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!

Ontario’s Liberal government says we need to refurbish our province’s nuclear fleet and build another major plant near Toronto. The opposition Progressive Conservative leader, confident he will win this October’s election, says nuclear will be a cornerstone of his party’s energy policy. Indeed, as countries such as Japan, Germany and Switzerland vow to phase out their nuclear fleets or rely less on nuclear power, Ontario appears intent on not only preserving the 50-per-cent share of electricity that nuclear power generation supplies in this province; it is open to giving nuclear an even larger share of the power mix.

There are many reasons to oppose nuclear: high cost, toxic waste, risk of disaster, uranium mining, etc… What I haven’t seen raised so far is the ability of a province like Ontario to carry out an aggressive nuclear refurbishment and new-build strategy. In other words, do we have the skilled labour at our disposal to take on such an initiative?

It doesn’t appear that way.

Recent data from the industry-led Construction Sector Council has raised a red flag, warning that Ontario will face an extremely tight labour market between the period 2014 and 2019. During this time about 85,000 new construction workers will be needed. Problem is, 73,000 existing workers are expected to exit the labour force because of retirement (or mortality), and only 60,000 new entrants are expected. “This leaves a gap of almost 100,000 workers that need to be recruited from either other industries or outside the province,” according to the Council.

Don’t let the recent recession fool you. Ontario is only a year or two away from reaching pre-recession construction employment levels, largely because of new mining and processing facilities planned for Northern Ontario, the need for new facilities in time for the 2015 Pan American games, the deployment of renewable-energy projects that have been enabled by the Green Energy and Green Economy Act (and FIT program), and plans for the refurishment of several nuclear reactors over the period. The Council estimates this will carry construction employment “to new record levels,” with non-residential construction activity more than double that enjoyed in pre-recession years.

The Greater Toronto Area will be hit particularly hard, and the Council pegs much of that to nuclear refurbishment and new-build plans. This is supported by comments from Mark Arnone, vice-president of nuclear refurbishment execution at Ontario Power Generation. “For those working on the nuclear plants, supply will be particularly tight,” Arnone is quoted as saying in the Council press statement.

How tight will it be? The Council’s report ranks a number of different construction trades in each region of Ontario, including the GTA. It ranks them on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 representing no problems with the labour pool and 5 representing severe shortages. Specifically, a ranking of 5 means “Needed workers meeting employer qualifications are not available in local or adjacent markets to meet current demand so that projects or production may be delayed or deferred. There is excess demand, competition is intense and recruiting reaches to remote markets.”

In the GTA, four key trades carry a 5 ranking between 2012 and 2019: boilermakers, construction managers, construction millwrights and industrial mechanics, and industrial instrument technicians and mechanics. In all cases, blame is placed on major industrial and utility projects, with particular troubles occurring between 2015 and 2018 as planned nuclear projects enter high gear. Electricians, gasfitters, pipefitters and welders will also be in short supply.

So what does this all mean? First, the Ontario government and its opposition are underestimating the impact of baby boomer retirements during a period of what is expected to be high construction activity. Big projects, such as nuclear refurbs and new reactor builds, will suffer and will be at serious risk of delay. Getting the necessary skilled trades will mean bringing in workers from distant locations. In this environment of tight labour supply wages will surely skyrocket, causing project costs to rise. Ontario will be competing with other jurisdictions, such as Alberta, and this will cause both labour markets to overheat.

Simply put, Ontario will have a very difficult time refurbishing its fleet of reactors AND building a new plant at Darlington. It will be difficult enough trying to refurbish the existing fleet and keep it on schedule. Adding a new build into the mix could spell major trouble for an industry already struggling to keep up with the backfilling of its retiring workforce. Sure, skilled workers can be imported — at a premium. It makes one wonder: Do we need these jobs? How can job creation be a justification for these large projects, which create jobs but not necessarily ones that Ontarians can/will fill?

