Smart metering trials kick-off in Sweden and Germany

Benefits of hourly meter reading will be explored

Full Story [Energy Efficiency News]

Where have all the green jobs gone?

Looks like Europe is ahead of the game

Full Story [BBC News]

Kaiser Permanente invests in solar power

By next summer Kaiser’s hospitals should be running of energy generated by solar power

Full Story [Green Inc.]

Go shopping, save the planet

Buying stuff now provides a triple benefit: you own something new, you help the economy recover and you save the planet. Not bad for an afternoon at the mall. AIR MILES® has announced the formation of a new division, AIR MILES for Social Change, designed “to help organizations more effectively inspire socially responsible lifestyle choices among Canadians by harnessing the power of reward miles.”

AIR MILES for Social Change is partnering with government agencies, energy utilities, transit service providers, and non-governmental organizations. According to the news release, these partnerships “leverage the value of AIR MILES reward miles and the program’s reach into more than 10 million Canadian households to create incentives for energy conservation, public transit, waste reduction and other sustainable choices to shift the attitudes and behaviours of Canadians in favour of healthy living and the environment.”

Details about the new program are scant, but “an innovative energy conservation relationship with the Ontario Power Authority is set to be announced in April, 2010. This joint program will help engage Ontarians to take simple conservation actions that will have lasting financial rewards and help fight climate change.”

Making the grade on energy

It’s easy to lose sight of our energy. After all, it’s invisible. Whether we’re silently fuelling our cars or turning on a light switch that allows current to flow, we use energy every day without actually seeing its source. But in a world that calls for increased energy efficiency and alternative approaches to the sources we’re used to using, losing sight of our energy just doesn’t work anymore.

In 2009, The Canadian Centre for Energy Information conducted a poll (376KB PDF) that found a full 59 per cent of respondents felt disconnected from energy policy-making decisions and only about half felt informed about energy issues in their country. This, despite the fact that a slate of (sometimes bizarre) technologies, alternate sources of transportation, and fundamental changes in the ways we use energy are changing our lives every day. Energy is changing, which means that our education has to keep pace.

Provincial and territorial energy strategy documents have consistently identified energy awareness as an important factor in any future energy plans. Alberta, for example, identifies awareness as one of its “Desired Outcomes” in its 2008 energy strategy document, while the Government of the Northwest Territories calls for “provid[ing] information and research on emerging technologies, their potential application in the NWT, and develop Alternative Energy Demonstration Projects” as one of its main energy strategy objectives.

To raise this awareness, governments have tried to educate energy consumers both on the way they already use energy — though energy efficiency campaigns, such as those produced by Quebec’s Agence de l’efficacité énergétique — and the ways in which energy is changing — such as demonstration projects like Nova Scotia’s Fundy Tidal Energy Demonstration Project. Government programs run the gamut from awareness campaigns to simple changes in existing programs, like Quebec’s resolution to provide efficient driving techniques as part of driver training, but they aren’t the only ones set to educate consumers. The energy sector, with its literal investment in the energy you use, regularly provides educational opportunities for consumers.

Among energy providers, energy conservation campaigns, like Enmax’s “GreenMax”, provide material benefits to consumers. Use less, they suggest, and pay less. Other outreach efforts, however, provide more direct educational programs. Here are three upcoming events produced by the private sector to educate Canadian consumers.

While new, more compact generating technologies provide an ever-increasing number of options for decentralizing our power, the electricity grid continues to play an essential role in our day-to-day lives. Presented by Inside Education, an upcoming Electricity Education Tour (April 22 – 24) will help participants take a look at the seemingly invisible net of electricity that powers Canadian homes.

Energy in Action (May 3 – May 28), produced by the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, has been providing community programs on energy since 2004. Its activities, designed to showcase the organization’s environmental stewardship — a common goal of industry outreach — will take place in schools across eight Western provinces this year.

GeoCanada 2010 (May 10 – 14), a conference that invites a raft of energy professionals will also include an educational component for the public. Five of them, in fact. From a poster competition designed to encourage students to consider geology in their communities to a full two-day program with hands-on exhibits, these GeoCanada Community initiatives are designed to share professionals’ knowledge with the general public.

Something old, something new and something green

What is the future going to look like?

