My latest Clean Break column takes at look at C100 CleanTech, a group of ex-pat executives and investors based in Silicon Valley who are opening up their California network to the best and brightest Canadian clean technology entrepreneurs, at the same time giving them a chance to break out of their Canadian cocoon and get exposure to the larger world of opportunities around them.

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Tyler Hamilton

Another year, another global ranking of the world’s most anticipated clean technology companies, and once again Canadian entrepreneurs in this field remain largely invisible to the outside world.

I’m referring to the release this week of the 2011 Global Cleantech 100, put out by research and investor organization the Cleantech Group.

Last year I lamented that only two Canadian companies made the list: Montreal-based Enerkem, which turns municipal solid waste into ethanol; and Vancouver-based Ostara Nutrient Recovery Technologies, which extracts phosphorous and other nutrients from municipal waste water and turns it into high-grade fertilizer.

Both are excellent companies that deserved the recognition, but they’re certainly not entirely representatives of the amazing clean technology innovations coming out of Canada — or even Toronto for that matter.

In this year’s U.S.-centric ranking, we didn’t fare much better. Ostara was back on the list. Enerkem got the boot.

Two new ventures were added: Another B.C.-based company, Nexterra, which turns wood waste into a type of fuel called “syngas”; and FilterBoxx Water and Environmental, a Calgary-based firm with a water and waste water treatment technology designed for use in remote locations with harsh climates.

Seems the only thing Canadians gets recognized for beyond our borders is our ability to treat waste or turn it into fuel or fertilizer. Not a bad thing, but we have so much more to offer.

Jonathan Quick, a self-described “proud Canadian” now working at Silicon Valley-based VantagePoint Capital Partners, one of the top clean tech-focused U.S. venture capital firms, says there’s huge opportunity for Canadian entrepreneurs to be recognized as world leaders in clean technology.

“We are an understated nation,” says Quick, who works closely with VantagePoint co-founder and chief executive Alan Salzman, also a Canadian. Both men grew up in Toronto.

“We have this heightened sense of fair play, and we’ve been afraid to pick winners,” Quick adds. “But this is a game, and other countries are picking winners. We need to do the same.”

VantagePoint is a member of C100, a not-for-profit group created two years ago by Chris Albinson and Anthony Lee, Canadian ex-pats working in Silicon Valley who, from a distance, thought technology entrepreneurs from Canada weren’t getting enough support at home or recognition abroad.

True to the name, the group’s aim was to create a network of 100 charter members who would agree to reach out to Canadian entrepreneurs, bring them down to California, offer mentorship and introduce them to potential partners as a way to accelerate their business development and growth.

The group now includes top executives from Apple, Cisco, eBay, Google, Microsoft and Facebook, reflecting its emphasis on Web 2.0 and information technology.

Clean technology, however, is a different beast with unique needs, so earlier this year Quick — representing VantagePoint — suggested that a splinter group be set up specifically to support the Canadian cleantech scene.

The result was the creation of C100 CleanTech, which has been operating since September and will have its formal launch in Toronto on Nov. 17.

Soon after, as part of a program called “48 hours in the Valley,” the group will select eight to 10 Canadian clean tech startups and invite them down “for two days of intense mentorship, partnership and networking events,” according to program director Atlee Clark.

Companies that can address a $1 billion or greater market, have the potential to be a $500 million business, and have a commercial product or service within 12 months can apply before Oct. 30 at www.theC100.org/cleantech.

“We really want to go out and find the best of the best, and help them take their business to the next level,” says Clark.

It’s still early days for the global clean tech sector, and there are few clearly defined leaders in the field. “Canada has just as much potential to be there,” says Quick. “There’s a real opportunity to build those billion-dollar companies.”

Perhaps it takes an ex-pat to see the opportunity so clearly.

Tyler Hamilton, author of Mad Like Tesla, writes weekly about green energy and clean technologies. Contact him at tyler@cleanbreak.ca

In my book Mad Like Tesla I have a chapter on a company called General Fusion, which is making what is in essence a mechanical fusion reactor — a thermonuclear diesel engine, if you will — using $50 million or so in government grants and venture capital, some of which has come from Amazon.com founder and CEO Jeff Bezos. General Fusion says it can do with tens of millions and within a few years what large, bureaucratic international consortia, such as ITER, aim to do with many billions over at least a couple of decades.

But enough about GF. You can read the book for that.

I mention this because as part of the chapter I go into a bit of history around nuclear fusion, and specifically some of the past scandals related to cold-fusion claims — e.g. Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann’s public claim in 1989 that they had achieved a cold fusion reaction in their university lab. If you can’t remember the day of that event, just go on YouTube to view the original news conference. The media was abuzz, and the world thought we finally had the solution to the world’s growing energy crisis. Yay! Except, wait, nobody else could replicate it and after a few months government scientists put out a comprehensive report that said Pons and Fleischmann’s claim lacked “convincing evidence.”

The two scientists, tails under their legs, walked out of the limelight and the quest for “cold fusion” was, as far as the mainstream media were concerned, a dead end.

