June 28, 2012
8:00 am	to	6:00 pm

The Canadian Water Summit is Heading WEST for the First Time!

It will take place in Calgary, Alberta at the TELUS Spark Science Centre on June 28, 2012 where you can  learn how to prepare for the challenges emerging from the interdependence between WATER, FOOD and ENERGY. Gain the skills, knowledge and networks to manage your water risk, identify opportunities for innovation, and contribute to water sustainability in Canada.

The Canadian Water Summit was created in 2009 to facilitate partnerships between leaders from business, government, NGOs and academia to help realize Canada’s potential to be a world leader in water expertise and technology innovation.
To learn more about the 2012 Canadian Water Summit and to join the journey to shape Canada’s Water Future, visit: www.watersummit.ca

  For readers who want to delve deeper into geothermal energy or solar, here are 4 upcoming conferences (or conference series) you might want to check out:   Geothermal Energy Finance Forum — January 18, San Francisco On January 18, the Geothermal Energy Association will convene the financial community at San Francisco’s Marriott Marquis for GEA Geothermal Energy Finance Forum 2012. After three years in New York City, GEA’s leading financial renewable program moves for the first time to the Bay Area, home of the world’s top technology leaders and venture capitalists. The event will create a networking dialogue between the finance and investment communities of the East and West Coasts, and offer a tutorial on geothermal energy investment with top experts and major players in geothermal development and finance. Event partners for the event are American Council on Renewable Energy (ACORE) as well as sponsors GeothermEx and Pratt & Whitney Power Systems. “California is ...

This is the second part of my blog on produced water (you can read the first part here) which will look at the market – the players and technologies – in some more detail.

Produced water is a term used to describe the wastewater that’s brought to the surface during the oil and gas production process. For conventional oil and gas (onshore and offshore), it refers to the water that already exists in the oil reservoir and the water that’s been injected to force more oil to the surface. In unconventional oil and gas projects, such as hydraulic fracturing (fracking), coal bed methane (CBM) and oil sands, it refers to the wastewater produced by the fracking process (flowback water) and the process water used to recover bitumen from the oil sands.

Produced water is a hazardous ...

The Keystone XL Pipeline  is probably one of the last great infrastructure projects of the petroleum era in the U.S., and it will face a pivotal moment some time before the end of February. President Obama is under a two-month deadline to approve or disapprove the massive pipeline, which would bring oil from Canada’s notorious Alberta Tar Sands down to the midwest and on through to refineries on the Gulf Coast. But heck, why wait two months? Given the conditions of the deadline, President Obama might as well go ahead and cancel the project tomorrow.

Pipeline Politics in an Election Year

The two-month deadline was set by Republicans in Congress, as a rider attached to the new spending bill. Before the rider was voted through, the State Department already warned ...

The Finnish physicist Matti Nurmia has patented a different type of CO2 sequestration with real commercial potential, using very little energy in the conversion process and creating byproducts with high commercial value. His firm, Cuyha Innovation Oy (Oy means company) converts acidic CO2 into harmless bicarbonates.

Nurmia’s process differs from carbonization, where CO2 is neutralized with carbonate minerals such as limestone, the way that companies like California’s Calera are making cement with sequestered CO2. But Cuyha is sequestering CO2 in Feldspars, a group of rock-forming minerals, by washing the flue emissions with water at a very high pressure.

The process creates salable byproducts (depending on which feldspar is employed) of lithium carbonate ($10 a kg) or alumina (worth about $300 a ton) or quartz sand.

Neutralizing 1 ton of carbon dioxide with anorthite produces about 1 ton of alumina plus ...

 

OK, I’m doing my top 10 list now. Following up on AWEA’s top 10 wind energy stories and SEIA’s top 10 solar energy stories, I decided I may as well give my own opinion on the top 10 clean energy stories and energy efficiency stories of 2011 (plus one bonus story). There will be some overlap, of course.

Click to Enlarge

1. 40% drop in cost of solar. This tremendous drop in the cost of solar was, to say the least, massively influential. It helped tons of people and businesses to go solar for less, increased work for numerous solar installers, and helped to put some companies out of business who were working on alternatives to traditional solar PV. The full ramifications are still unclear, but recent reports have shown that ...

This coming March, the 10th GLOBE Awards, sponsored by The GLOBE Foundation and The Globe and Mail, will be presented at the GLOBE 2012 Conference Closing Luncheon giving you access to hundreds of international senior executives in the business of energy and environment, and providing your company the type of exposure that “makes a difference”.

Join the ranks of other finalists and winners and get the recognition your company deserves. The GLOBE Awards for Environmental Excellence will be presented to extraordinary companies from across the country that have shown an exceptional ability to balance competitive strategies and sustainable development.

Who’s already planning on applying for the GLOBE Awards?

Aqua-Guard Spill Response Inc.
Canadian Tire
M.A. Turbo/Engine Ltd.
Morgan Solar …

February 8, 2012
9:00 am	to	4:00 pm

On November 4th, 2011, Alberta’s new Premier gave four of her Ministers a mandate to “design and implement an initiative that would make Alberta the national leader in energy efficiency and sustainability.”

As a gathering place for discussions about energy efficiency, join us as we discuss what this new mandate means for the province, and share your ideas on how you would design an initiative for Alberta.

This event is sure to have an impact on the future of energy efficiency in the province as the Honourable Diana McQueen, Minister of Environment and Water is confirmed to attend and address the event participants.

Date: Wednesday February 8, 2012
Location: Calgary Telus Convention Centre (120 – 9 Ave SE)
Time: 9 a.m. – 4 p.m. (lunch and refreshments included)
Click Here to Register Now
Join us after the event at James Joyce Irish Pub (114 – 8 Ave SW) for continued …

    If you pay attention to Twitter, Facebook or are the kind of person that gets regular emails from the likes of the Wildrose Party or those lovely Ethical Oil folks you’ve been informed about the latest outrage perpetrated against Alberta. For the rest of us, let me clue you in, it’s bananas. We’re not talking about the Hollaback Girl kind of bananas, we’re talking actual bananas, specifically the Chiquita kind. You see Chiquita Brands International (NYSE : CBQ) recently had the temerity to send out a press release saying that they would work with ForestEthics to eliminate the use of oil sands oil in the shipping of their product. This kind of announcement is part of a wider strategy by the NRDC and ForestEthics to put pressure on oil sands companies by organizing boycotts of oil sands oil and the refineries that process it. This announcement follows ...

While the Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline is temporarily stalled, the U.S. Navy is helping to push the market for algae biofuel. That’s good news for the U.S. biofuel industry and it could also help influence the growth of the biofuel industry internationally as well, since the Navy is coordinating its biofuel program with NATO fuel standards. In the latest development, the algae biofuel company OriginOil has announced a multinational joint venture to develop biorefineries that would supply both the U.S. and NATO.

OriginOil and International Algae Standards

The new joint venture is called Future Energy Solutions, and it’s still in the early stages of lining up investors and planning feasibility studies. In the meantime, in support of ...