario (including the feed-in-tariff program, which offers 19 cents per kilowatt-hour for offshore wind power), all the stars are aligned and it’s only a matter of time before Vestas makes its move.

The problem with this conclusion? Clarens based the life-cycle analysis on data that was mostly 10 years old. For example, some current algae cultivation practices, particularly those based on wastewater or sea water, tackle the fertilizer issue head on. So the age of the data is an important bit of information that should have been made very clear in the study — even the abstract. Ten years in the world of technology, particular cleantech, is a long time. I mean, the big R&D push around algae-based fuels only began three or four years ago, and 10 years ago the “cleantech” sector didn’t exist in name. Ten years ago the world was still wrapping its head around Y2K, George W. Bush was just getting into office, Google was still a start-up years from going public, and the TV show CSI (the original one) had its world premiere. In other words, you can expect data about algae cultivation to be, well, rather useless as a reflection of current practices.

This isn’t to blame Clarens. As he told the New York Times’ Green Inc., the most current data out there is simply unavailable to academia. It’s proprietary. “I’d be happy to model it if somebody produces it,” he said. This, of course, is a general problem with a lot of studies looking into lifecycle analyses. Researchers can only go with the data they can get, and perhaps this explains a lot of the earlier controversy around ethanol from corn. It’s still something we want to move away from, but certainly not as bad as guys like David Pimental of Cornell University like to paint it. I’d argue these studies should do two things: make a greater effort of emphasizing data limitations; and make a clear distinction between technologies/processes already deployed and those in pre-commercial phase.

Look at it this way: Can you imagine a study coming out in 2010 comparing different Internet search engines, but basing it on data available in 2000? Now, the Internet isn’t cleantech, but in certain areas there’s no reason to believe that the pace of innovation is any different.

Life-cycle analysis is hugely important work, but if it can’t keep up with innovation then it can become dated before it’s even published.

Most media coverage has highlighted the growth in laptops, mobile devices, servers and routers, but more eye-opening is the coming wave of “smart” grid devices that will need to have their own IP addresses. Thermostats, smart meters, dish washers, laundry machines/dryers, intelligent lighting (in homes and buildings), electric cars — really any appliances or devices or machine that will be controlled remotely through the Internet. Here’s a question I honestly have no answer to: Are energy management and smart grid/appliance companies — General Electric, for example — aware of this coming shortage of IP addresses, and have they taken the necessary measures to avoid the crisis?

Network World had an informative article on this issue in October.

Apparently it’s not difficult to migrate from IPv4 to IPv6, but it does require a lot of investment in software and hardware upgrades. Will the energy sector be caught off guard by this? I’d love to open this up for discussion from some more knowledgeable people… please enlighten us.

To put this into perspective, Electrovaya is still a small fry in the global battery game, pulling in less than $4 million in revenues last year. It’s also an increasingly crowded market, with players like A123, EnerDel, Advanced Lithium, Altair, Panasonic, Boston Power and a slew of others battling for electric-car supremacy. And while it has a history of touting partnerships that haven’t gone anywhere, even if just a fraction bear fruit it could elevate Electrovaya above the noise. And forget about the U.S. market, I’m talking Asia and the deals this company have brokered in India, China and Japan. Just last month it announced an MOU with India’s HEROElectric to jointly developed electric scooters and motorcycles (unlike in China, where electric bicycles are more popular, the East Indian crowd prefers scooters and motorcycles). HEROElectric controls half the market in India for two-wheelers, so it’s not such a bad partner to have. In November it signed another MOU with Japan’s Nippon Kouatsu Electric Co. to co-develop smart grid stationary battery systems based on its Lithium Ion SuperPolymer cell technology, and in late 2008 it signed an MOU with Chana International Corp., China’s third-largest automaker, to develop zero-emission electric cars. Significantly, Chana has joint ventures with Ford, Mazda and Suzuki. Electrovaya is also a partner with India’s Tata Motors as part of a joint-venture to manufacture its  batteries in Norway.

As would be expected, Electrovaya is doing a good job leveraging its own connections to India.

These are all potentially positive announcements. Problem with Electrovaya is that little is known about all these partnerships since their announcement. How is the Norway manufacturing plant progressing? Are the Chinese MOUs moving forward or have they fizzled? That the company has turned a corner by reporting profitability in its fourth quarter, and by announcing some solid revenue growth in 2009, may be a sign that some of the groundwork laid in 2008 and 2009 is beginning to pay off. Certainly a Canadian cleantech company to watch in 2010.

