Natural gas is inexpensive, seemingly plentiful and much cleaner-burning when used as an alternative to diesel fuel in transportation fleets, so it makes sense that Waste Management is converting its entire North American fleet to run on compressed natural gas. The company announced this week it has added 25 new CNG waste collection trucks to its fleet in Ottawa. About 80 per cent of all new trucks purchased by the company now run on compressed natural gas. To accommodate this fleet conversion, Waste Management has been increasing the number of fuelling stations it has to support the fleet. Currently it operates 17 of these stations across North America, but that number is expected to expand to 50 by the end of this year. Overall, the company has more than 1,400 CNG trucks in its fleet, including 100 added to its fleet in Vancouver last year. While this represents only 3.5 per cent of the entire fleet, conversion is happening at a healthy clip. It should be noted that Waste Management is also using route optimization software to reduce driving time and all trucks are programmed to turn off automatically after five minutes of idling. These are all solid initiatives that will help reduce emissions, but also reduce company costs.

From a greenhouse-gas perspective, the emission reductions aren’t massive — up to 25 per cent reduction — but the real gains here are in the reduction of smog-causing pollutants. Nitrogen oxides and diesel particulate matter are reduced by 90 per cent. Over time, it leaves open the possibility of using renewable natural gas, sourced from landfill gas and municipal wastewater biogas, to displace its fossil fuel cousin. The city of Surrey, B.C., is already heading in this direction. It now requires that natural gas-powered trucks be used for its municipal waste collection, a service being performed by BFI Canada, which has purchased 75 trucks that run on CNG. At the same time, it is launching an organics collection program for Surrey’s 470,000 residents and businesses that will see the household waste converted into biogas that will be cleaned, conditioned and used in BFI trucks. Surrey hopes the new biogas facility will begin operation in 2014.

Toronto was supposed to head in this direction as well, but from what I understand the plan has unraveled under the administration of Mayor Rob Ford.

FYI: This is a presentation and panel that I participated in in late September at the Evergreen Brick Works Forum on Leadership, Innovation and Sustainability. We were confined to a PechaKucha presentation format, meaning you have to go through 20 slides and spend no more than 20 seconds on each one — i.e. total presentation of just six minutes and 40 seconds. Needless to say, we all felt rushed, but it allowed more time for discussion. You can find the other panels here, as well as video of the keynote presentation from Jeremy Rifkin.

This is a guest post from the Evergreen blog:

People know that Evergreen Brick Works celebrates both the natural and cultural heritage of Toronto. But what role does it play in shaping the future of sustainable transportation in this city and beyond?

Evergreen Brick Works is more than a vibrant space for community festivals and appreciating nature in the city. It is also a living lab and a hub for green innovation, where like-minded people and businesses can explore, advance and apply urban sustainability solutions.

So, when the Electric Vehicle Society of Canada approached us to host their upcoming EV Festival, we were fully on board. What surprised us, however, was the depth of enthusiasm toward EVs and just how far the technology has come.

The EV Fest, to be held in The Kilns and Holcim Gallery on Sunday, Oct. 23 (10 a.m.–5 p.m.), will feature dozens of registered electric vehicles on display, as well as many people who have converted their cars and can help you convert yours. And, of course, Autoshare will be on hand with their Nissan Leaf parked close by at our charging stations in the main lot. Plus, be sure to stop by Better Place and their EV demonstration centre for even more electric fun!

You’ll come away from the day recognizing that the innovation and technology for EVs already exists—it simply needs to be scaled up.

The event will also be a great precursor for many more sustainable transportation initiatives planned at Evergreen Brick Works.

We are currently gearing up to host MOVE, a Transportation Expo next summer that will guide visitors through the past, present and future of urban transportation. The Expo, presented in partnership with George Brown College’s Institute without Boundaries, will be the first in a five-year series exploring the major issues affecting cities, and will also include a suite of 10 design “charrettes” held this fall.

Here’s my latest Clean Break column about Toronto-based Solar Ship, which has designed a hybrid airship-airplane that’s driven only by solar power. This is a very cool creation.

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By Tyler Hamilton

Mining companies operating in the most remote areas of Canada may want to take notice. Ditto for humanitarian groups looking for better ways to get life-saving medical supplies to hard-to-reach, disaster-stricken regions.

A Toronto company called Solar Ship has designed an aircraft that it says will be able to travel 1,000 kilometres carrying up to 1,000 kilograms of cargo, powered only by the sunlight that shines on its back. It will also be able to take off from — and land on — a spot no larger than a high-school soccer field.

Not quite an airship, not quite an airplane, the solar ship is a hybrid of both. The delta-shaped aircraft will be filled with helium, but slightly less than what’s required to lift it off the ground.

Solar panels across the top of its body, likely backed up by a lithium-ion battery system, will supply enough electricity to drive it forward and into the air. In this way, the design achieves just the right balance of static lift (like a blimp) and aerodynamic lift (like a plane).

Jay Godsall, founder and chief executive of Solar Ship, says his aircraft will be able to go where no roads are built, where landing locations are too small or have been destroyed, and where existing airplanes and helicopters can’t reach on a single tank of fuel.

The need is certainly there. When a magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck Haiti on Jan. 12, 2010, it took eight days before supplies and other aid could be delivered to the city of Jacmel.

Roads from the capital, Port-au-Prince, were blocked. The small airstrip and fuelling infrastructure in Jacmel were too damaged to accommodate supply flights from the closest U.S. city, Miami.

“Nobody could land,” says Godsall. “If we could make a similar run, and do it here in Ontario, it would be an irrefutable demonstration of our aircraft.”

