Toronto Greenhouse will be hosting a timely and unique event tomorrow night in Toronto which will have feature Gord Miller, The Environmental Commissioner of Ontario.
As well the event will have a “Green Business” Mayoral Debate:
Guest Moderator: Tyler Hamilton, (Green) Business Columnist for the Toronto Star

• Rob Ford
• Joe Pantalone
• Rocco Rossi
• George Smitherman
• Sarah Thomson

To register click here.

Burnaby-Based Day4 Energy recently released its Q2 financial results recoding revenues of $44.8 million increased by $39.1 million or 685% from the same period in 2009 and by $21.9 million or 95% from the prior quarter. Much of this growth was due to sales from its German subsidy adjustment on July 1, 2010.

“Throughout the second quarter we concentrated on building a number of fundamental components of our business that are required to reach the ultimate goal of sustainable long-term operating profitability,” said George Rubin, President of Day4 Energy. “In addition to realizing the strongest sales quarter in our history with revenues of $44.8 million, another really significant event of the quarter was the progress we made in our long-term transition to a solution provider business model. We believe that, when completed, this transition will significantly alter the company’s revenue model with higher profit margin sales and royalty streams becoming an increasingly larger component of the company’s revenue mix over time.”

D4 Energy Q2 Highlights:

Surpassed previous high set in the fourth quarter of 2009 and diversified revenues with almost 20% of total revenues generated outside of our core market in Germany;
Completed the expansion of our production capacity at Jabil to 10MW per month or 120MW annualized and transitioned most of our production output to the next generation Day4 Guardian Technology(TM) 60MC-I modules with intelligent shade protection;

Completed construction of two power projects for a total of 2.5MW and $7.6 million in revenues in record time of less than six weeks, expanding our turnkey power project business and contributing positively to our profit margins; and

Signed two manufacturing and licensing agreements that are expected to come on-line in 2011 and would provide approximately 1.9 million Euros per year in royalty revenue to Day4.

Day4 Energy is a solar electric technology developer and supplier of premium solar energy solutions,

With the recently cabinet shuffle on August 18th, 2010, Premier Dalton McGuinty has announced that Glen Murray, MPP for Toronto Centre, was appointed to the position of Minister of Research and Innovation.

Minister Murray was elected to the Ontario Legislature in February, 2010. He has a long and distinguished record of public service at all levels of government, having served as Mayor of Winnipeg from 1998 to 2004. Following his departure from the Mayor’s office, Minister Murray was appointed by the Prime Minister to chair the National Roundtable on the Economy and the Environment.

Westport Innovations Inc. (TSX:WPT / NASDAQ:WPRT), release their Q1 financial results yesterday with a revenue growth of $25.5 million for fiscal 2011 ended June 30, 2010.

“Revenue growth strengthens and we continue to see strong interest in our products in markets around the world,” said David Demers, Westport’s CEO. “Outside of our financial performance, Westport has made several transformative announcements in recent weeks, and we are seeing new government support for natural gas as a transportation fuel in several jurisdictions. We have acquired 100% of our joint venture, Juniper Engines, and also 100% of our former joint venture partner OMVL of Italy. We completed the official formation of our joint venture with Weichai, in China. We have concluded supply agreements with Delphi Diesel Systems and a new global development and commercialization partnership with Volvo Power Train in Sweden. As a result of these announcements, we will expand our global product coverage, significantly increasing our revenue opportunities and reducing our R&D risk through cost recovery from our partners. Our new global partnerships and agreements, the restructuring of our Juniper venture, and our improvements in production capabilities have helped solidify our position as a technology leader in a growing market for clean, domestically produced, alternative fuel transportation solutions.”

Westport Innovations First Quarter Financial Highlights

• Reported consolidated revenues of $25.5 million for the quarter ended June 30, 2010 compared to $21.8 million for the same period last year, an increase of 17%.
• Reported net loss of $8.1 million ($0.21 loss per share) for the period ending June 30, 2010 compared to a net loss of $7.9 million ($0.25 loss per share) for the same period last year.
• Reported cash and short term investments balance as at June 30, 2010 of $98.3 million compared to $104.2 million as at March 31, 2010.
• Generated $9.4 million in cash from the exercise of warrants previously issued to Industry Canada, a department of the Government of Canada as well as warrants previously issued through a financing with Mackie Research Capital Corporation, formerly J.F. Mackie & Company.
• Reached high volume scale production capability in a deal with Delphi Automotive Systems LLC to supply Westport’s proprietary heavy-duty (HD) fuel injectors.

SunEdison, a division of MEMC Electronic Materials, Inc. (NYSE: WFR), announced yesterday that it will develop and build industrial and retail roof-top solar photovoltaic (PV) projects for CanFirst Capital Management, a private real estate company also based in Toronto, Ontario.
With this agreement, SunEdison will finance, build, own, operate, monitor and maintain photovoltaic solar energy systems with capacity totaling 1.5-megawatts (MW). They will be hosted at CanFirst Capital Management facilities, and the Ontario Power Authority (OPA) will purchase the energy produced under the terms of Ontario’s Feed-in Tariff Program (FIT)*. CanFirst Capital Management will receive lease revenue for roof-top space allocated to the projects, without any upfront capital equipment costs.

“We are committed to supporting responsible energy initiatives for Ontario. Building sustainability is an important aspect of our operations. We see this as an excellent opportunity to increase the value of properties for our clients,” said Paul Braun, Managing Director at CanFirst Captial Management. “SunEdison was our first choice in solar rooftop providers because of their proven record of successful installations and their in-depth understanding of the complexities involved in solar projects.”

