Posts Tagged ‘renewable energy’

Turbines on a wind farm in Alberta. (pembina.org / David Dodge)

Arise Technologies Corp. has been mulling whether to expand south of the border ever since U.S. President Barack Obama was elected last year.

The 13-year-old Waterloo, Ont.-based company produces photo voltaic cells used in solar panels – from a factory in Europe. Thanks to an $80-million investment offer by the German government, Arise built its first factory in Bischofswerda, near Dresden, in 2006.

About 100 people work at the plant today. It supplies Europe’s solar energy market, which founder and Chief Technology Officer, Ian MacLellan, calls “far more established and mature” than Canada’s.

The European Union set up an emissions trade system in 2005. It forces emitters who exceed an absolute limit on greenhouse gas emissions to buy credits from less-polluting companies. One result is that 250,000 people now work in Germany’s renewable-energy industry.

MacLellan is anticipating that governments in the U.S. and Canada will put into force the same kind of green energy laws within a year. His industry will expand on this side of the Atlantic Ocean, he expects. So Arise is positioning itself to take advantage.

“People are anticipating some significant growth opportunities in North America,” he says. “I think in 2010, it will be the turning point where this industry will become more mainstream.”

Arise has located firms with operations in the U.S. that it could potentially partner with if it decides to expand there, MacLellan says. Over the next couple of months, his publicly traded firm also plans to set up a 68,000-square-foot pilot plant in Kitchener, Ont. It would produce silicon for solar applications.

“What we’ve been holding our breath on, is the Ontario government following through with implementing regulations for the Green Energy Act,” he says.

The province passed that piece of legislation in May. Proponents say it will create tens of thousands of jobs and help to shore up the province’s ailing manufacturing base. One of the goals of the Act is to encourage investment in renewable energy firms such as Arise.

Regulations to support the Act could be voted into law as early as September. But there are rumours that a debate over whether to include “Buy Canadian” provisions could cause delays.

Meanwhile in Ottawa, a timetable to begin enforcing a proposed national industrial-emissions plan has been pushed back from 2010 to 2011. Green-energy firms, experts and groups concerned with global warming say they know little about what the proposed plan will look like, or how tough it will be.

Environment Minister Jim Prentice has said the emissions scheme will be unveiled before December. That’s when governments from around the world will convene in Copenhagen, Denmark, to negotiate an agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.

Experts have been arguing for years that making climate-warming gases more expensive to produce is the best way to fight global warming.

“I tell politicians that they have to price carbon if they are serious about reducing GHG emissions,” says Mark Jaccard a professor of energy policy and modelling at Simon Fraser University who has been advising the federal government.

“We can make substantial reductions, at least over a 10-year timeframe, without a huge cost to the Canadian economy,” he says. “You don’t have to reduce output, per se.”

Jaccard points to North America’s first consumer-based carbon tax as an example. It was introduced in B.C. in 2008, and it’s designed to rise each year before leveling out at $30 per metric ton of carbon dioxide in 2012.

Still, Canadian emissions policies pale in comparison to what the U.S. government has been working on.

Congress approved US$59 billion in funding for green-energy initiatives in February as part of Washington’s expansive economic recovery program. The U.S. Senate is also set to debate a bill for a European-style emissions trade system this fall, after the House of Representatives passed it in June.

Syncrude oilsands operations in Northern Alberta. (pembina.org / David Dodge)

As developed countries on both sides of the Atlantic move more aggressively to discourage carbon emissions, climate-change groups are warning that Canadian renewables firms may be left behind.

“We’re clearly one of the laggards internationally,” says Clare Demerse, an associate director at The Pembina Institute, a national sustainable-energy think-tank. That’s creating “very serious competitiveness issues” for local green energy firms, she says.

There are close to 1,000 such companies operating on Canadian soil, according to the federal government.

Ottawa’s 2009 federal budget included $1 billion for the Green Infrastructure Fund, which deals with electricity generation, and $1 billion for the Clean Energy Fund, which targets renewable-energy technology.

However, the U.S. government will invest six times more per capita in renewable-energy and energy-efficiency projects this year compared to Ottawa, the Pembina Institute calculates.

“When they see the amount of support on offer in the United States versus Canada, it’s pretty obvious where a company would want to invest,” Demerse says.

Yet there are signs Ottawa could be heading towards an emissions-trade system similar to the one in Europe, and like the one being considered in Washington.

Last month at the “three amigos summit,” Prime Minister Stephen Harper, U.S. President Barack Obama and Mexican President Felipe Calderon issued a joint statement, pledging to cooperate to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions across the continent.

But Jaccard doubts that the federal government’s climate-change policy will keep pace with that of its southern neighbour.

“I myself speculated that Canada would move fairly quickly to harmonize with the U.S., or perhaps even anticipate where it’s going,” he says. “Now I’m not convinced.”

“They could just as easily drag their feet some more.”