He plans to hold just such a demonstration in summer 2013. A test flight of a smaller solar ship designed to carry a light load of medical supplies is expected in late 2012, somewhere in Africa.

Solar Ship’s target market is any industry with logistical headaches, including mining companies trying to open up areas of the north where roads are either non-existent or made of ice that is becoming less stable because of climate change.

Godsall recognized the need for such an aircraft back in the early 1980s while running a lawn mowing business in Ottawa.

Just 16 years old at the time, the young entrepreneur had become friendly with some students from Burundi who spoke poor English. He gave them some lessons, and in exchange his lawn mowing business got access to the African embassy crowd.

This led to occasional social visits to the Burundi embassy. One Saturday — Feb. 5, 1983, to be precise — Godsall attended a luncheon and overheard a gentleman talking about landlocked countries in Africa that had major transportation challenges.

“We have the least reliable transportation infrastructure in the world,” the gentleman said. “We have a lot of resources, but we can’t get them out to the global economy.”

The teenage Godsall responded, “Why don’t you just get yourself an airship?”

Once uttered, the idea was firmly planted. “I caught the bug,” says Godsall, explaining how he ended up doing high school projects on airships and, later at university, did an economics thesis on the use of airships to spark economic development in Africa.

“The thesis was rejected as lunacy,” he recalls. He’s had a chip on his shoulder ever since.

Godsall pressed on, starting his first airship business in the early 1990s. But he couldn’t attract the funding required to get it off the ground, so he directed his efforts instead to helping people start up businesses in Africa.

In the decade that followed, he travelled to Africa dozens of times and got to know the continent intimately, as well as the many infectious diseases that were common to the region. This included a bout with malaria in 1997 that nearly killed him.

But adversity gave birth to opportunity. Godsall ended up teaming up with the doctor who saved his life, and they built a business around getting life-saving medical supplies to remote communities.

Once again, the airship idea was floated. Only this time, Godsall decided to rethink his approach, knowing through experience that airships lifted by helium alone were difficult and awkward beasts to control.

In 2004, he approached James DeLaurier, a professor at the University of Toronto’s Institute for Aerospace Studies and, according to Godsall, “the king of engineering for airships.”

He posed a very specific problem to DeLaurier: get 1,000 kilograms of refrigerated medical supplies from point A to B. DeLaurier pulled out a model that looked like both an airship and an airplane.

“It was a freaky design, like a stealth bomber but all ballooned out, all puffed up,” Godsall recalls.

The two men agreed to pursue just such an aircraft, so DeLaurier recruited some of his U of T students and worked away to refine and improve the design. Happy with the progress, Godsall and DeLaurier registered the company Solar Ship in 2006.

Today, DeLaurier is the company’s chief aerospace engineer, and along with a team of top-notch engineers and bush pilots, the company is quietly preparing to show the world what its oddly shaped, emission-free aircraft can do.

For Godsall, the initiative is about building on Canada’s world-recognized leadership in airship design and, particularly, remote-area aviation. He knows full well there’s likely to be turbulence along the way, and that the aircraft will operate best where the sun shines and weather is steady and predictable.

But if anyone can get it right, it’s us Canadians. “Canada has the best bush plane community in the world,” says Godsall. “We have the best engineers and pilots. We’re the experts.”

This, to him, is another chance to prove it.

Tyler Hamilton, author of Mad Like Tesla, writes weekly about green energy and clean technologies. Contact him at tyler@cleanbreak.ca.

GM announced yesterday that it has partnered up with San Francisco-based RelayRides, a pioneer in peer-to-peer carsharing. RelayRides is like a decentralized Zipcar. Instead of owning its own fleet of vehicles, it enables individual car owners to rent out their idle vehicles for short periods to other individuals in their community — for example, an apartment complex or subdivision.

RelayRides has created the online systems that allow for this peer-to-peer transaction to take place, and it supplies/installs the in-vehicle device that allows strangers who have booked a car through the system to gain access at their scheduled times. This model isn’t permitted in every jurisdiction, as changes in insurance regulations — or clarity — is often required first, but RelayRides is starting in San Francisco and Boston, and plans to expand as regulations permit and demand for the service builds. I recently wrote about peer-to-peer carsharing and the whole trend of collaborative consumption in a previous post.

The GM partnership is important for the following reason: GM’s six million OnStar customers can potentially participate in RelayRides (at least the ones in San Francisco and Boston for now) without having to install a special device. That’s because the OnStar service already allows for remote entry into vehicles, so GM is working with RelayRides to allow those renting another individual’s OnStar-equipped car to access the car remotely through their mobile phones. “The integration makes all eligible OnStar vehicles immediately ‘RelayRides ready’ without having to install additional hardware,” according to a GM press release.

“RelayRides has always worked toward providing the safest, most advanced, peer-to-peer carsharing marketplace, where neighbors can help out one another by making their frequently unused car available to those who live nearby,” said RelayRides Chief Executive Officer André Haddad. “With the new GM relationship, RelayRides can leverage the OnStar technology to make carsharing even more convenient, with nothing more than a mobile app. Carsharing has never been easier.”

Does this represent a significant boost to the fledgling peer-to-peer carshare model? I think so. GM’s announcement brings credibility to the concept, and I fully expect the momentum to continue. Peer-to-peer carsharing — or sharing of any physical asset, for that matter — isn’t an easy model to perfect. It’s not like sharing music or movies or other digital files. These are real objects that other people can damage, crash, stink up, mess up, and return late. Clearly, carsharing won’t be for everyone and those who do participate are going to have to be realistic about how their vehicle may be treated by others. But for a certain segment of the population — and I would argue it’s not a small segment — this could be a very exciting development.