It’s not a new question, but it’s one we’re still constantly trying to answer. And when it comes to energy, it’s a question that seems to have a few contradictory answers.

On one hand, we already know that Canada’s future is going to be different than its present: with the advent of alternative energy technologies and an increasing emphasis on energy efficiency, Canadians are demanding a bigger say in the energy they use. A national Canadian Centre for Energy Information survey conducted this year found that a full 59 per cent of respondents felt disconnected from decision-making on energy policies. But on the other hand, there are strong economic incentives to continue using the same profitable sources we’ve always used, especially when demand for those sources is growing globally. So, what’s a Canadian to do?

Flow doesn’t have a crystal ball (just a pic), but we’re always doing our best to keep an eye out to the future. So, here are a few thoughts on Canada’s energy future: the new, the old and the green.

Something Old

At the moment, Canada’s primary energy production is dominated by crude oil and natural gas. Together, these two sources make up almost 75 per cent of our total energy exports, exports that totalled $126 billion in 2008. Given the current patterns of global energy consumption, those exports isn’t likely to become any less important to the country.

Global demand for both oil and natural gas is continuing to rise, driven by demand in Asia and the Middle East, particularly China. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), demand in the transportation sector alone is expected to climb 41 per cent by 2030. And with most of that demand occurring in the developing world, Canada’s strength as an exporter is likely to continue, especially with oil reserves actually continuing to grow.

In fact, despite the fact that oil is a non-renewable resource, developments in areas like Alberta’s oil sands — the second largest oil reserve in the world — have hiked the planet’s total proved reserves to 1,258 billion barrels. If demand continues to increase, there will continue to be reserves to meet this demand into the near future.

One of the places where industry will be discussing that near future will be the CERI 2010 Oil Conference, a three-day event running between April 18 and 20. With session titles like “Conventional Oil: Last Rights or New Breath?” it’s clear that the industry recognizes that changes are coming, but with demand continuing, there’s strong reason to believe that the future won’t necessarily be unrecognizable.

Still, while oil and natural gas have long been mainstays of the Canadian energy mix, an increasing emphasis on the environmental impact of their use has fuelled the development of alternative energy sources.  The field of alternative energy includes sources as varied as biomass and waste products, but two of the leading areas in the field of alternative energy continue to be solar and wind.

Something New

Solar and wind energy are two of the most common examples of energy technologies that are changing the Canadian energy mix, and are likely to continue to change it into our future. Solar power is already becoming increasingly common in Canadian homes and once-distant wind turbine might end up finding their way into our cities.

For now, solar energy is primarily used in two ways in Canadian homes, either passively and actively. Examples of active use include photovoltaic (PV) cells that generate electricity or through solar heating panels that transmit the sun’s heat through a heat-transfer liquid. Passive uses of solar energy include architectural changes that allow homes to absorb ambient heat and redirect it in much the same way that a heating duct redirects a furnace’s.

At a federal level, solar development is supported through Natural Resource Canada’s CanmetENERGY, whose solar projects include research into low energy solar homes and developing codes, certification, and installation standards for PV systems and components. The agency has even developed a useful map of PV potential across the country demonstrating Canada’s solar potential.

Given that potential, it’s not surprising that organizations like The Canadian Solar Industries Association (CanSIA) are trying to get professionals networking. In May, CanSIA will host its first-ever regional conference. Running for two days, May 25 and 26, the conference’s topics include “The economics of solar – can it make sense?”, “Sharing the Western Landscape…where do renewables and solar fit in?” and a “Solar Showcase” featuring private and public industry figures.

Wind, meanwhile, continues to be largely a commercial, rather than a residential sector. Though there are wind turbines small enough to be used residentially, they aren’t nearly as common as their larger, commercial brothers.

For now, wind represents only 0.3 per cent of the country’s total electricity mix, but given global trends it’s not difficult to imagine that number growing. In fact, in the last 10 years, wind power use globally has increased annually by 30 per cent. The applications for Canada, where rural communities sometimes require their own power, are considerable. Operations adding diesel or hydro to intermittent wind, for example, could provide the same amount of energy with fewer emissions and other negative environmental impacts. Expect issues like these to be discussed at The Canadian Wind Energy Association’s upcoming Wind Energy Forum, running from April 13 to 14 in Toronto.

