Hi all, I’m delighted to report that the first review of my upcoming book, Mad Like Tesla: Underdog Inventors and Their Relentless Pursuit of Clean Energy, is in and it’s, well, pretty encouraging. Here’s what Library Journal, an important industry trade magazine used as a purchasing guide by library buyer and book wholesalers, had to say:

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!

I’d like to start off by saying that the federal government and provincial governments in Canada have missed the boat. They had the opportunity to raise billions of dollars in green bonds as a way to make cheap debt capital available for big projects promoting industrial efficiency, renewable power or clean fuel production. At the same time, Canadians would have access to a safe and ethical investment, as green bonds could be purchased just like Canada Savings Bonds. Tom Rand, who leads the cleantech practice at Mars Discovery District in Toronto, spent much of 2007/2008 promoting the idea but unfortunately it got little traction within government circles. It could still be done, or some variation of it.  The U.K. is getting ready to launch its first Green Investment Bank. In the U.S., the Department of Energy’s Loan Guarantee Program for clean energy projects has backstopped nearly $31 billion worth of projects and President Obama is seeking to double that amount, while the U.S. Senate is considering establishing the Clean Energy Deployment Administration, which would effectively operate like a green bank. Canada, it would appear, has nothing equivalent in the works, let alone under discussion.

The good news is that communities of like-minded folks, as I write in today’s Clean Break column, are taking the green energy funding challenge into their own hands. Several community co-ops have emerged that plan to issue “Community Bonds” as a way to raise cheap debt financing for local renewable-energy projects. SolarShare is doing it for solar PV installations. ZooShare is doing it for a biogas facility at the Toronto Zoo. WaterShare plans to do it for small hydro projects. Others are emerging, most learning from the early pioneering work by the Centre for Social Innovation in Toronto. It’s an innovative approach to a big problem, and it’s a positive story for green energy that could gain momentum as the first few projects of this type show success. Their approaches may differ slightly, but for the most part, if you’re a not-for-profit community co-op you can seek approval from the Financial Services Commission of Ontario to issue private bonds to people within your community or social network. You can even make these community bonds RRSP-elligible, making this a very attractive investment for citizens looking to put their money back into their own communities and, even better, support green energy projects at the same time.

It’s no secret that smaller community renewable-energy projects have had a difficult time raising capital from the usual suspects. Banks aren’t interested, and if they are, they charge interest rates that can make a project uneconomic. You’d think that in Ontario, where the feed-in-tariff program guarantees electricity payments over 20 years for renewable-energy developers, the banks would be more willing to lend. But the credit crunch persists. Community bonds have emerged as a way to go directly to local supporters of projects, and those local supporters in return get a decent return on their investment. The power of social media makes connecting with the community that much easier.

ZooShare plans to offer an annual rate of return of 6 or 7 per cent for community bonds that can be redeemed after seven years. Bonds can be purchased in $500 or $5,000 units, depending on an individual’s relationship with the zoo or distance from it. SolarShare is eyeing bonds that would pay 5 per cent annually over five years and could be purchased in $1,000 units. Both have figured out how to make these bonds RRSP-elligible, meaning they could be purchased through a self-directed RRSP account and the buyer could shift existing investments in that account to community bonds.

Now, there are always hiccups. The financial services commission has been slow to approve these community bond issues, as this is new territory for the commission and, from what I hear, they lack the budget to devote too much attention to it. This is where government could and should step in to help grease the wheel, so to speak. Also, banks are largely ignorant about these bonds and are unlikely to make them available to their customers, at least initially. There is a learning curve here for the large financial institutions to overcome. Credit Unions will, as usual, likely be the first to give their customers access to these bonds, and eventually one of the more progressive and sustainability minded big banks will move to distinguish itself by doing the same. Citizens who want to purchase these bonds, at the same time, will have to make some noise and push their banks to get on board. It won’t be easy, and it will take some time. Again, a little nudging from the government would help.

These community bonds, it’s important to keep in mind, aren’t as secure as your typical government bond. There’s no physical assets backing it or government purse, just a 20-year power purchase agreement with the Ontario Power Authority. Projects could fail. There is some risk. That’s why SolarShare, for example, doesn’t plan to sell bonds until it a project is built and operational. The bond issue, instead, will raise money to pay off bridge financing and other loans to get the project up and running. This significantly reduces risk for the community bondholders.

This kind of creativity is to be applauded. Community bonds solve a big problem. Another great approach is to allow homeowners to pay for solar PV systems through their property taxes. This is essentially what was done through the hobbled Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) program in the United States. Under this program, municipalities raise money through a bond issue that funds the installation of PV systems on residential rooftops or geothermal heat pump systems. Homeowners participating in the program gradually pay back the cost and interest of the system through their property taxes. No upfront pain. It’s another terrific idea, one largely ignored in Canada.