You might be thinking that this applies equally to other power-sector projects, such as the building of wind farms and big solar plants. To a certain extent it will, but there will be less of an impact because of the small scale and distributed nature of renewable-energy projects. Labour tightness might delay a few small projects, but that will have much less impact than the delays and cost-overruns associated with massive centralized projects that currently lie at the beating  heart of our electricity system.

So when Tim Hudak, leader of the Progressive Conservatives, says he wants to go full steam ahead with nuclear power, one must wonder if he’s setting up the market for failure and promising something he won’t be capable of delivering. He has said that “a PC government will stop dithering and delays and invest in nuclear power,” but a PC government will be powerless in that regard. Perhaps he’ll address some of the dithering, but the delays will be imposed by the market.

All of this isn’t to suggest Ontario shouldn’t go forward with some nuclear refurbishment projects. What it does suggest is that building new reactors at Darlington, while at the same time tackling a logistically difficult refurbishment program, will cause delays, cost-overruns and market stresses that could have been avoided. Sound familiar?

Ontario, in other words, must be careful that it doesn’t bite off more than it can chew. Sure, it means many jobs won’t be created. But those jobs will be more expensive to fill, and there’s a good chance it wouldn’t be Ontarians filling them. In my humble opinion, the province would be far better off ditching its plans to build a new nuclear plant at Darlington and re-evaluating its existing fleet refurbishment plans. More thought should be put into industrial efficiency, conservation, hydroelectric imports from Quebec (or Newfoundland and Labrador), combined heat and power plants, offshore wind and community power projects based on renewables.

Ontario Progressive Conservative leader Tim Hudak has vowed to kill the province’s feed-in-tariff program on the grounds that, in his view, it is leading to unacceptably high electricity costs for consumers. But when all is considered the problem, as he describes it, isn’t really with the FIT at all: it’s about FIT rates for solar PV. Take solar out of the equation and the FIT rates are quite reasonable, at least when compared to nuclear power, which is Hudak’s own half-baked solution to Ontario’s future electricity needs.

Beyond the propoganda of the nuclear industry, I haven’t seen a single credible study that calculates the cost of (new) nuclear to ratepayers below 13 cents per kilowatt-hour. Indeed, there are many reports that suggest nuke power is above 20 cents per kilowatt-hour, particularly when you choose to not hide the hidden costs and subsidies. This makes wind power, landfill gas systems, waterpower and even some large biogas systems competitive with nuclear on a kilowatt-hour basis. And, of course, under the FIT we’re not held hostage to delays or cost overruns like we have been in the past with nuclear. You pay for what you get under the FIT. No risk, no large single points of failure, no risk of meltdown, no worries about handling future radioactive waste, and very high price transparency.

Now, Hudak would have Ontario voters believe that the rate we pay today is what we should expect to pay for future generation. I don’t believe this is a naive belief on Hudak’s part; I believe it’s to intentionally mislead. Fact is, there isn’t a single form of clean (or dirty) generation that can be built new today that isn’t more expensive than the 6 or 7 cents per kilowatt-hour that Hudak (and most media, for that matter) recklessly bandies about. Now, could we get wind generation cheaper through a competitive process? Yeah, we could maybe carve a couple of cents off the FIT rate. But the FIT was intentionally designed to lower barriers to market access — to open up the market beyond the big, deep-pocketed corporate giants who can afford the upfront millions required to respond to a request for proposals (RFP) and, after participating in such a process, can afford to walk away empty handed. The province created the FIT to encourage community participation, and to stimulate the kind of growth that would attract manufacturing and jobs — and it has, despite a few spineless moments and missteps from the Liberal government.

