I have a column in today’s Toronto Star that’s bound to upset a number of solar and wind developers, and the investors behind them. I argue that the $7 billion Samsung deal announced last week in Ontario isn’t a bad deal at all, and that Ontario was right to jump on the opportunity when it presented itself. The deal is controversial because the government gave Samsung an “economic adder” that amounts to a 4 per cent premium (on a price per kilowatt-hour basis) to existing feed-in-tariffs available to other solar and wind developers. The government also set aside 500 megawatts of transmission capacity for Samsung, which in addition to building four manufacturing plants (wind blades, wind towers, solar inverters and solar modules) also wants to deploy 2,000 megawatts of wind and 500 megawatts of solar in Ontario.

Samsung has said publicly that it plans to become the largest maker of solar panels by 2015, and wants to become a major player in wind. The fact that it chose Ontario as the launchpad is significant. This is a huge deal, and while not perfect, it has the potential to bring tremendous long-term benefits to Ontario. Sure, other developers would love the special treatment Samsung got, but have those developers been willing to step up, develop a comprehensive supply chain, and sign a deal that commits them to X amount of renewables and create X thousand amounts of jobs? My only big criticism of this deal is that the government may be overlooking some amazing Ontario-made opportunities — local consortia who have big plans but can’t seem to get the attention and support of the Ontario government. This apparent lack of confidence in local entrepreneurs and investors doesn’t send a good signal. Premier Dalton McGuinty needs to do a much better job of nurturing and having confidence in local ventures, even if they lack the deep pockets and brand appeal of an anchor tenant like Samsung.

Were smaller developers in Ontario betrayed? I can see why they think so, but I don’t recall anyone in the current government ever saying the feed-in-tariff program is the only way they will sign up renewables (or any source of power generation) in the future. What the feed-in tariff program and Green Energy Act does is let these developers access the program, equally, without having to go through an expensive RFP process. The fact is the FIT program, as it is, is more than generous to these developers. And while transmission is scarce, there’s a solid commitment to build more. So there is a bigger picture here, one that needs to be put into perspective.

Okay, let’s open this one up to some civil debated…

Obviously, this isn’t great news for the coal industry. What’s that expression — cry me a river? It doesn’t mean CCS can’t be put to good use in rich countries, but obviously that will come at higher cost. Will anyone want to pay developed-world prices to get the needed 100 or so clean coal and carbon sequestration projects working? Tough to say, but I doubt it. Developing-world projects were considered a way to get some volume deployment, and without that, it doesn’t look good for coal. But given what’s on the line for Canada, Australia, the U.S. and others, leaving out CCS doesn’t look good for Copenhagen either, so someone’s going to have to give.

Isn’t international politics fun?

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…

What’s perhaps even funnier is that an hour later another press release was sent out, purporting to come from the real Environment Canada, denouncing the earlier “spoof” e-mail and claiming the story had been picked up by the Wall Street Journal, European edition (seems like a spoof site as well). That second e-mail came from www.ec-gc.ca, also a fake Web address. Seems the hoaxsters are doing this to throw off the international media so that when the real Government of Canada press release comes out, nobody will know what’s true and what’s not true.

Will be interesting to see how this one plays out…

According to the 44-country ranking, measured by cleantech sales as a percentage of GDP, the Top 3 countries are Denmark, Brazil and Germany. China ranked sixth. The U.S. ranked 19th, just one position behind the United Kingdom. On the bottom half of the list are Australia, ranked 28th, and Canada, ranked 31st. Keith Stewart at WWF said the results come as a warning to Canada. “This report shows that Canada is far behind countries like the U.S. and China in investing in green technologies, in real and relative terms,” he said. “You can be sure the Chinese economy will not sit still while we sit on our hands.”

Stewart said it doesn’t help that come the end of January 2010 a Canadian federal incentive program designed to promote renewable energy development will run out of budgeted funds. While there is talk of re-charging the fund next year there is still likely to be a major funding gap, creating the kind of bust-boom cycle that once held back the U.S. wind and solar markets. Have we not learned from past mistakes?

It’s good to see some movement on a U.S. climate bill, but it’s still far, far short of what’s really needed. One can only hope that as the big U.S. ship moves to meet even these weak targets, perhaps the momentum will be so great that businesses, industry and consumers find it all the more easier to embrace clean energy and move beyond the targets. Wishful thinking, I know, but you’ll never turn the ship if you don’t turn the steering wheel.

The position of most Canadians couldn’t be farther apart than the position of their federal government. Britain’s Prime Minister, meanwhile, is intent on raising the bar on action.

It was a fitting way for Canada to kickstart the long-anticipated Copenhagen climate conference, which began this morning and will go on until Dec. 18, when U.S. president Barack Obama is expected to attend. Obama’s attendance at the end is actually a good sign because it signals that Obama could end up closing the conference with the kind of strong commitment to greenhouse-gas reductions that the world is expecting. On the first day of the conference officials from other countries were clear about what the focus would be over the next 11 days: the U.S. and China. China announced last month that Premier Wen Jiabao would also be attending, while India’s leader Manmohan Singh has also committed to attend. Both India and China have raised hopes after both countries committed to reducing the carbon intensity of their economies (not absolute reduction, mind you, but at least it’s a start).

A consensus is emerging that a $10-billion a year fund should be set up, by 2012, that would help developing countries with their adaption and mitigation efforts. But China and India (backed by Brazil and South Africa) have made clear that they’ll walk out of the conference if developed nations try to force their agenda on developing nations. Still, the fact that all of these countries are at the table and have agreed on the need to reduce emissions is an encouraging sign. “Never in 17 years of climate negotiations have so many different nations made so many firm pledges together,” U.N. climate chief Yvo de Boer said in a statement yesterday evening. The key word all countries are clinging to is “momentum.” The New York Times has a great analysis of what to expect here.

What’s also interesting is that Canada has attracted a lot of international attention, but not for its commitments. As these two editorials — one from the Toronto Star, one from the Globe and Mail — show, the country enters this conference MIA, both with an action plan and a meaningful emissions-reduction target. This morning, Canada’s top negotiator at the conference repeated the government’s stubborn position: “Canada is not going to be changing the number that it is promoting at this meeting.”

The video here is of John Holdren, science and technology advisor to U.S. President Barack Obama. He’s also director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. His message, summarized in the statement below as part of testimony yesterday to a Congressional committee, is both powerful and disturbing: “In my judgement, and that of the great majority of other scientists who have seriously studied this matter, the current state of knowledge about it, even though incomplete, as science always is, and even though controversial in some details, as science almost always is, is sufficient to make clear that failure to act promptly to reduce global emissions to the atmosphere of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping substances is overwhelmingly likely to lead to changes in climate too extreme and too damaging to be adequately addressed by any adaptation measures that can be foreseen.” I urge you to watch the full video, which is about 6.5 minutes long.

UPDATE: If you watch the video, Holdren starts off by discussing the hacked e-mails from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia. Like most credible climate authorities, he says the e-mails have been scrutinized and spun out of context and in no way show there’s any kind of conspiracy or exaggeration of global warming. Rather, they show a bunch of frustrated scientists under siege by the persistent pecking of climate skeptics. I want to add here links to a Nature magazine editorial and an article in The Economist, both of which come to similar conclusions. Sorry Rex. I’m not saying these scientists who wrote the e-mails weren’t careless…  I’m just saying it doesn’t appear to go beyond that, at least from any fair reading of the messages.