There’s still a chance to get our act together. Government green bonds, green banks, community green bonds, and PACE style programs could all be created and put to work across Canada, had we the vision and will to pursue them.

Those of you who frequent this blog know that I mention Sustainable Development Technology Canada quite regularly (picture to the left is of SDTC chief Vicky Sharpe). That’s because the federal agency, which was created nine years ago, has introduced me over the years to so many interesting, innovative and ambitious clean technology companies. SDTC does the screening. It carries out the due diligence. It offers funding for demonstration projects. It forces the hand of private investors that might not otherwise open their doors or pockets. It offers guidance. Introduces partners and customers. Need I say more? This agency has given dozens of promising green technologies and the companies behind them a solid chance of success. For every dollar of public money it has invested, it has tapped into twice as much (actually more) from the private sector. Over the past few years, that has translated into $515 million in public funding being leveraged to attract about $1.2 billion in mostly private funds.

That’s why in my Clean Break column this week I argue clean technology, and specifically the efforts of SDTC, need to be part of the country’s election dialogue. We need to build on the progress SDTC has achieved to date, not abandon the momentum at a time when major world economies — Germany, China, India, Brazil, the United States – are racing to establish a dominant position in the emerging global green economy.

The leaders of the political parties looking to run the next government need to be asked: How are they prepared to support clean technology innovation and green economic development in Canada?

My friends over at Earth2Tech are reporting that Toronto-based Morgan Solar, a promising concentrated solar PV startup, is heading into its round B of financing and hopes to raise between $20 and $25 million. Up until now the company has raised about $20 million, slightly less than half from private investors and the rest through government grants. Morgan Solar, in my talks with them, is serious about keeping its R&D and some manufacturing in Toronto, but it sees the first major volume happening at a new facility it plans to build in California. I don’t think Morgan will have trouble raising the money. I’ve seen the technology, know the founders well, and have talked to their early investors. There is solid commitment there and a sense that what the company is working on is truly ground-breaking. 

Montreal-based 5N Plus, meanwhile, is diversifying its business through acquisition. The company is the main supplier of cadmium telluride to First Solar and others, such as Abound Solar. But analysts were concerned 5N wasn’t diversified enough and was too dependent on its business with First Solar. So 5N decided this week to acquire Belgian-based MCP Group, which is a producer of specialty metals such as bismuth, gallium, indium and selenium. This allows 5N to tap into the market for CIGS solar cells (that is, copper indium gallium selenide cells), but also a whole range of other products: LEDs, flat-panel displays, fuel cells and other forms of energy storage.

Heading to the West Coast, biomass gasification expert Nexterra has raised $15 million in equity financing from Tandem Expansion Funds and ARC Financial. Nexterra makes small-scale biomass CHP systems based on the gasification of biomass. The systems are ideal for distributed generation in a hospital, university, industrial or municipal setting, and because it is ultra low emission it is a good fit for urban environments. The company has a solid partnership with General Electric and just snagged some government funding for a large biomass-based CHP system at the University of British Columbia, which says the 2-megawatt system when it’s up and running in 2012 will reduce its demand for natural gas by 12 per cent.

In Florida, algae-to-ethanol startup Algenol has acquired its German partner Cyano Biofuels GmbH. Okay, the company isn’t based in Canada, but Algenol’s founder Paul Woods is a Canadian who grew up in the Toronto area and kickstarted the natural gas retail market in Ontario before moving south. And some of Algenol’s core innovation comes out of the University of Toronto, so I consider the company an honourary Canadian corporate citizen. Cyano Biofuels is an expert in producing hybrid algae that can produce ethanol, and Algenol was already a minority shareholder in the company. Algenol saw the all-out acquisition as a way to accelerate the commercialization of its Direct-to-Ethanol process using genetically enhanced cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae. I’m a fan of Algenol, which is the focus of a chapter in my upcoming book Mad Like Tesla.

Finally, Sustainable Development Technology Canada issued another round of grants to 17 companies doing cleantechie stuff. I’ll go through some of these in more detail later, either as part of a Clean Break column or a quick post. But check out the list — there are some interesting projects there. As I’ve always said, SDTC funding rounds are like Christmas time for cleantech news junkies like myself.

Kudos to Vancouver-based Chrysalix Energy for being recognized by the Cleantech Group as the top global VC investor in clean technology last year, a position it shares with Draper Fisher Jurvetson of Menlo Park, California. You can see Chrysalix’s portfolio here — an impressive list that includes Canadian ventures General Fusion, Exro, Cyrium and Day 4 Energy. A bright light in an otherwise weak cleantech VC scene here in Canada.