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.

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.

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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.

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.

Mad Like Tesla: Underdog Inventors and Their Relentless Pursuit of Clean Energy was launched this month and has been well-received. The reviews so far have been positive, and awareness of the book is slowly building. But not fast enough. I want to take this moment to ask my readers, many of whom have already purchased the book (thank you!), to help spread the word. Share this link or the Mad Like Tesla website (www.madliketesla.com) on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Refer to it when commenting on the various blogs you might follow. And for my media friends out there — whether in the mainstream press or the blogosphere — please consider a review, or alternatively, I’m happy to chat about the many odd and inspiring stories in this book. Please see press release here.

Thank you all for your ongoing interest and support. BTW: Many have asked, so I’m happy to report that the e-book version of Mad Like Tesla is now available at Amazon.com.

My Clean Break column today begins with a look at a new Web-based beta service launched by a Texas company called Nautical Monkey, and how the trend in peer-to-peer vehicle sharing is poised to expand into many new areas beyond the road. Nautical Monkey was designed to match up people who own boats with people who want to use boats but don’t want the hassle of owning one. The service let’s boat owners make some money on the side for the majority of the year when the boat sits idle, while also providing a way for folks like me — who could never justify buying a decent-sized boat and wouldn’t want the headache of owning one — to partake in the nautical experience without breaking the bank or my marriage. As I say in the column, it’s Craigslist meets Facebook meets Zipcar, with a twist on the traditional time-share model used today by vacationers. Nautical Monkey charges $10 a month for the service, and with that you get all the tools you need to connect with someone and manage the relationship.

It’s very interesting how technology is truly beginning to enable this whole peer-to-peer culture of asset sharing. We have services today like Zipcar (or, for my local homeys in Toronto, AutoShare), which is to car use what Napster was to digital music — a centrally managed system shared by many (though unlike Napster, Zipcar actually owns the asset it’s sharing). Now, we’re starting to see true peer-to-peer vehicle sharing services, where anybody with a car in their driveway can “rent” out their vehicles to neighbours and local strangers. Services like this — Getaround, RelayRides, Spride and Buzzcar among them — are more like all those music-sharing sites that use the BitTorrent platform. It’s not a direct analogy, but close enough. P2P vehicle sharing gets around the requirement for some centrally managed and owned fleet, which can become costly and can’t be done economically when expanding into less dense (i.e. suburban) areas. Now, there are major hurdles to overcome, such as murky insurance laws and logistical challenges, but I’m sure these will be dealt with over time and that first-generation car share providers will help legitimize the approach. For example, Montreal’s Communauto is the first in Canada that appears to be taking this on with the coming launch of a P2P vehicle sharing pilot project.

Now, Nautical Monkey comes along and brings the P2P sharing model to boats. The company has already indicated it’s interested in expanding the model to recreational vehicles, planes, and a host of other “assets” that I’m sure many people would feel comfortable sharing. As more people do, it lowers consumption and the energy required to feed higher consumption, and it creates positive behaviour. Car-share members, for example, tend to walk more, bicycle more, and take more public transit. Let’s face it folks, there’s no reason we all have to own this “stuff.”

Where will the P2P-sharing journey take us? Kayaks, lawn mowers, camping equipment, pressure washers, etc…  the opportunities are endless, and it may pose a significant threat in the not-so-distant future to traditional physical rent-all outlets.

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!

Also, I had a chance to attend a panel at the BIO World Congress conference in Toronto this week on the challenges of producing renewable jet fuel. The panellists all agreed that producing low-carbon jet fuel from algae, jatropha, camelina and wood was not only technically doable but could be done economically. The potential problem, as one panellist pointed out, is that producers may opt first to make higher value products, such as green chemicals and nutriceuticals, which can fetch a much higher price per litre and, by association, a higher profit. In other words, we can make the green jet fuel, but will we use it as jet fuel?

So far, that’s Rentech’s intention — but will it change its mind? Either way, from a climate perspective, the end product will still presumably displace petroleum-based feedstocks, so it would seem all good in the end.

The United Nations, which tracks world population growth, has upped its estimates. We know that we’ll pass the seven billion mark sometime this October, but the U.N. is now saying we could hit 10 billion within the century – nearly a billion more than expected. Actually, by 2050 we will likely hit 9.3 billion. For some perspective, the planet held five billion people back when Johnny Depp was just starting his career on the TV show 21 Jump Street (Yes, I admit, I was a huge fan of that show). That was the mid-1980s – not so long ago, is it?