 Now, on to solar. Hudak and his legion of backers, including National Post columnist Parker Gallant (who has somehow managed to turn his column into an official soap box for the Ontario PCs — hell, he even hands over fresh quotes for Hudak’s press releases now), always point to solar prices when talking about the FIT. After all, it’s easier to anger voters by saying generally that we’re paying 80.2 cents per kilowatt-hour under the FIT and that this is 10 times more than the wholesale market rate for electricity. Wow — 10 times more! Crazy. But the comparison shouldn’t be to the wholesale market rate, and the rate itself is far from representative of the FIT program pricing. That scary 80.2 cents, which will soon be lowered, is for less than 1 per cent of FIT contracts when measured on a megawatt-hour contribution basis. Also, that money doesn’t go to big corporate conglomerates intent on vacuuming money out of Ontario. It goes to farmers and homeowners who are taking risks to become participants in the electricity system. The thousands of people taking part are literally changing the energy landscape in Ontario and they’re creating local jobs. You can see it just driving around this province. Put into perspective, the premium being paid to them is more than worth what the province is getting back. Hudak, however, would prefer to demonize them to score votes.

Now, let’s talk about the elephant in the room — big solar. Big, multimegawatt solar projects are getting 44.3 cents per kilowatt-hour. But unlike the small solar rooftop systems, these larger systems will collectively have an impact on electricty rates over the coming years. At the same time, we have to acknowledge that it is because of these large systems that a lot of manufacturing has shifted to Ontario. Still, it’s a lot of solar and a lot to pay, and this is in my view the Achilles heal of Ontario’s FIT program. If there are going to be changes to the program, the most dramatic changes have to come here, but it has to be done in a way that balances the need to nurture an emerging industry and the interests of ratepayers. The answer, in my view, is to embrace a competitive bidding process for these large-scale projects and set caps (targets?) on the amount of big solar we want in Ontario by 2015, 2020 and 2025.

But Hudak isn’t thinking or talking that way. He wants to throw the baby out with the bath water, and in doing so kill investor confidence in the Ontario market, kill green jobs and build new nuclear plants that we’ll have to start paying for 10 years before the first kilowatt-hour is generated. His approach is reckless at a time when Ontario needs surgical, not blunt force, solutions. He’s being destructive at a time when Ontarians want our politicians to be constructive.

On a final note, let’s keep in mind that we don’t have to choose nuclear over renewables or vice versa. While building new nuclear plants may be an unwise decision economically, there is plenty of job creation to come from reburishing or extending the life of Ontario’s existing nuclear fleet — even if we retire a couple of plants, such as Pickering. Indeed, OPG and Bruce Power have expressed concerns about doing these refurbishments and building new because of the limited labour pool and the logistical nightmare of taking so much on in such a tight window. So, the message here is you can continue to aggressively build green energy and capture the associated jobs while keeping folks in our nuclear industry gainfully employed for the next 10 years, simply following through on an existing refurbishment schedule. Talk of building new nukes is a distraction — there will be opportunities in both sectors, and plenty of jobs to go around. We don’t have to choose one over the other.

Nuclear fusion startup General Fusion of Burnaby, B.C., has just closed a Series B Funding round worth $19.5 million, bringing its total haul to more than $33 million (likely higher, depending on where grants from Sustainable Development Technology Canada fit in). What’s interesting about this round is that Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, through his personal investment firm Bezos Expeditions, has decided to contribute. Bezos’ share of the round was not disclosed, but it’s a sign that the company’s Magnetized Target Fusion technology and its progress on building a prototype is beginning to attract some attention (as opposed to skepticism).

Another new investor in the round is Canadian oil company Cenovus Energy, through its Environmental Opportunity Fund. Bezos and Cenovus join returning investors Chrysalix Energy, GrowthWorks, Braemar Energy Ventures, Entrepreneurs Fund, Business Development Bank of Canada, and SET Venture Partners.

“We have a lot of work ahead of us, but the support of Cenovus Energy and Jeff Bezos, and the continued participation of every one of our venture capital investors, reflects the strength of our team, our plan, and the progress we have made.”

I have a chapter in my upcoming book, Mad Like Tesla, about General Fusion, its technology and its struggle to be taken seriously. It’s a great company taking the kinds of risks we need to see in this world. Check out this article I wrote on General Fusion two years ago for the Toronto Star, and here for MIT Technology Review.

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?