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Ottawa’s AMPED becomes first zero-carbon ice rink

3 years ago

The AMPED Sports Lab and Ice Complex, a privately operated arena and training complex in the south end of Ottawa, has become the first such facility to achieve the zero-carbon building performance standard.

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Quebec and Alberta are leveraging their respective strengths to emerge as Canada’s top hydrogen hubs, Hydro-Québec by capitalizing on its abundant hydroelectricity to produce ‘green’ hydrogen and Alberta through the use of natural gas to produce ‘blue’ hydrogen products.

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Asim Hussain, VP, commercial strategy at Bloom Energy, which specializes in solid oxide fuel cell technology, described how Bloom Energy makes a stationary energy system with hydrocarbon fuel (natural gas or biogas) converts it to electricity with an electrochemical reaction.

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In California, a recent tally found 8,890 electric cars and 48 electric buses running on hydrogen batteries. On the East Coast, there are many fewer hydrogen-electric vehicles requiring one devotee, Mike Strizki, to refine his own hydrogen fuel for his Toyota Mirai.

Energy Profiles

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There is so much talk about the hydrogen economy these days, and about making “green” hydrogen from renewable electricity. Treehugger has been somewhat skeptical but there is a solution hydrogen offers for the problem of the intermittency of renewable energy.

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To unlock “the tremendous potential of microgrids” California regulators need to make two key changes to microgrid rules. One is permitting microgrids to serve multiple commercial buildings without being categorized as ‘utilities’ and its associated, crippling regulations.

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Aided by advances in deep-drilling technology for fracking, engineers are developing new methods of tapping into the earth’s limitless underground supplies of heat and steam. The costs of accessing deep geothermal energy are high, and initial government support is needed.

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The Potlotek First Nation in Cape Breton is one of several Indigenous communities in Atlantic Canada that is launching a project to address food insecurity using a geothermal greenhouse that can grow produce year-round.

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While the world is focused on recovering from COVID-19, increasing climate change risks continue to loom large. Green banks are an implementable, versatile answer for sustainable economic recovery and many countries are making this solution a reality.

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Finally, Canada may have reached the point where climate change is no longer a political issue. As evidence, take Tiff Macklem. Appointed last June as governor of the Bank of Canada tasked with ensuring the stability of Canada’s financial system.

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The transformation of the corporate world over the past 18 months looks, to many, like a revolution. CEOs of major corporations are pledging to serve all stakeholders, not just shareholders. Environmental, social and governance “best practices” and reporting have become the rage.

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OPINION: Canadian investors want consistent and comparable company reporting of climate-related risks and opportunities to inform their allocation of investment capital. Yet disclosure continues to be uneven, creating the risk of capital moving to other jurisdictions with more transparent reporting.

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The 2020 KPMG Survey of Sustainability Reporting found 96 per cent of the world’s largest 250 companies voluntarily report their sustainability performance and most are using the global GRI Standard. For the N100 – 5,200 companies comprising the largest 100 firms in 52 countries – 80 per cent report.

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Ontario Power Generation (OPG) has become the first company in the Canadian power and utility sector to incorporate sustainability targets into its corporate financing needs and the first Canadian energy company to secure a sustainability linked loan.

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More and more cars on Quebec roads have green licence plates these days, just not as many as the province had hoped. On Dec. 31, 2020, there were 92,000 electric or plug-in hybrids on the road in Quebec – 8,000 shy of its goal.

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COVID continues to cause severe economic distress, but natural disasters fueled by a warming planet also took their toll this year, causing record damage and displacing millions according to two new assessments of insurance claims in 20l20.

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Quebec’s public pension plan, the Caisse de dépôt, is investing $1 billion in a Taiwanese wind project in a recent string of renewable-energy acquisitions. The 605-MW project is worth the equivalent of $3.4 billion and under development off the coast of Taiwan.

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Solar Alliance Energy signed a binding Letter of Intent on Jan. 4, 2021, with Green Data Center Real Estate for the design and construction of a 56-megawatt solar project located in Illinois to cost approximately US$60 million.

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When Brookfield Renewable Partners (BEP-UN-T)  formed in 2011, its balance sheet showed US$14 billion in clean electricity assets that it managed, with 89 per cent of those assets in hydroelectricity, 10.5 per cent in wind power, and 0.5 per cent in other green energy.

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Billionaire financier and mine builder Robert Friedland is aiming to raise as much as US$230 million to acquire a green energy company as he doubles down on efforts to make money from the global transition away from fossil fuels.

Industry Events