Perhaps there’s more to this story that wasn’t revealed by 60 Minutes, but there are many companies out there working on this kind of fuel cell so I don’t see what’s particularly special or unique about Bloom Energy. More details are expected to be released on Wednesday, however, so maybe then my questions will be answered.

In the meantime, would someone out there please enlighten me?

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.

After three and a half years of extensive study, which included exhaustive consultation with industry experts and review of peer-reviewed literature, the policy think tank released a report yesterday that says the nuclear industry will have a hard enough time just replacing older reactors in the existing global fleet. Fact is, nuclear’s contribution to the global power mix since 2000 has fallen, as has the number of reactors in the fleet. Meanwhile, 2008 was the first year since the mid-1950s that no new nuclear reactor was connected to the grid. There have been refurbishments and life extensions, and there has been a lot of talk about building new reactors, but so far the massive, fast-paced expansion the industry has touted simply isn’t materializing. There will be some modest growth, but CIGI doesn’t expect nuclear will play a major role in combatting climate change before 2030. Between now and then, it also says alternatives — solar, wind, energy efficiency, conservation, smart grid technologies — will gain momentum and may ultimately prevent nuclear projects from getting a foothold. “Research and development is proceeding at such a pace for most of these alternatives that improvements in performance and cost will likely arrive faster than for nuclear technology,” the study concluded.

Think about it: by 2030 it’s quite possible we’ll have energy storage breakthroughs that give intermittant renewables baseload characteristics, but instead of deploying them in massive multibillion-dollar chunks, they could be part of a distributed energy system that locates power closer to consumers, and deploys it quickly and when needed.

CIGI lists a number of issues that have held back expansion of the nuclear power market:

• High upfront cost — reactors that can cost up to $10 billion a piece.
• Labour shortages resulting from boomer retirements and lack of investment in training and education.
• Long construction lead time.
• High risk of cost overruns and delay.
• High reliance on government subsidies and public backstopping.
• Ongoing concerns with waste management.
• Alternatives becoming increasingly more competitive.

Now, the nuclear industry isn’t oblivious to these issues, and indeed, there is a move underway to build smaller reactors that can be built more quickly, on time, and at a more manageable cost and pace. Also, these mini reactors would fit better into a distributed generation model, and attempts at developing small thorium-fuelled reactors would address waste management and nuclear proliferation concerns. CIGI acknowledged these developments, but said we’re not likely to see thorium reactors or mini-reactors being adopted in any significant way before 2030 — again, too late to be relied on for climate-change mitigation.

All this said, there will be growth — in China, in India, and a handful of other countries — and there will be refurbishments. This should keep the industry busy for the next couple of decades. No jobs are likely at risk here. Over the long term, however, the future of the nuclear industry would appear more uncertain.

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.

Like many secretive Kleiner Perkins investments — EEStor, for example — let’s hope the hype and promise leads to something truly disruptive. Speaking of EEStor, tick, tick, tick… the end of the year fast approaches.

Certainly a big mission, but after chatting with Cody Friesen, Arizona State professor and founder of Fluidic, I quickly realized it’s not mission impossible. And it gave me great hope that five or 10 years from now, whether it’s Fluidic or EEStor or Premium Power or some other company, the big breakthrough we’re looking for will happen. And that, my friends, is an exciting thing.

I urge you to read this story on MIT Technology Review, posted today, which explains what Fluidic is doing and why it may overcome many of the challenges that have dogged the commercial, mass-market introduction of rechargeable metal-air batteries.

But here’s the tricky part: plug-in vehicles that use lithium-ion chemistries are just now beginning to enter the market, and slowly. We’re not likely to see any kind of meaningful volume until about 2012. And then there’s a 10-year wait before most of these batteries get to a point where they need to be recycled. This long delay makes it difficult for a startup to enter the recycling business, so Toxco has an edge because it can simply scale up as volume builds.