Ten billion people are a lot of mouths to feed, bodies to hydrate and families to shelter. It translates into more vehicles on roads, more gigawatts of electricity demand, and more land needed for growing crops. And dramatically more garbage and pollution. It will become much more difficult for supply to meet this demand. Commodity prices will continue to rise, as they have been. Fresh water resources will become more scarce. Regional conflicts will grow. Greenhouse gas emissions will rise. This isn’t scaremongering, this is reality. Even climate skeptics must appreciate that the current path is unsustainable. Global warming isn’t the only reason to be concerned.

Now, reducing waste, eliminating inefficiency and doing things in a more intelligence way will help, but ultimately dealing with the planet’s population explosion will also require a complete rethinking of where we get energy and how we use it. We can’t simply “shoe-horn” renewables into an existing fossil-fuel infrastructure, at least not in the long term. We need to imagine an infrastructure that puts renewables and low-emission energy sources first, and then begin the difficult task of making the transition. Many barriers (entrenched interests, risk aversion, lack of political leadership and citizen buy-in) will need to be overcome, but what’s the alternative?

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a short preview of an upcoming report today that asserts we can make the transition. It concludes that nearly 80 per cent of the world’s energy supply could by 2050 be met through deployment of renewable energy technologies — particularly those that capture solar energy. Now, it’s a highly optimistic scenario, but it’s what we need to help keep GHG emissions below 450 parts per million and keep the global temperature from rising beyond 2 degrees C.

Are we too intimidated by the daunting task ahead? Perhaps that’s part of the problem. The IPCC spends many years putting together a massive and comprehensive report on the climate and then plunks it down for all the world to see. It’s information overload — simply too much to digest in one sitting — and it gives the impression that we have a problem that’s too big to tackle. The IPCC’s Fourth Assessment was roughly 3,000 pages! The Fifth Assessment, currently in the works, will be an equally large tome filled with depressing conclusions and broad calls for action that no countries appear ready to embrace.

I agree with folks like Andrew Weaver from the University of Victoria, who is perhaps Canada’s top climate scientist. He says we need to start targeting the science and dividing the problem into smaller, more manageable chunks. ”The science behind the problem is so utterly solid is that what we need to do is start carving pieces off and dealing with those,” Weaver recently told me.

Take, for example, global emission from landfills, which represent up to 4 per cent of total global GHGs. Why doesn’t the IPCC come out with a full report dedicated to the problem of landfill methane emissions and how to tackle it aggressively? Another report could focus on air travel, another major contributor, or tropical deforestation, or agricultural, or even geo-engineering as an attempt to buy time for adaptation programs. “Hiving off these parts and focusing international negotiations on individual sectors is probably where we need to go,” said Weaver. “The problem is so big people don’t know where to begin, so we have to go in this direction. Some are easy to tackle, some are more difficult. All of them are doable if you deal with them bit by bit.”

Now, back to the climate skeptics. Many say Canada is so insignificant that there’s no point in taking any action that could threaten our economy. How, for example, can a country of less than 50 million really register in a world heading toward 9 billion? One can see the allure of the do-nothing position when looked at this way. The problem with this argument is that it ignores the other problems — real, verifiable problems — that come with overpopulation and rapid depletion of resources, particularly fossil fuels. Air quality. Water scarcity. Geopolitical instability. Rising oil prices. Mass immigration that threatens to overwhelm the west’s social systems. Economic volatility. Even if you forget about greenhouse gases, there are plenty of hazards ahead that should concern us. Canada is not an alone. These issues will impact us, and will take a toll on our economy and standard of living.

Moving away from increasingly expensive fossil fuels toward locally generated, zero-emission energy sources, and using clean technologies to reduce waste will enhance our economic competitiveness during these trying times. By becoming more self-sufficient, we can become more insulated from many of the global challenges that lie ahead.

Putting our eggs in the fossil fuel basket, on the other hand, greatly exposes us to these challenges. Sure, a small group of people will get really rich (and this will skew our national GDP, which is a misleading indicator of a country’s economic health). But we will become more vulnernable to the volatility of oil and gas prices, commodity price swings and other gyrations of our international markets.

 I can’t help but think that North America, at the moment, is like a teenage athlete that continues to take steroids to win a race, only to ignore the heart attack that’s likely to come at age 25. Where’s the glory in that? There’s a quote in the Coppola movie Rumble Fish, in which Rusty James asks his brother what California is like (in the 1980s). His brother answers back: “California’s like a beautiful, wild girl on heroin who’s high as a kite, thinkin’ she’s on top of the world, not knowing she’s dying even if you show her the marks.”

One could say this of Alberta. In fact, some kind of are — and they’re not just environmental groups.