Green Energy Futures

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...

The new hot water style district heating system at UBC runs partly on biomass generated heat. It can integrate renewable energy systems like geoexchange, solar thermal and waste heat into this new low temperature heating system. It turns out you can save lots of money, and carbon emissions, by replacing those creaky old turn of the century steam pipes. See video, blog and photos. http://www.greene...

Farmers in Ontario are diversifying into farming for biogas. It uses cow manure and grease from the restauraunt industry to create methane which is then burned to produce heat and power. James Callaghan is a fifth generation dairy farmer who is about two hours east of Toronto. He never thought he would be selling electricity to the grid as part of his business but Ontario's feed-in tariff makes it...

Unbeknownst to the thousands of skiers who visit Whistler-Blackcomb every year is exactly what powers its 38 lifts, 17 restauraunts, snowmaking equipment and numerous buildings on-site. It turns out there is a 7.5 megawatt run-of-river power plant on Fitzsimmons Creek that generates the annual demand of the Whistler Blackcomb resort. Take a tour with us on CKUA Radio's Green Energy Futures. See bl...

Alive is not a word you use to describe buildings very often but this four-story 60,000 square foot CIRS building on the UBC campus in Vancouver is practically a living, breathing creature. It treats its own waste, it interacts symbiotically with its neighbors and it even gathers and cleans all of its own drinking water. Learn about what might be the greenest building in Canada this week on Green...

The False Creek Energy Centre currently heats 250,000 square metres of space with heat from the sewer system! It saves 70 per cent on greenhouse gas emissions compared to heating with natural gas and they're taking a previously unused waste product and transmogrifying it into something useful. Calvin and Hobbes would be proud. See blog, video and photos. http://www.greenenergyfutures.ca/episode/28...

When you talk about the tipping point in Vancouver's efforts to get people cycling it was a decision to close a lane of the Burrard Street bridge to cars and make it a bike lane. That was a game changer. It opened without a hitch and Vanouver has embraced the bike. See blog, video and photos. http://www.greenenergyfutures.ca/episode/26-bike-city-what-rest-canada-can-learn-vancouver

Canada's leading cleantech entrepreneurs, academics and executives say what's needed for Canada to become a clean energy superpower is a level the playing field, a price on carbon and make it easier for entrepreneurs to access capital. Get the details from the 22 experts that were interviewed for this story on this week's podcast at Green Energy Futures in CKUA Radio. See blog, photos and video: h...

This Camrose County willow biomass project is a real example of a win-win-win project. They took a potential problem - lagoons used to treat human waste - and turned it into a resource - to grow willow biomass that is used to heat their main county office. See blog, video and photos. http://www.greenenergyfutures.ca/episode/25-waste-willows

In our last Green Energy Futures CKUA podcast of 2012 we take a tour through our favourite stories, interviews and sounds. We go to Nova Scotia, Ontario, Calgary and our homebase of Edmonton and we talk to regular folks, writers and even a premier. Join us as we recount the top stories and sounds of this year. See blog and photos: http://www.greenenergyfutures.ca/episode/24-our-favourite-stories-2...

On an average day about 160 billion tonnes of seawater flows into the Bay of Fundy. That’s more than four times the combined flow of all of the freshwater rivers in the world. Nova Scotia could produce more electricity here than all of Nova Scotia requires-if they get it right. On this weeks Green Energy Futures CKUA podcast we visit the Minas Passage where Nova Scotia is testing the next generati...

Université St. Anne is a small, Francophone university in Nova Scotia. It's located on the southeastern tip of Nova Scotia at St. Mary's Bay. This campus of 300 students decided to switch from fuel oil to biomass, wind and solar thermal energy and the campus is now saving $200,000/year. We tour the campus in this episode of Green Energy Futures in our CKUA Radio podcast. See video, blog and photos...