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.

Been crazy busy this past week but there’s been no shortage of interesting news in the cleantech and green energy space, so I’ll summarize a few of them here instead of doing individual posts. BTW: Hope everyone is enjoying their summer.

Click to the next page to read about General Fusion’s new infusion of cash, new fluids that can make enhanced geothermal more efficient, a McKinsey report that details the incredible payback of investments in energy efficency, and a University of Calgary report that says Alberta would benefit tremendously by plugging into electric transportation.

* Vancouver-based General Fusion, which is trying to build a low-budget nuclear fusion power reactor, raised $9 million from private investors, which triggers a $4.5 million grant from Sustainable Development Technology Canada. It’s enough to get it through the first two-year phase of a four-year project that will see it design and build a test fusion reactor that can demonstrate “net gain.” Projected cost: $50 million. The company is aiming to build a 100 megawatt prototype power plant five years later — sometime before 2020, at least — which would beat the ITER project in France by, oh, two decades. And at an estimated $500 million it would come in at a fraction of the cost. Go, boys, go! (See MIT Technology Review story here).

* Another MIT Technology Review story takes a look at work being done at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory on a new type of heat-absorbing fluid that could be used with binary-cycle geothermal power projects to boost efficiency by 20 to 30 per cent. The fluid is a mixture of organic liquid and metal nanoparticles bonded by organic “linkers.” Researchers figure that the heat-trapping efficiency of the mixture, when used as a working fluid in a closed loop to extract heat from a primary fluid (i.e. the hot water pumped from underground) can improve the economics of enhanced geothermal power projects, either by allowing a plant to be built with a smaller heat exchanger (a big part of a plant’s cost) or by reducing the depth of drilling required to access heat in rock (i.e. the fluid allows the plant to do more with less underground heat). It may sound boring, but this is potentially a huge breakthrough for geothermal.

* I encourage you to read Joe Romm at Climate Progress and his post about a new report from consultancy giant McKinsey, which has found through comprehensive analysis that a $520 billion (U.S.) investment in energy efficiency in the United States through to 2020 would yield energy savings of more than $1.2 trillion — in other words, a payback of $680 million billion. “Such a program is estimated to reduce end-use energy consumption in 2020 by 9.1 quadrillion BTUs, roughly 23 per cent of projected demand, potentially abating up to 1.1 gigatons of CO2 annually.” McKinsey wisely included co-generation/CHP as part of its analysis — a crucial component that’s too often overlooked. As Romm points out, the savings and CO2 reductions are even more impressive considering McKinsey’s analysis doesn’t even touch on the transportation sector and potential for reductions there.

* Over at the University of Calgary, meanwhile, a report has been released that shows it would be a no-brainer for Alberta to embrace plug-in hybrid vehicles. “Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles could release 40 to 90 per cent fewer greenhouse gas emissions in Alberta than conventional passenger vehicles,” researchers found. It’s an interesting conclusion, given that over 90 per cent of Alberta’s power generation comes from fossil-fuel based resources — coal, natural gas and oil — the highest in Canada. Now, we’ve seen studies before that suggest even with 100 per cent coal you still get emission reductions, but nowhere near 40 per cent, let alone 90 per cent. Getting those levels, researcher say, requires “smart charging systems” that could make the most of Alberta’s growing wind resources. In other words, an infrastructure that would know to charge cars only when the wind is blowing, typically at night. Of course, the potential for smart charging applies to any jurisdiction, but it’s good to see folks in Alberta giving it serious thought.

You can read the article for more details and a deeper explanation of how it works. General Fusion recently secured $13.9 million from Sustainable Development Technology Canada so it can pursue its prototype development, contingent on the company raising another $30 million or so from private investors. SDTC‘s average deal size is around $3 million so the fact it’s giving General Fusion nearly five times that amount speaks to the credibility of what it’s doing.

My readers would know that I love an underdog, and this certaintly counts as one of them. Unfortunately, Canada doesn’t have a fusion program and all expertise and experience around nuclear technology is around fission reactors — i.e. Candu. But if General Fusion can show four years from now that its approach can achieve net-gain, the company will have no problem attracting investment and attention from some of the world’s best nuclear minds.

Sustainable Development Technlogy Canada just completed its 13th funding round, this time putting $53 million into 16 cleantech projects and bringing its total funding to $376 million. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, SDTC only invests if private consortia come to the table with two-thirds of project funding. In total, 154 project have been funded with $1.3 billion in public-private funds.

Here are, in my opinion, some of the more interesting projects that got funded in this round:

Alterna Energy Inc. — This B.C.-based company is going to build and demonstrate a “biocarbon” production facility designed to process wood residues, such as bark, sawmill waste, forest slash and trees killed by pine beetle infestation. The facility will be able to turn 110,000 tonnes of wood residue into 25,000 tonnes of biocarbon annually. So what is biocarbon? Its physical and chemical properties are very similar to coal. Alterna’s process carbonizes the wood — or any other form of biomass – in about 1.5 hours and pelletizes it with virtually no external  energy inputs. The resulting pellets, because they closely resemble coal, can be used at existing coal-fired generating stations with limited modifications. Such a process could bode well for Ontario Power Generation, which wants to convert some coal-fired units to 100 per cent biomass. Perhaps biocarbon is the way to go. (I should point out that biocarbon is essentially biochar, which offers a great way to sequester carbon while reviving depleted soils and enhancing plant growth. Read previous post on biochar here).

General Fusion Inc. – Another B.C.-based company, General Fusion, has developed a technology that uses acoustic waves to create fusion reactors. The end goal is to produce inexpensive and plentiful electricity without greenhouse gas emissions, or long-lived radioactive waste. Under this project, the company will construct a full-scale engine that will demonstrate improved energy conversion efficiencies. The demonstration project will produce 600 megajoules of thermal energy per cycle.

Greenfield Ethanol Inc. — This Toronto-based ethanol producer will integrate a lignocellulosic process into an existing facility as part of a pre-commercial pilot. It will produce ethanol using corn cobs using a special pretreatment and enzymatic hydrolysis process that, if it works as planned, could be applied to first-generation ethanol facilities that, in turn, could be retrofitted to second generation facilities. The company believes it could produce 70 million litres per year of ethanol just on corn cobs by 2015.

Performance Plants Inc. — This company is based in Kingston, Ontario, and has developed a more efficient way to convert cellulosic feedstocks into ethanol by modifying the cell wall structure of cellulose fibres. In essence, the company’s process makes it easier for the cell walls to release useable sugars that are eventually converted into alcohols. This innovation will lead to lower energy consumption during ethanol production, a lower requirement for enzymes, and faster processing times. SDTC is providing $5.6 million in funding for this project.

SunCentral Inc. – Another B.C.-based company, SunCentral has developed a solar canopy illumination system that brings daylight inside multistory buildings to cut down on daytime lighting costs. It uses low cost tracking mirrors and simple light guides in a modular design. First it collects sunlight on the exterior façade of a building and then distributes it up to 20 metres into the building core. This technology is easy to retrofit to existing buildings undergoing renovations or, alternatively, it can be included in the design of new buildings. The company claims that energy savings on commercial building lighting will be at least 25 per cent.