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.

My Clean Break column this weekend takes a look at the efforts of Brazilian social entrepreneur Fabio Rosa and how, with the donation of 560 solar panels from Canadian Solar Solutions, a subsidiary of Canadian Solar Inc., impoverished villages in the Amazon will soon get a clean, reliable source of power for keeping lights on, pumping clean water, and keeping medicine, vaccines and food cooled. This initiative demonstrates clearly how solar, beyond simply adding more renewable energy to the power mix of developed countries, has the potential to directly improve the well-being of millions of individuals around the world living on a few dollars or less per month.

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Tyler Hamilton

A number of impoverished villages in Brazil’s Amazonia region will soon receive a life-changing Christmas present from Canada.

As you read this a shipping container full of 560 solar panels is en route to Brazil aboard the cargo ship MSC Santhya. The panels, worth nearly $1 million (when shipping and delivery costs are factored in), were donated by Canadian Solar Solutions Inc. and manufactured out of the company’s new facility in Guelph.

Once these made-in-Ontario panels arrive in Brazil, they will be transported to a handful of villages and, come spring 2012, installed atop schools, hospitals, and water-pumping stations. The power they produce will be used directly, or stored in golf-cart batteries so the energy from the sun can be used at night.

It’s all part of a program started in 2001 by Brazilian social entrepreneur Fabio Rosa, who, along with help from Canadian investigative journalist Paul McKay, are on a mission to bring clean water, light, refrigeration, basic communications and, ultimately, better health and education to some of the poorest people on the planet.

McKay was a reporter at the Ottawa Citizen when he travelled to Brazil in 2004 to do a series of stories. It was there that he met Rosa and learned about how something as simple as a solar panel could have such a profound impact on the lives of so many.

Solar may have a growing role to play in cleaning up Ontario’s electricity system, creating green jobs, and helping homeowner reduce their environmental footprint – and their guilt.

But in these remote Brazilian communities with no connection to a power grid, solar technology can both enrich and save lives. Medicine, vaccines and food can be kept cool 24 hours a day. Light can come from CFL bulbs and LEDs instead of kerosene lamps that emit toxic fumes indoors. Sun-powered pumps can supply a constant flow of clean water.

The problem is villagers typically make as little as $2 a day. “There are 20 million people in Brazil without access to electricity and they can’t afford the panels themselves,” explains McKay, who in “retirement” is now a green energy advocate running his own foundation that acts as a kind of North American ambassador to Rosa’s efforts.

“Most utilities there have been privatized and are not interested in going after tiny customers in remote places.”

Rosa is offering these villagers an alternative, but to be clear, he isn’t giving the technology away. What he has developed is a low-cost leasing model that makes the systems and the energy they produce accessible to the poor.

Typically, he will install a solar panel, a battery, a charge controller, a few lights, and a water pump in each home and then charge less than $15 a month for what, in essence, is the service this equipment provides.

Keep in mind that these individuals would already be paying $15 a month on candles, batteries, and kerosene that would no longer be required, so there is no additional financial burden. What they get in return, however, is a far better quality of life and work.

Something as simple as the ability to pump water automatically for a cash crop operation can also generate new income for villagers.

The panels supplied by Canadian Solar will go a step further. Instead of being used to support individual households, they will support entire villages by bringing power to schools, hospitals, central pumping stations and even Internet and cellphone stations.

Milfred Hammerbacher, president and chief executive of Canadian Solar Solutions, which is a subsidiary of Canadian Solar Inc., says the decision to get involved came in 2010 after McKay brought Rosa to the company’s factory for a presentation.

The company fell in love with the idea, recalls Hammerbacher.

“It was a great opportunity for us to help out,” he says. “On a personal level, it’s really why I got into the solar business in the first place. There are so many cases where a few solar panels can make such a huge difference in people’s lives.”

Next spring, the company will be sending down a team of employees to help install the systems.

McKay says the donation of so many panels is significant and takes Rosa’s program to a new level. It has taken years to install 300 systems, as Rosa could only raise enough money to purchase five to 10 panels at a time. He also has to raise funds for all the batteries, pumps and lights that go with each system.

He hopes that by having Canadian Solar show such good will, other suppliers and non-governmental organizations will step up to the plate. In that regard, McKay’s and Rosa’s next priority is to get a similarly large donation of batteries to go with the panels.

The potential is there to grow Rosa’s program throughout Latin America and into the poorest regions of Africa and Asia. Indeed, that’s their plan.

It’s an idea that Hammerbacher finds appealing. “This is something we’d like to do on a long-term basis,” he says. “There are many other organizations like Rosa’s around the world that we’d like to support if we can.

“I hope a lot of other solar companies follow.”

NOTE: If you represent a company that would like to help fund or contribute solar panels, batteries, LED lights, water pumps and/or power electronics to Rosa’s initiative, please contact Paul McKay at paul@paulmckay.com

My team at Corporate Knights — my new gig these days — has raised more than $1,000 to go toward prostate cancer research, part of the much-celebrated Movember campaign. It’s not bad, but not nearly as much as we had hoped. This is my last ditch effort to tap into my Clean Break network for some 11th-hour donations.

If you’d like to donate (of course you do) please visit our special donations page. The money goes toward a terrific cause. Most of the men in our office are now sporting not-so-flattering facial hair. Myself, I usually have a goatee on display so my participation was more about what I shaved off than what I grew. That said, I am now reminded how much I look like my father — and man, is he a stylin’ dude.