Except is wasn’t a dead end. Since then there have been many serious and not-so-serious scientists quietly labouring away on cold fusion. One of the most prominent is Peter Hagelstein, an associate professor of electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The group, generally, is shunned by the mainstream scientific community, and yes, spurned by a media still stinging more than two decades after Pons and Fleischmann.

But it will be interesting to see how long they will stay out of this story, considering the progress Italian scientists Andrea Rossi and Sergio Focardi are apparently making.

Back in January 2011 the two men demonstrated their own cold fusion apparatus, which they claim fuses nuclei of nickel and hydrogen to produce copper and huge amounts of excess energy. The device is being called the E-Cat, which stands for “energy catalyzer.” According to the site E-Cat World, which was created to follow the work of Rossi and Focardi, “The E-Cat is a device in which hydrogen gas, powdered nickel metal, and an undisclosed catalyst are combined to produce a large amount of heat through a little understood low-energy nuclear reaction (LENR) process inside a specially designed chamber… In this process, when an external heat source is applied (electric or fossil) it is claimed that the nucleus of a hydrogen atom, a proton, penetrates a nickel nucleus and in doing so a nickel atom becomes a copper atom, and releases a large amount of thermal energy” — much more than the energy that goes into the process. That heat, of course, is used just like any heat source to drive a steam generator that produces electricity.

Furthermore, no radioactive waste is created from the process and no CO2 is released, it is claimed.

Honestly, I don’t know what Rossi and Focardi have, but they have attracted much attention in the blogosphere — no surprise there — and have conducted a number of demonstrations in front of scientists, such as two Swedish physicists who — while still skeptical — have admitted that the reaction is real and not based on chemical reactions.

I write all of this now because, as he promised earlier this year, Rossi has plans to demonstrate a 1-megawatt version of his technology later in October, and possibly as early as Oct. 6 will test a single E-Cat unit in Uppsala, Sweden. Apparently a number of scientists from around the world — and some select journalists — have been invited to attend. The demonstration of the 1 -megawatt plant will be interesting, as this is being positioned as a pre-commercial demonstration. Something to watch for, certainly, and the outcome of this larger 1-megawatt demonstration could either reinforce the skepticism toward the cold fusion concept or, after 20 years, finally attract the attention of the mainstream media.

Stay tuned. In the meantime, it’s worth watching this 60 Minutes show from spring 2009 — one of the rare detailed looks by a mainstream media outlet at the state of cold-fusion research. It cited research from the U.S. Pentagon, specifically the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which found after a thorough analysis of the research that “there no doubt that anomolous excess heat is produced from these experiments.”

Also in the show, Robert Duncan, vice-chancellor of research at the University of Missouri and an expert in energy measurement, said he was a cold-fusion skeptic until he took a closer look at the data. He’s now convinced that we should be taking seriously some of the research in the field. “To say we don’t fundamentally understand the process, and that’s why we’re not going to study it, it’s like saying we’re too sick to go to the doctor,” he says, encouraging the mainstream scientific community to do their homework before making knee-jerk dismissals. “Read the published results, talk to the scientists, and never let anybody else do your thinking for you.”

I’ll report back later in October with an update on the Rossi and Focardi demonstration.

Just one more note: the term cold fusion is thrown around loosely now to encompass any kind of non-chemical reaction in a relatively ambient-temperature environment that can’t be easily explained. Defined narrowly, what Rossi and Focardi are attempting to do may not even be cold fusion — or even just fusion. But it’s something that may be producing much more energy than goes in. The same can be said for BlackLight Power, which claims it has a catalyst-driven process that turns hydrogen atoms into what the company calls hydrinos. The process of turning hydrogen to hydrinos releases an enormous amount of energy, according to the company — another venture to watch.

Calling each of these innovations a form of “cold fusion” is the equivalent of calling the research crackpot science, and this does a disservice to those individuals who are devoting their life and labours to exploring these energy unknowns. Perhaps one day we can move beyond the cold fusion label and the memories of Pons and Fleischmann and give this broad area of research a more committed, objective look. We need more of this kind of exploration and experimentation, not less. We should cautiously praise it; not ridicule and ignore.

General Fusion, of course, is far from a cold fusion play — though anything considered unconventional fusion is often wrongly tossed into the cold fusion bucket. What General Fusion is attempting is a lower-cost mechanical approach to fusion that takes the best of magnetic fusion (ITER) and intertial confinement fusion (U.S. National Ignition Facility) — i.e. a hybrid approach known as magnetized target fusion.

Keep your eyes on General Fusion as well, and on the fusion field in general. Often written off as that forever-emerging but never-emerging technology, there are significant advancements coming down the pipeline — sooner than many people think.

It’s shameless self promotion, I know, but this is how you create awareness of books, and the point of writing Mad Like Tesla was to create awareness of the innovation going on around clean energy and the immense barriers inventors and entrepreneurs face. I also wanted to celebrate those much-needed risk takers in society, without whom we will never have the kind of breakthroughs necessary to tackle our energy demons. It’s part of the reason I write and have maintained this Clean Break blog for the past six years, without financial gain. It’s a labour of love, as time consuming as it often can be.

