Green Energy Futures

In part II of our Green Energy Futures gift guide we suggest a home energy audit, a home energy monitor that helps track down your power vampires like a detective and giving the gift of green energy! Best of the season!

Part I of our Green Energy Futures gift guide. In this episode we recommend the Pedego electric bike, the Nest thermostat and LED light bulbs.

Promo ad for Green Energy Futures Best of 2013 episode on CKUA Radio in Alberta. We pick our favorite episodes from 2013. http://www.greenenergyfutures.ca/episode/56-best-stories-2013

The earth tube is a humble, simple invention. It pre-heats or pre-cools the air coming into a building by running it through an underground pipe. If you go a meter or two underground the earth is a constant 4-6 degrees. By taking advantage of that free heat you can can save a ton of money. We explore a couple earth tube projects in this episode of CKUA's Green Energy Futures.

The Eastgate office building in Edmonton is colorful, bright, energy efficient and oh yeah, has a 153 kilowatt solar system on the roof. The building, which will soon become an outpost for Environment Canada, was a developer led project that was seeking LEED Gold status. In order to get the necessary energy efficiency points they went with the simplest, cheapest, most cost effective technology - s...

The worldwide price war around solar photovoltaic modules is bad for manufacturers but great for consumers. Thirty years ago it cost $75 per watt for solar pv, now it costs $0.75 cents a watt. That downward pressure on prices means even more solar gets bought and installed. It's a virtuous cycle and one that means you might be getting a solar system sooner than you think.

Kent Rathwell is a study in contrasts. He's an ambitious entrepeneur who's spending money bringing electric vehicle infrastructure to a country with around 3500 EVs. Rathwell made his money in bird seed, he is the president of Sun Country Farms, and how he's branched out into electric vehicle chargers. The connection isn't obvious at first but listen to this week's story and the connection between...

We break out the microscope and tell the story of just cleantech startup this week at Green Energy Futures. Morgan Solar is an intriguing example of tenacity, smarts and passion. When Morgan Solar got started six years ago their goal was to get their concentrated solar pv modules down to about $1 a watt. Well, in that time the global solar market changed drastically and prices per watt are now aro...

If we get a future where we are integrating large amounts of renewable energy into the grid it won't come without some serious innovation in the energy storage space. We look at Temporal Power's flywheel technology and eCAMION's battery storage this week on CKUA Radio's Green Energy Futures.

If you're a renewable energy nerd like us you've no doubt seen Bullfrog Power's ubiquitous green froggie at an event or on a piece of swag. They're darn good at being everywhere, but we wanted to get behind the cute logo and figure out if Bullfrog Power was for real. Learn what this green energy provider is all about in this week's Green Energy Futures CKUA Radio podcast.

A rocket stove is a hyper efficient wood burning stove that was originally built for the developing world. It solved two big problems - people were dying from indoor air pollution from cooking on indoor open air fires and all of the wood needed to run these stoves was causing deforestation. Now the rocket stove has come to North America but with a bit of a twist. Instead of cooking with it the roc...

Europe and especially Germany are loaded with biomass energy projects. They're converting their old coal fired power plants so that they'll take biomass. Axel Lambion and Harry Welling have even done projects that have turned the residue left over from the wine-making process into heat and energy. So when Sherwood Park decided to build a biomass fired district heating system it was no surprise tha...

The electricity industry is old and creaky. It depends on 40-50 year old powerplants to send power along 80 year old transmission lines. It's the same system that Edison used more than a hundred years ago. However the industry is being forced to modernize itself and some things are becoming self-evident - the old centralized hub and spoke model doesn't make sense anymore. Why build massive power p...

This week on CKUA's Green Energy Futures we visit the Future of Transportation Symposium at NAIT. There we met the people who are driving everything from Teslas to Volts the next generation of vehicles.

We head to the Edmonton Auto Show to check out the new lineup of EVs, hybrids and even some super efficient gas vehicles. We talk to auto industry execs and check out their lineups and find out where they're headed and what they really think about these new products.

Collaborative consumption is an idea that's gained some popularity recently with the publishing of the book "What's Mine is Yours" and the rise of car sharing services like Zipcar and Car2Go. It's a phenomenon that makes a lot of sense - why own something that sits unused for the majority of its working life when you can pay for it when you need to use it. This week on CKUA's Green Energy Futures...

Peter Amerongen is a bit of an expert when it comes to net-zero homes. What he has learned is that simplicity is the golden secret when it comes to building a home that produces as much energy as it consumes. We reveal his secrets on a visit to one of his super-insulated, airtight homes that is powered by solar energy. That's this week on Green Energy Futures on the CKUA Radio network.

Lawrence Grassi middle school in Canmore, Alberta is your typical, mid-size public school. It's home to 391 students. There is a wood shop and portables and a gym but where Grassi is different from other schools is the simple but effective steps they've taken to drastically reduce their utility bills. They replaced the old school and completed the current one in 2008 and since then they're saving...

The Nanaimo Regional District is your usual mid-size Canadian municipality. There are suburbs and strip malls and regular Canadians doing regular Canadian things. With around 145,000 people there isn't anything out of the ordinary here aside from the rugged coastal beauty and consistent rain of the area. But when even smallish cities like Nanaimo have innovative programs that are turning waste int...

When we visited the T'sou-ke first nation on Vancouver Island it was a grey day and the rain was coming down in steady sheets. at first blush not necessarily the best place for solar energy. But the T'sou-ke have a plan, a really good plan in fact with the force of the whole community behind it. So while the big shiny project is the 75 kilowatt solar photovoltaic installation, the largest in B.C....

Reza Nasseri, the CEO of the Landmark Group of Builders, thinks the traditional house building process is a bit of a dog's breakfast. He likens it to Ford dumping 15,000 parts off in your garage and you having to hire a mechanic to put it all together. At Landmark they have an indoor house production facility that not only saves energy in the building process but they are building some of the most...

The Cowichan Bio-Diesel cooperative has grown from a small group of volunteers selling jugs of their product at a Farmer's Market to scaling up to 150,000 litres a year and powering bus line. Learn how they did it it this week on the CKUA Radio podcast. See Green Energy Futures blog, video and photos: http://www.greenenergyfutures.ca/episode/36-micro-brewed-bio-diesel

Reimagine is a movement started by Edmonton architectural firm Manasc Isaac to inspire people who own aging office buildings not to knock them down, but to re-insulate and re-skin buildings that now save a ton of money by using 70 per cent less energy. See blog, video and photos: http://www.greenenergyfutures.ca/episode/35-reimagine-your-office-building

The Nest programmable thermostat can, on first blush, look a bit like the HAL9000 from Spacy Odyssey 2001. But this is a kinder, gentler computer – one that isn't worried about the pod bay doors, but about saving you money. It's internet connected with a fully featured mobile app and it even learns your habits and adjusts the temperature accordingly. Learn about the Nest and how programmable therm...

There are 64 landfill gas recovery projects in Canada diverting more than seven million megatonnes of C02 equivalent a year and making money for their operators either through electricity and heat or carbon credits. On this week's CKUA Green Energy Futures we explore Edmonton's landfill gas operation, a 4.8 megawatt project that can power up 4,600 homes with nothing more than methane that's collec...