Something Green

Whether they’re fossil fuels or renewable energy sources, one of our strongest motivations for changing the way we use energy continues to be our concern over greenhouse gas emissions. Even if our mix continues to include fuels that produce these emissions, the way we use our energy is becoming just as important as the types of energy sources we use. Canada’s energy future, then, is likely to include changes in that use, both by consumers and businesses.

For those industries already producing fossil fuels, the emphasis will now be on “cleaner” versions. From carbon capture and storage technology that will trap much of the carbon dioxide ultimately released into the atmosphere, to fundamental changes in the way that oil and natural gas are extracted. At least one of the many public acknowledgements of this move toward cleaner fossil fuels can be seen in the U.S.- Canada Clean Energy Dialogue, a resolution between the two countries aimed at reducing the intensity of the energy industry’s emissions.

Consumers, meanwhile, in addition to being able to purchase home-based energy systems that can sell power back to the grid, as Ontarians can do under the province’s Feed-In Tariff program, are using less energy. And provincial governments are doing what they can to ensure that this conservation becomes a large part of the country’s energy future.

Provincial governments have already nodded to the importance of reducing their citizens’ energy use, creating agencies like Quebec’s Agence de l’efficacité énergétique and Prince Edward Island’s Office of Energy Efficiency to centrally manage provincial energy efficiency initiatives. Together with more rigorous building codes and incentive programs that encourage everything from low flow toilets to more efficient appliances, the hope is that future energy use will not only be defined by resources like oil and natural gas, wind and solar, but by the consumers who ultimately use them.

Powering Canadian communities

More than 80 per cent of Canadians live in urban centres, a number that’s been steadily increasing since records began in 1851. That leaves most of our attention focused on cities, especially when it comes to energy. Where the people live, the energy will follow.

But in a public environment where we’re increasingly concerned about the costs of our power, both financial and environmental, we can’t forget about our rural communities either. Fortunately, local governments and the communities themselves are already paying attention.

At 3.3 inhabitants per square kilometre, in a total area of almost 10 million square kilometres, Canada is one of the least densely populated places on Earth. That leaves us trying to stretch 160,000 kilometres of high voltage lines between our power plants and our major urban centres, an enormous grid that still isn’t large enough to reach our most remote communities. Whether these communities are isolated by distance, a harsh climate, unyielding geography or (usually) some combination of the three, the result is that they have to generate their own power. And, as it happens, generating your own power tends to be a fairly dirty business.

Diesel generators have been the go-to solution for small communities’ power needs for years — they provide a dependable source of power and can be built on a relatively small scale, or they can purchased and imported. But while these generators allow remote communities to stay powered without staying connected to the grid, they’re also using fuel whose carbon emissions are under increasing scrutiny.

In Northwest Territories, for example, the territory’s 43,000 citizens (spread across almost 1.2 million square kilometres) get most of their power from 25 diesel generating facilities dotted in communities. But under Northwest Territories’ energy strategy, Community Energy Plans would be implemented across the territory by 2011, encouraging a more sustainable approach to each community’s power generation.

One of the most practical methods of improving remote communities’ energy use has been cogeneration. By harnessing the heat that is generally lost in facilities only designed to generate electricity, cogeneration plants are able to provide both heat and electricity, requiring between 10 and 30 per cent less fuel.

Given that communities in northern climates also rely on carbon-intensive heating oil for their heating, it’s not hard to see why cogeneration plants would reduce both the financial and environmental costs of energy. And it isn’t only northern communities changing the way they use energy.

BC’s Bioenergy Network, for example, has already begun awarding contracts for wood waste cogeneration plants under their BC Bioenergy Strategy. And the Ontario Government, like many other provincial governments, is encouraging agricultural operations to consider wind and other alternative sources of generation.

And communities are still actively seeking out new opportunities to generate their own power in more cost-effective and environmentally responsible ways.

From April 21 to 22, the Town of Cochrane, Ontario (population: less than 6,000) will be hosting its Energize Your Community Conference, a showcase for communities hoping to encourage green community energy initiatives. Featuring talks from organizations like Nipissing University’s Biomass Innovation Centre and the Ontario Power Authority, the conference bills itself as a chance for like-minded communities to network and learn. Its scale is appropriately modest, but if you’re a community interested in joining the conversation on changing energy use in Canada’s, go ahead and drop them a line holly.touchette@town.cochrane.on.ca. After all, in a country where only 20 per cent live outside of cities, communities need to stick together.

