Living in the Bay Area, I’m used to the abundance of great green start-ups blazing new trails nearby, whether its Berkeley pioneering PACE, Emeryville where Amarys boils up its Algae, San Francisco where 1BOG is perking in a cool SOMA warehouse, Silicon Valley with all those cleantech businesses, even Fremont now has a new Tesla factory… but doesn’t every region have that town most unlikely to make it into green news?  Sleepy, rural, oil stained, fast food, big box-riddled Vacaville is that town.

Yet it is Vacaville, I read in Wired, that is pioneering – despite having fewer than 100,000 inhabitants – the nation’s very first Level 3 DC rapid charger for electric vehicles!

A visionary EV enthusiast as city transportation manager put Vacaville out front on this, in a move sure to make this particular pink-roofed Vacaville Sonic Burger off 1-80 at Davis Street a new destination spot for the Bay Area.

Read more of this story »

In far less time than it will take BP to drill the relief wells needed to permanently stop the catastrophic Gulf of Mexico oil spill, a community college has installed the largest concentrating solar array in the U.S. It took only two months of construction to install the six-acre array, which will generate about 2.6 million kilowatt hours of clean, renewable, spill-free energy annually.

The new solar array will supply about 30% of the electricity for Victor Valley College, which is part of the California community college system, and it will double as a learning center for new green jobs training programs.  With 109 schools, the system serves about 10% of U.S. students, so the quick conversion to solar at one campus adds a huge jolt of momentum to a trend that is converting college campuses across the country to renewable energy while training students for new green jobs, too.

Read more of this story »

Article sponsored by Ontario Solar Academy.

On the heels of 694 recently approved renewable energy projects in the province, Ontario Solar Academy (OSA) has established itself a new 8,000 square foot facility in Vaughan, a city just north of Toronto. The move allows OSA to run three times as many training classes every month – an expansion [...]

Progress was made this week to realizing the nations first wind freshwater wind farm in the shallow and vast expanse of Lake Erie, one of the Great Lakes, by the Lake Erie Energy Development Company.

The local non-profit group LEEDCo snared a deal with General Electric to supply the first five turbines for a $100 million demonstration project by 2012, as the first step of a 10-year plan to build a 200 turbine, 1,000 MW wind farm in the nearly 10,000 square mile lake by 2020, using state-of-the-art 4 MW turbines.

Read more of this story »

I bet you didn’t know that Calgary is home to a successful little solar inverter manufacturer – Sustainable Energy Technologies.

Or that Kyle Kasawski, whose original solar company was acquired by German solar giant Conergy, has now started a new company – Provident Solar.

Or that Enbridge has a 20 megawatt solar farm in Ontario and is in the process of adding an 80 megawatt addition?

Or that the Okotoks community, Drake Landing, is <a href="http://www.nrcan-rncan.gc.ca/media/newcom/2010/201032-eng.php?PHPSESSID=9336250bc83b05f3d89a4d23129de6e9http://www.nrcan-rncan.gc.ca/media/newcom/2010/201032-eng.php?PHPSESSID=93362…” target=”_blank”>home to a recent world record where 80% of space heating needs are met by a solar powered district heating system.

These are the beginnings of a self-sufficient solar industry in Alberta.

Last week Calgary was home to the CanSIA Western Solar Conference and Showcase. This is the first time that CanSIA (Canadian Solar Industries Association) has had a conference west of Toronto and they deliberately chose to host it in Calgary.

With Enmax a marquee sponsor, openinig remarks from the chief bureaucrat at Alberta Energy and a meeting afterwards these are positive signs from the province of Alberta that they’re ready to embrace the solar industry as a viable energy and heating partner.

Albertas has some of the best solar resources in the country, it’s time we took advantage of them.

Permalink

| Leave a comment  »

Sustainable Development Technology Canada releases a Ontario Edition of Canada’s first ever comprehensive report on the cleantech industry. The 2010 SDTC Cleantech Growth & Go-to-Market Report – Ontario Edition found that the clean technology industry in Ontario grew at a compound annual growth rate of 50 per cent versus the national growth rate of 47 per [...]

A new survey shows 78 per cent of Canadians are aware of their driving negative environmental impact, but they are not likely to give up their vehicles for sustainable forms of transportation (75 per cent). (Marketwire News Release, 19.05.10)

The City of Ottawa staff issue a proposal to the planning and environment committee to establish a renewable energy campus, the first of its kind in Canada.  The first solar field would generate five megawatts (MW) of peak energy, enough to power up to 600 homes. The second solar field would generate seven megawatts of peak energy, enough to power up [...]

Vancouver-based Smartcool Sysems Inc. secures a deal with European giant Colt Telecom to roll out Smartcool’s energy efficiency technology in Colt’s data centers and corporate facilities in Western Europe.  (PRNewswire News Release, 19, 05.10)

This article explores a new trend called hypermiling – maximizing gas mileage by making fuel-conserving adjustments to a vehicle and to driving techniques.  (Backbone Magazine article, June/July/August 2010)