Now, there’s a big debate in the industry about whether we’ll have enough lithium carbonate to supply what’s expected to be a massive market over the next decade. If you believe we’ll run into supply problems, then recycling is a pretty good thing to have as a way to reduce dependence on foreign lithium suppliers, such as Russia, China, and Bolivia. But even if there’s plentyof lithium to supply the market for the next few decades (after all, the amount of lithium used in an electric car battery is quite small), we still need to recycle the batteries if we truly want these cars to be “green.” So Toxco is in a very good position.

The president of Paradigm confirmed what happened but said it’s not known how the recording made it onto the Internet. ZENN, meanwhile, is arguing that the information within the interview is not material or was disclosed previously, so while the leak is embarrassing it’s not breaking any rules. Of course, I’m sure many of you out there who have heard the recording or read the script would beg to differ. It will be interesting to see how this controversy unfolds, and whether financial regulators in Canada decide to look into it further.

(NOTE: The video on Yahoo has been disabled, not surprisingly. But someone over at TheEEStory.com has kindly supplied a transcript.)

Mr. Weir probably had no clue the person interviewing him would post this on the Internet, but it appeared just a few hours ago. Weir talks about the history of EEStor, how he hooked up with Ian Clifford at ZENN Motors, the relationship with Lockheed, and the status of EEStor’s ultracapacitor development. Weir says there’s really nothing standing in the way now from commercial production, and that pre-production of EESU units will begin in the fourth quarter. This is a lengthy, very detailed phone interview, and I don’t believe Weir would be talking this way if he wasn’t confident in the road ahead. It sounds like, from the interview, that somebody is trying to profile EEStor and Weir — perhaps, maybe, for a documentary that’s being made?

(NOTE: I’ve spoken with Dick Weir several times by telephone. This is his voice in the interview, 100 per cent, for those who wonder if it’s some kind of impersonation hoax.)

A few nuggets:

* Says Kleiner Perkin’s owns “20-something per cent” of the company.

* Weir says he and his co-founders still own controlling interest in the company.

* On Lockheed: “I’m really in deep with Lockheed Martin.” He said Lockheed has no investment, but relationship goes way back.

* On EEStor’s value: “If we make an EESU… God only knows what we’ll be valued then.”

* He has two patents on grid-load levelling. “You can put 45 per cent more electricity on the grid and do nothing more than put our batteries on there…. that electricity could supply the electricity to the electric vehicle market as it emerges… we make wind and solar real… you can make a wind farm operate like a coal-fired plant and it’s really cost-effective.”

* On storage for PCs and handhelds. “We can take a battery for a cellphone and give you three to five times more energy storage that would never degrade on you and you can charge in seconds.”

* Electric vehicles: “It’s going to take time to emerge, but I think with ZENN Motors it’s going to be very interesting to see them grow dramatically to capture that market.”

* On portable tools: “I’m already in knee-deep with the people in the portable tool business. They’re waiting for me to emerge and they’ll come on strong.”

* On relationship with ZENN and the EESU: “They buy it for a certain amount and they put it in their car. Right now our contract says $100 per kilowatt-hour, excluding electronics, and it’s extremely attractive. You take a lithium-ion battery right now it’s $350 to $1,200 dollars… nobody is going to compete with us, certainly no lithium-ion.”

* How quick to market for EESU electric car? “Need is always a wonderful thing, and the need is very high for our technology…. there’s nothing corrosive, harmful or explosive in our technology… there’s nothing, there’s no chemistry part of our product. It’s all solid state… I think also ZENN is going to happen very, very quickly… people will want that electric car. They’ll be able to test it, don’t get me wrong, but they’ll be able to pass those tests quickly because we’ve got the UL.”

* On EESU status: “I’m already out there putting EESUs together and I’m still in June. I’m ahead of schedule.” Says ZENN will get pre-production prototypes by the end of this year. “Once I do that, all hell is going to break loose for ZENN as well as EEStor.”

* Ending note: “We’ve done our homework, and you’ll see the results when we get into 2010… you’ll see a very effective and constant ramp-up to our production capabilities.”

I can guarantee one thing: this audio/video will spread like wildfire across the Internet over the next few days.