Over the past couple of years, I’m sure you’ve noticed I’ve been more selective about what I write about. I’m largely focused on Canadian happenings and companies, and there’s a reason for that. Few others are covering it. Beyond Canada, there’s no shortage of sites reprocessing press releases, linking to studies, covering announcements, and tracking the latest mergers, IPOs, deals, partnerships and financings. I figure there’s no reason to offer more of what’s already out there. Besides, I have a day job and a young family – I can’t be on top of this stuff 24-hours a day, like many sites now are. If I do cover non-Canadian events, I try to come at it with a different perspective.

There appears to be 15,000 to 20,000 of you who regularly stop by. I hope you’re finding that most of what I offer is information you won’t find elsewhere. As always, I’m open to suggestions.

So again, thank you, have a happy holidays, and more importantly, have a safe and healthy break with family and friends.

Cheers!

Tyler

Meanwhile, Toronto-based Pond Biofuels Inc. says one of its CO2-to-algae demonstration projects has been approved as part of the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate program. The company, in partnership with cement manufacturer St. Marys Cement, has established a microalgae facility that uses CO2 from the neighbouring cement plant as a source of nutrients for the organisms. The algae is then expected to be harvested and used as biomass fuel in the plant’s cement kiln. Pond Biofuels will now get funding under the Asia-Pacific Partnership for a feasibility study that will assess the suitability of its technology for the cement industry in China.

A story I wrote last week for MIT Technology Review takes a look at a new energy-efficient approach to desalination developed by a Vancouver-based startup called Saltworks Technologies. Conventional desalination relies on reverse-osmosis and costly membrane technologies. Pumping the water at high pressure through these desalting membranes takes a lot of energy, which drives up the cost of this form of desalination. Another approach is to evaporate and then condense the water, another energy-intensive approach.

Saltworks has a completely different, and quite novel approach. It starts by using the sun or industrial waste heat to evaporate one pool of seawater until it becomes concentrated with 18 per cent salt (compared to 3.5 per cent for regular seawater). This concentrated stream is pumped into a desalting unit along with three other regular seawater streams. The concentrated stream is connected by specially designed “bridges” to two regular streams, and because it has a higher concentration it is compelled to diffuse its salt content — sodium and chloride — into the weaker streams. But the bridge connecting to the one weaker stream only allows sodium ions, which are positive, to flow through; the bridge connected to the second weaker stream only allows chloride ions, which are negative, to flow through. The end result at this stage is that one of the two weaker streams now has surplus positive ions, mostly sodium, and the other has surplus negative ions, mostly chloride. The two streams, now out of balance and eager to pick up ions of opposite charge, are separately “bridged” to the third regular seawater stream. The one stream with surplus positive ions strips the third stream of all its negative ions, and the second stream with surplus negative ions strips the third stream of all its positive ions. This leaves the third stream completely stripped of all ions — i.e. it’s de-ionized, or pure drinking water.

It’s a brilliant process because most of the energy that’s required comes at the front end through evaporation, which is accomplished in a low-tech way with abundant solar energy, or waste heat from a neighbouring industrial facility. The rest is accomplished through electrochemical reactions requiring no outside energy source. If Saltworks can scale this approach up, it could bring cheap desalination to the many parts of the world that need it.

Not recharging SDTC’s fund would be unfortunate, in light of recent momentum around investment in climate innovation. SDTC isn’t perfect. Small companies routinely complain of the complexity of the application process, and how they simply don’t have the time or resources to commit to jumping through hoops when that time could be better devoted to the innovation that funding is intended to support. Still, SDTC has played a vital role in helping emerging ventures get through the “valley of death” — that funding chasm that many startups fall into just when they’re prepared to demonstrate and commercialize their products. For this reason, SDTC and its continued funding path is considered crucial to the health and success of Canada’s cleantech sector.

The Wall Street Journal has a good story here that puts the whole issue into perspective. It’s not that China doesn’t have its problems, and it could certainly benefit from some homegrown innovation, but there’s no question that China’s manufacturing might is beginning to expand into cleantech and the country is taking the economic opportunity — against the backdrop of climate change — very seriously. It should not be underestimated. Solar. Wind. Electric bikes. Electric cars. Batteries. Carbon capture. Watch out…