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?

You’ll recall that last year the Canadian federal government refused to inject more funding into Sustainable Development Technology Canada, an agency that has proven crucial to helping Canadian energy and environmental innovations cross the “Valley of Death.” SDTC has contributed hundreds of millions of dollars to clean technology demonstration projects and leveraged twice as much from the private sector. It has enough money to fund probably one more round of projects, after which it will exist simply to manage its existing portfolio of projects (it also manages and issues grants from a separate biofuels fund). To stop funding new clean technology innovation now would be a huge mistake, and SDTC officials have made this clear to the federal government. We’ll find out at 4:30 pm today, after details of the federal budget go public, if the Harper government will continue to fund the agency’s activities. If it doesn’t, this will be a sad day for cleantech in Canada…. stay tuned.

General Electric announced today its new $40-million Grid IQ Innovation Centre, which will be located in Markham, Ontario, and will include a global testing and product simulation laboratory. This announcement reinforces one of my recent Clean Break columns about Ontario becoming a global hub for smart grid innovation.

The 200,000-square foot facility, supported by a $7.9-million grant from the Ontario government, will open in summer 2012 and also be a centre for product development and manufacturing. About 146 new jobs will be created over the next four years as the facility opens and ramps up. GE’s Markham facility is already the company’s global hub for transmission and distribution technologies, so this announcement is an expansion of that commitment into the emerging market for smart grid technologies and services.

Specific activities planned for GE’s Grid IQ Innovation Centre include leading edge research and development in substation and distribution automation, electrical system protection and control, microgrid control, and cyber security,” according to the company. “GE’s Grid IQ Innovation Centre should become a Canadian destination for companies and countries seeking to upgrade their energy systems. A testing and simulation laboratory can be utilized by global utilities to learn how the Centre’s technologies can help their specific infrastructures with simulations and testing before deployment.”

The company said products researched and developed at the site will be manufactured there as well. In fact, an existing manufacturing facility GE has in Calgary will relocate to Markham.

My Clean Break column from Friday revisits RuggedCom, the Woodbridge, Ontario-based maker of ruggedized communications equipment for the smart grid. The company celebrates its 10th anniversary this week, and is at the top of its game. Sales of routers and switches designed to operate in the harsh environment of the grid are climbing steadily, profits are also growing, and the company is on track to breaking $100 million a year in revenues, about two thirds of it coming from utility customers. In the market it plays in, the company has a commanding lead over big names such as Cisco and General Electric, and while it doesn’t get much attention from media south of the border, utility purchase managers know the company well. Investors are starting to catch on — in the past four months the company’s share price has shot up 70 per cent.

Ontario has done well with its deployment of smart meters, but it’s often forgotten that the smart grid is much more than that. Smart meters are on one edge of the grid — that is, attached to the customer, no different than a cable modem’s placement in the larger cable infrastructure. But the smart grid is about adding automation, communications and digital technologies throughout the entire grid, from generation to delivery to consumption, with the idea that the information collected and acted on can make the electricity system more efficient, adaptable, reliable and safer, while allowing for the introduction of new services and business models that ultimately benefit consumers.

RuggedCom supplies the core communications technology for transmission and distribution infrastructure. And it’s not alone in Ontario. General Electric decided back in the mid-1990s to consolidate its global operations around T&D equipment and today its facility in Markham is considered the company’s global smart grid headquarters with respect to core grid products. The equipment GE and RuggedCom are designing and manufacturing in Ontario, and exporting to countries such as China, may not be as interesting as smart meters, in-home displays, energy-management portals, or smart appliances, but they’re arguably more important to realizing the true potential of the smart grid.

And Ontario, it seems, is a hotspot for this kind of innovation. RuggedCom’s CEO, in fact, believes the company can grow to more than a billion dollars in revenues over its next 10 years. Canada’s next RIM? Wouldn’t be as as high profile, but certainly the potential for that kind of success is there.

My Clean Break column, which now appears Friday in the Toronto Star, questions whether we have the capacity as a society to invest in long-term infrastructure transitions that don’t bear fruit right away. The knee-jerk reaction by some in Ontario (and other jurisdictions) to smart meters and time-of-using pricing is unfortunate, because it reveals a state-of-mind that will also end up impeding other necessary infrastructure transitions. It’s short-sighted and ultimately self-destructive. I will be the first to accept that Ontario’s feed-in-tariff program has problems with its design and price structure, and that in some scenarios there are certainly better ways to reduce CO2 emissions and stimulate jobs. It’s a good program in principle, but delicate adjustments will be needed and much more emphasis must be placed on conservation and co-generation/CHP.  But the smart meter program is right on the money. It helps lay a  new foundation for the electricity system, the same ways digital technologies and cable modems unleashed the Internet and wireless communication services.