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.

Hamilton, energy and technology writer for the Toronto Star, examines some of the latest, most far-out green energy innovations and the people behind them. How far-out? Take, for example, a retired engineer’s idea to produce electricity via an artificial tornado, or a plan for a space-based power station that would harvest the sun’s energy, using microwaves to beam it down to earth. Other gizmos and processes seem more amenable to commercial success and social acceptance: Hamilton tells of a secretive company called EEStor that claims to have made a breakthrough in energy storage, and of a team building a low-cost nuclear fusion reactor. He strikes a fine balance between hope and hard realism when considering barriers to energy transition. As the “tornado guy” says, upon considering financial and regulatory obstacles: “Holy crap, that’s a lot to get through.” VERDICT: Mad Like Tesla is easy to get through, even for readers with only a basic knowledge of energy issues. Hamilton makes complex technologies comprehensible, and he clearly enjoys the remarkable human stories behind the science. Many of the risk takers and visionaries portrayed are Canadian (rocker Neil Young makes a cameo appearance!), but this book’s strong appeal should transcend all borders.

Can’t complain with that. The book is scheduled for public release on Sept. 1 and is already available for pre-order on a number of sites, including Amazon.com/Amazon.ca and Indigo.ca. The book won’t break the bank, either. We decided to do paperback release on first run to make the book more accessible to a larger audience. You can likely pick it up for $13 or so. I built a Web site I’m not entirely happy with, so plan to have a newly designed site finished by the end of August. Stay tuned!

For some reason, a large percentage of the population really dig getting Air Miles. There’s trophy value to them, and while they’re worth much less than cash itself, members of the Air Miles program seem to treasure these rewards more than cash. An odd phenomenon, but a good one. That’s because for government agencies and utilities and transit authorities, handing out Air Miles in exchange for good behaviour is much cheaper than handing out cash in the form of discounts and rebates. And because they’re partnered up with LoyaltyGroup, which has direct access to and detailed information on nearly three-quarters of Canadian households (i.e. about 10 million), it gives them a less expensive yet highly more targeted way to reach out to consumers — at least when compared to that relatively ineffective and expensive medium called advertising. The Ontario Power Authority, the first agency to work with Air Miles on such a program to encourage energy conservation, found that it spent two-thirds less but got seven times the results compared to its advertising- and rebates-based approach a year earlier. You’ll get more details on that if you read the column.

Since working with the OPA, Air Miles for Social Change has run with the concept and now has about 25 similar programs on the go across Canada. It’s catching on.

It’s not that issuing rewards for good behaviour is an entirely new thing. It’s what Toronto’s Lowfoot.com is doing, as well as New York City-based Efficiency 2.0 — both focused on energy management for consumers. But what Air Miles brings to the equation, at least in Canada, is unmatched reach into households. And with that comes the power to influence positive change with carrots instead of sticks — not that we don’t need both.

Watch and laugh… only because it’s so true!

Sadly, the environmental reporter has become an endangered species. I heard yesterday that the Oregonian just disbanded its environmental reporting team and made them all into general assignment reporters. Also yesterday Keith Johnson announced that his Wall Street Journal blog Environmental Capital was “closing its virtual doors.” In October, the prestigious Columbia School of Journalism announced it had stopped accepting applications for its Earth and Environmental Science Journalism program because of “the current weakness in the job market for environmental journalists.” In a letter to its faculty, the school wrote “media organizations across the country are in dire financial straits and thousands of journalists’ jobs have been eliminated. Science and environment beats have been particularly vulnerable.”

Again, this is all happening at a time when we need this kind of experienced coverage most, and when governments and the business community both are giving environmental issues more attention than ever. My own newspaper, the Toronto Star, used to have two environmental reporters a year ago. Through newsroom attrition both positions are vacant, but given plans to downsize the newsroom there appears no desire to fill those spots. It’s discouraging to say the least.

But, hell, we can all take comfort that Sarah Palin is joining Fox News.

By positioning smart meters as more of an infrastructure play the cost of deployment can be simply incorporated into annual capital budgets and households are more resigned to the fact that getting the new device is mandatory. Let’s face it, initially smart meters are about helping utilities manage their networks better — i.e. they can pinpoint problems and do more detailed analysis of individual household, neighbourhood, and community power consumption, improving system planning and maintenance operations and preparing utilities for increased distributed generation in their service territories.

By making this seem like some gift to consumers, as has been done, utilities open themselves up to consumers expecting certain results and wanting the option of getting or not getting the smart meter. I witness this every day in the e-mails I get and conversations I have with disgruntled Toronto Hydro customers. Later, once the smart meter infrastructure is in place, the utility can begin deploying the in-home monitors and Web applications that allow customers, on an optional basis, to better take advantage of time-of-use pricing and demand-response programs. This, of course, needs to be preceded by gradual price hikes that are blamed on the rising cost of new generation and grid renewal so that consumers more clearly see smart-meter-enabled applications as a way to offset those inevitable increases (which are simply the reality of our times, not the cause of smart meters).

So how, as my subject line hints, does time-of-use pricing potentially undermine programs that promote the uptake of domestic solar hot-water systems? I have one of these systems on my roof, and I like it. It works well. I’m not sure I use enough water every month to justify the payback (disclosure: I’m part of a pilot program, so when I say “payback” I’m referring to the typical installed cost of these systems), but it’s nice to know the hot water we use for our dishwasher, showers, and occasionally our laundry can come from the sun, not natural gas. But here’s the problem with time-of-use pricing. If I want to run the laundry or dishwasher when the hot water in my house is completely heated by the sun, I must do it during what are typically peak times under time-of-use schedules. It means I pay double for the electricity so I can save on the natural gas. Alternatively, I can do the laundry during off-peak hours when power is cheap, but the sun is down and my water tank relies more on natural gas.

So, it seems, this is a classic case of the law of unintended consequences — two programs aimed at reducing our use of non-renewable energy that end up undermining their respective objectives. This is a good argument against mandatory time-of-use pricing. At the very least, it’s a good argument for retail electricity providers such as Direct Energy, Bullfrog Power, and others who offer fixed-rate pricing. Using green-energy retailer Bullfrog Power, for example, is a nice complement to solar thermal because you pay the same rate for green electricity at any time of the day so are not penalized for running your dishwasher or laundry machine in the afternoon on a sunny day.

Creating .eco as an Internet address extension could be beneficial, but it could also enable corporate greenwashing. And major questions are bound to emerge, like: Can you register www.coal.eco or www.climatechangeisahoax.eco? The good news is that both groups want to take a portion of proceeds from the sale of these new addresses and donate them to environmental causes. It will be interesting to see as 2010 approaches whether any other bidders come out of the woodwork.

UPDATE: The folks at Dot Eco LLC were upset that I didn’t include a comment from them in the above story, so I gave them a chance to comment on this blog post. Here’s what Minor Childers, co-founder of Dot Eco LLC, had to say:

Key findings:

• Doubling of jobs by 2011.
• Industry shortage of installers right now.
• By 2011 there will also be a shortage of system designers, project managers and engineers.
• Recommendation to increase training and relevant curricula.

My guess is that most of these shortages and job opportunities will be created in Ontario, given the province’s Green Energy Act and progressive feed-in tariff program.