Construction of the seven roof-top PV systems will begin this fall, with the majority of installations completed by spring 2011. Over 20 years, the systems will generate sufficient energy to avoid emitting 6.2 million kilograms of CO2 into the atmosphere. The CanFirst Capital Management solar projects will be located in the Greater Toronto Area including Burlington, Markham, Mississauga, Richmond Hill, Oakville and Toronto.

Wondering if clean technology is a hot and growing industry?
Ernst & Young released a new report yesterday which shows great signs for the growth potential within the clean technology sector as they say that there has been $1.5 billion worth of venture capital investment in US-based cleantech companies for the second quarter, in 68 financing rounds. Doing the math this represents approximately 63.8 percent in capital and a 4.6 percent increase in deals compared to the same period last year.
The $1.5 billion mark also means the highest level of venture funding for the cleantech industry was reached since the third quarter of 2008 (i.e. two years ago).

Ottawa-based Cyrium Technologies Inc. announced yesterdy the introduction of the next phase of the company’s technology, Application-Specific Concentrator Cells (ASCC). A high-efficiency concentrator photovoltaic (CPV) cell for terrestrial solar applications. Cyrium’s ASCC capabilities provide its clients with custom engineered solutions enabling them to optimize cell performance to match the requirements of their specific CPV systems.

“Building on the success of our QDEC (Quantum Dot Enhanced Cell) product line,” said Harry Rozakis Cyrium’s president and chief executive officer, “we are now addressing the unique needs of CPV systems developers by enabling them to achieve enhanced system performance. Our objective at Cyrium is to use our exceptional engineering capabilities to provide value-added services that aide our clients in achieving optimal competitiveness in their systems.”

Essentially, the advantage of Cyrium’s new ASCC offering is that instead of ordering an off-the-shelf design for a CPV cell, Cyrium can now deliver a cost-competitive, individually engineered product tailored to address the needs of the client’s system and the environment where the system will be installed. The client receives a customized product – one that maximizes the core advantages of Cyrium’s advanced and proprietary quantum dot technology, allowing their system to deliver the lowest possible cost of energy.

Previously, Cyrium introduced the QDEC product line, to provide clients high-efficiency cost-effective cells with consistent and reproducible performance. Using Cyrium’s proprietary nanotechnology, the QDEC line exceeds the performance of competing CPV cells available in the market. QDEC is the most efficient multi-junction solar cell available to commercial CPV systems manufacturers.

Through First Energy Generation Corp. is a subsidiary of Akron, Ohio-based First Energy Corp Ballard Power Systems announced yesterday the completion of factory testing of a utility- scale distributed generation system using the company’s proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cells. Installation and commissioning of the system for a multi-year demonstration at FirstEnergy Generation Corp’s Eastlake Plant in Ohio.

“We are pleased to have passed this key customer milestone,” said Michael Goldstein, Ballard’s Chief Commercial Officer. “Once commissioned, this will be an important ‘first’ for us, meeting a key 2010 Ballard growth milestone and further demonstrating the benefits of fuel cell systems for clean distributed generation applications in the energy sector.”

Ballard designed the generator to provide clean energy peaking capacity, which is particularly useful during heavy energy demand periods in the summer months, and tested the generator to a power level of one megawatt. Because fuel cells use hydrogen to produce electricity – with heat and water as by-products – this technology is a more environmentally-friendly means of generating power than diesel or coal alternatives. In addition, the Ballard generator is transportable so it can be relocated to other sites on a seasonal basis.

Our speakers and confirmed and ready to share with you what the hot opportunities in the clean technology sector will be in Canada as we present “Clean Tech Opportunities 2011.”  Register early to save!

Who’s speaking?

• Don Roberts, Vice Chairman Of Renewable Energy And Clean Technology Banking – CIBC World Markets Inc.
• Scott MacDonald, Partner – Emerald Technology Ventures

Yours truely (Dave Forde) will be moderating the discussion panel, it will be a lively discussion so you will walk away with a better understanding for what opportunities lie ahead in the clean tech industry here in Canada.  Register today and get you ticket.

Northland is a income trust that has ownership or economic interests in 10 power projects totaling over 1,100 megawatts (“MW”) (net 872 MW). The trust announced in June of 2010 that it will go through a reorganization that will convert Northland Power Income Fund from an income trust into a corporation. It is expected that the conversion will be completed December 31, 2010 and the new corporation will continue operating as Northland Power Inc. effective January 1, 2011.

“We are very pleased that the Unitholders have shown such support for this conversion,” said Northland’s President and CEO, John Brace. “While this reorganization was in part necessitated by changes to the taxation system, which will see income trusts taxed at the same rate as corporations beginning in 2011, we also think it provides us tremendous opportunity to grow our business in the future. As a corporation, we can more easily access the capital necessary to fund our pipeline of development projects, two of which are already in construction, with several more in very advanced stages of development. Beyond that, we plan to continue adding to our portfolio of ‘clean and green’ development projects, to help ensure steady growth prospects for a long time to come.”

Following this reorganization, the new corporation will benefit from a large tax pool which should enable the corporation to defray the payment of income taxes for several years. V. Peter Harder, Linda Bertoldi and Gordon Cheesbrough were elected as trustees, joining returning trustees James Temerty (Chairman), the Hon. John Turner, Pierre Gloutney, and Dr. Marie Bountrogianni.