Mad Like Tesla: Underdog Inventors and Their Relentless Pursuit of Clean Energy was launched this month and has been well-received. The reviews so far have been positive, and awareness of the book is slowly building. But not fast enough. I want to take this moment to ask my readers, many of whom have already purchased the book (thank you!), to help spread the word. Share this link or the Mad Like Tesla website (www.madliketesla.com) on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Refer to it when commenting on the various blogs you might follow. And for my media friends out there — whether in the mainstream press or the blogosphere — please consider a review, or alternatively, I’m happy to chat about the many odd and inspiring stories in this book. Please see press release here.

Thank you all for your ongoing interest and support. BTW: Many have asked, so I’m happy to report that the e-book version of Mad Like Tesla is now available at Amazon.com.

The following post comes from Tom Rand (PEng, PhD), director of VCi Green Funds and author of Kick the Fossil Fuel Habit.

Fast forward to the year 2030: Canada and the U.S., driven by energy and climate security, have invested hundreds of billions in a continent-wide low-carbon Energy Internet. Vast wind and solar farms, biogas and geothermal power plants, spread across the continent feed that grid. So do countless smart buildings, energy storage facilities and electric vehicles. Will Ontario be a net seller, or buyer, of that technology? The answer depends largely on how, and if, the Green Energy Act (GEA) rolls out. It’s the Liberals, and not the NDP or Conservatives, who are promoting the policies that will ensure Ontario is positioned to become a major manufacturer and producer of clean technology.

The Conservatives would kill the GEA. This is the economic mistake of a lifetime. Clean energy technology is a bigger opportunity today than the microchip was in 1960, or the automobile in the 1940s. Those two sectors took off with strategic government support. The Interstate Highway System and subsequent Autopact grew the automotive sector, and initial demand from the academic and military communities seeded what became Silicon Valley. Entire industries do not emerge from nowhere, and clean energy is no different. The GEA places Ontario firmly at the forefront of the single largest global market of the 21^st century. Killing the GEA, as Hudak as promised, is very short-sighted.

The GEA is big business, and a good deal for taxpayers. Currently 7,400 MW of power are contracted which could power 1.9 million homes. This represents $26 billion in investment. What’s the cost to the taxpayer? The equivalent of a coffee and doughnut added to your bill every month.

To deliver on the promise of jobs, the GEA must do three things. It must engage and motivate the private sector, remove as many hurdles to clean energy projects as possible, and most importantly – provide a long-term, steady hand on the tiller. The NDP’s proposed policy does none of these.

The NDP would have Ontario Power Generation (OPG) own and operate all clean energy projects over 20 MW.  That represents about 70% of all contracted projects. It’s out with the private sector, and in with the public. This brings back the days when large central government agencies had a virtual monopoly on power production. That’s not the way to build a globally competitive industry. Large, private sector players – whether it’s TransAlta or Samsung – must be at the table if we are to create an industry that can grow to compete on the global stage.

When Samsung comes to Ontario, they will not only build and operate large clean energy projects. They will establish manufacturing facilities, and – just like the Ford plants in Ontario – this will create the capacity, and the jobs that come with it – to sell across North America. Samsung, like Ford, will outsource most of the components, spurring the growth of a large supporting ecosystem of companies right across the province. That’s what the big players bring to the table, and we cut them out of the picture at our peril.

To placate wind energy opponents, the NDP have also indicated they would give back a municipal veto on energy projects. The health concerns cited by many opponents of wind energy are nonsense, as any review of the medical literature reveals. Pandering to a small, but vocal minority, would kill many projects before the shovel is in the ground.

Most importantly, what the private sector needs to see is continuity. The veto and the change to public ownership of large projects introduce the worst sort of political risk. Whether it’s entrepreneurs or the big banks, the private sector will only step up if they can be assured the rules will stay the same. By broadcasting that they will change the fundamental dynamics of the policy, the NDP’s policy will have the renewable energy industry heading for the hills.

Ontario has established a lead in ensuring that we will be a seller into the emerging, global clean energy economy.  When Michael Prue, NDP MPP for Beaches and East York says “You can get [clean energy] for half if you buy it from Quebec as opposed to putting up the wind farm” he shows the NDP just don’t get how to create the New Economy jobs of the future. It’s not about the cheapest electrons today. It’s about who gets to make the clean electrons tomorrow.

Now, I’m not sure how big of a deal this is, but it may come in handy for Canadian cleantech firms looking to research the California market, make some connections with VCs, and seek out some potentially fruitful partnerships. The Canadian government formally launched what it calls the Clean Technology Accelerator program in San Jose, California. Specifically, it operates out of San Jose’s Environmental Business Cluster, described as a “cleantech business incubator that specializes in providing commercialization support and facilities for emerging clean energy and environmental technology companies.”

It’s not a new approach for the Canadian government. It has extended this kind of support to other emerging sectors since 2009 and, according to the feds, has helped out 66 companies. The difference here is that it’s focused on cleantech. So what does this program offer? Basically a place for Canadian-based companies to hang their hat for up to three months, giving them office space free of charge in an environment of like-minded entrepreneurs. There, they can also be introduced to various mentors, advisers and industry leaders in California, and participate in matchmaking and investor events.

Every little bit helps.