Gotta say, I found this a surprising one. Enbridge Inc., the Calgary-based oil/natural gas pipeline and delivery company, is investing $10 million in concentrated solar PV manufacturer Morgan Solar, which is based in Toronto. I say surprising because Enbridge, while it has invested in solar, wind and geothermal projects before — the kind that generate immediate cash flow and come with an acceptable level of risk — has never really put its money behind a greentech play, with the exception of fuel cells. It may be true that $10 million is couch change for this multibillion-dollar corporate giant, but keeping in mind this $10 million could have been spent elsewhere, this is an intriguing move by Enbridge.

Does it want to be in the same club as integrated oil company Cenovus, which has captured many headlines related to its venture investments in everything from fusion power to water desalination technology? Not sure, but perhaps this is the first of more tech investments to come — as sign that corporate capital is playing a more important role in a country where venture capital is hard to come by.

Morgan Solar, mind you, hasn’t had a tough time raising capital. In March 2011 it aimed to raise up to $25 million (U.S.), but with Enbridge joining the party the round is oversubscribed at $28.8 million. The interest in Morgan Solar is understandable. It has developed an inexpensive and innovative light-guide solar optic that captures and directs incoming sunlight into a tiny, high-efficiency, finger-nail sized PV chip, achieving a balance of cost, efficiency, weight, and low-profile (i.e. the system is really thin) that may be unrivaled in the market. The company says its systems cost less to build, ship, deploy and maintain than competing technologies. Indeed, it’s bold enough to say that its Sun Simba product will offer a lower Levelized Cost of Electricity (LCOE) “than solar technologies on the market today, or known to be under development.”

It should be pointed out that Enbridge owns three solar facilities that together represent 100 megawatts of capacity. Most of that comes from its 80 MW Sarnia Solar Project, which until recently was the largest operating PV facility in the world. It’s unclear whether Enbridge eyes using Morgan Solar’s CPV systems in future projects, but the potential certainly exists for collaboration on smaller demonstration projects. The reality, however, is that Enbridge has so far let others take on solar development risks. It then steps in and buys finished, operational projects that are already generating cash.

Morgan has other partners in the mix, some of them strategic. Iberdrola S.A., one of the world’s largest renewable-energy utilities, is a strategic investor, as is Nypro Inc., a contract manufacturer specializing in precision injection molding. Nypro, for example, makes the light-guide optic for Morgan Solar.

Morgan Solar, by the way, was recently named — for the second time — to Corporate Knights’ Next 10 list of most promising Canadian cleantech companies.

I was expecting nasty letters from my Clean Break column today but I found this one quite entertaining. Figured I’d post it here to give readers a sense of what the world is up against. Enjoy:

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I am wondering which planet you are living on because your article shilling for a carbon tax on Ontarions to deal with the fiscal challenges is out-of-touch with reality and arrogant.

It is obvious that you are another well-paid, fat-cat liberal with a generous expense account because it is so easy for you to push for such a dangerous, asinine, and egregious policy while you are living in your ivory-tower world. There is no doubt in the minds of readers that you and your dangerous articles are generously funded by the Green Lobby (Wind & Solar) industrial-journalism complex. People like you masquerading as reporters and journalists are the proverbial pig-at-the-trough who always want tax dollars wasted on expensive and unproven schemes and technologies.

At a time of the most severe recession in one’s memory, job losses, and financial misery for millions of people, such an approach would be financially disastrous for taxpayers, consumers, and the province. Instead of promoting growth, this insidious new tax will simply flip the province back into a prolonged slump or stalled recovery. Prices of gasoline and all commodities will shoot up if a carbon tax is introduced and this will kill-off all consumer spending and consumer confidence. Such a new carbon tax will increase and prolong employment instead of creating new jobs.

Ontarions currently pay one of the highest taxes in the world for an out-of-touch, fraudulent, kleptocratic, tax-and-spend government which blows away hard-earned taxpayer dollars on welfare bums, labor unions, special interest groups, corporate welfare queens, and anyone who has a loud megaphone in their hand.

It is easy for fat-cat and absurd journalist like you who smokes rare cuban cigars, eats caviar, and drinks the finest French champagne (all on a well-funded expense account with no limits) to sit in your exalted ivory towers dreaming about and advocating for all kinds of new taxes.

I do not ever trust any government and especially this government of Dalton McGuinty (who has a record of lying and broken promises) to impose a new tax and cut income taxes later, as you are suggesting in this article. Government is like a drug addict which wants just more new taxes like another high.

The current government is like a vermin or parasite which works on the backs of taxpayers instead of working for taxpayers.

The legacy of the current Fiberal Premier is tarnished and he will go in history as one of the most incompetent, corrupt, and prevaricating Premier of Ontario.

Taxpayers will openly rebel against this government if any more new taxes are imposed. People are fed and sick of feeding this bloated, corrupt, and arrogant government.

So, in the future, before you write any more reprehenisble articles advocating for new taxes, think about the impact of your asinine articles on the pocketbooks and wallets of ordinary people.

It is because of such stupid articles like this that I have cancelled my subscription to the paper edition of the Toronto Star. I would love to see this Liberal Star newspaper go into oblivion.

Instead of advocating for new taxes to deal with fiscal challenges, I would strongly suggest to you and challenge you to write even one article advocating for lower taxes, smaller government, a reduced bureaucracy, government services outsourced to the private sector, and less waste, spending, and corruption in government. I doubt it if you have even contemplated such an article. 

All the best to you personally but wish you the worse in your career,

Canadian who is disgusted with the kleptocratic governments.