China steams ahead on clean energy

China takes the lead over the U.S. in investing in renewable energy technologies

Full Story [BBC News]

What’s the greenest vehicle in Canada?

According to Natural Resources Canada’s fuel consumption ratings for the 2010 model year, of the 1,024 cars listed, it’s the Toyota Prius (not withstanding a recent recall of 2004-2009 Prius models and 2010 Prius models). Prius has held that position since 2007.

The Prius emits 1,748 kilograms of CO₂ per year and consumes 760 litres of gasoline in doing so. The second-greenest car is the hybrid version of the Honda Civic, with emissions of 2,070 kilograms of CO₂ per year and consumption of 900 litres of regular gasoline. Rounding out the top three is the Honda Insight with emissions of 2,162 kilograms of CO₂ per year and consumption of 940 litres of regular gasoline. The Insight was the greenest car from 2000 to 2006.

Of course your results may vary, depending on how you drive and where you drive. These estimates assume an annual driving distance of 20,000 kilometres, 55 per cent of which are city driving and 45 per cent highway driving.

As one would expect, nine of the top ten green vehicles are cars. Only the Ford Escape is a special purpose vehicle (the new name for an SUV). Of the top ten vehicles, eight are hybrids. Only two, the Toyota Yaris ( ranked 10th) and Smart Fortwo (ranked 5th), are powered by conventional gasoline internal combustion engines. No diesel-powered vehicles made it to the top ten. In fact the diesels with the lowest CO₂emissions are the Audi A3 TDI, Volkswagen Golf TDI Clean Diesel and the Volkswagen Jetta TDI Clean Diesel, all of which tied for 38^th place with emissions of 3,132 kilograms of CO₂ per year and consumption of 1,160 litres of diesel fuel. These cars were considered the greenest in 1999, prior to the introduction of hybrid technology.

Car	Class	Power	Emissions (kg/CO2/year)	Consumption (L/y)	Base Price ($Cdn)
Toyota Prius	Mid-size	Hybrid	1,748	760	27,800
Honda Civic	Subcompact	Hybrid	2,070	900	27,350
Honda Insight	Compact	Hybrid	2,162	940	23,900
Ford Fusion	Mid-size	Hybrid	2,300	1,000	21,499
Smart Fortwo	Two-seater	Conventional	2,484	1,080	14,990
Lexus HS250h	Compact	Hybrid	2,622	1,140	39,900
Toyota Camry	Mid-size	Hybrid	2,622	1,140	24,900
Nissan Altima	Mid-size	Hybrid	2,668	1,160	33,398
Ford Escape	Special Purpose	Hybrid	2,806	1,220	24,499
Toyota Yaris	Subcompact	Conventional	2,852	1,240	14,750
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So, we’ve covered green. What about affordable? Well, the reason these vehicles produce fewer emissions is that they consume less fuel. So there is a savings in operating costs. As well, there can be a savings in sticker price. Statistics Canada reports the average price of a new car in 2009 was $25,683. Adjusting for inflation of 1.86 per cent, that price rises to $25,770 in 2010. The average price of the top ten cleanest vehicles in Canada is $25,300. The least expensive are the Yaris at $14,750 and the Fortwo at $14,990, the only two non-hybrids of the bunch. The most expensive are the Lexus at $39,900 and the Altima at $33,398. Even the SUV comes in less than average car price.

On the other end of the emissions, consumption and price spectrum is the Bugatti Veyron which emits 10,166 kilograms of CO₂ per year, consumes of 4,420 litres of gasoline and costs about $1.7 million, depending upon options, retailer may sell for less. Operating costs are steep as well. At its top speed of 407 kilometres per hour, the tires last about 15 minutes. However, there’s a built-in safety mechanism. At top speed a full tank of gas only lasts 12 minutes.

London unveils plans for a hydrogen network by 2012

The plan is to have six hydrogen refuelling sites to support zero-emission vehicles

Full Story [Energy Efficiency News]

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