Talking About Green

[Although I applaud the Ontario Government and Hydro One on this initiative, the real significance of this announcement is that this is another example demonstrating how there will be huge demand for renewable power in the coming years from various sectors of society. The advent of cap and trade will further propel this demand and significantly drive up the cost of renewable power that is delivered over the traditional energy grid, which is already straining to meet the current demand. ICT is the only industry sector that can largely divorce itself from the current system of distributing energy (renewable or otherwise) by building optical networks and datacenters at small renewable energy sites that are not connected to the electrical grid. This will protect the ICT industry from huge price increases in energy because of cap and trade, and also will provide additional redundancy and reliability if the existing electrical grid is incapable of meeting the demand for renewable energy –BSA]

http://greenmonk.net/ontario-to-roll-out-better-place-car-charging-infrastructure/

Better Place is a California-based, startup that aims to reduce global dependency on petroleum through the creation of a transportation infrastructure that supports electric vehicles. Typically the vehicles will be capable of having their batteries swapped out to facilitate rapid ‘refueling’ of the vehicle, analogous to swapping out rechargeable batteries for your kids (or your!) toys.

Better Place will build its first Electric Recharge Grids in Denmark, Israel and Australia where the electricity will be generated by renewable energy. In fact, Denmark and Israel have gone so far as to enact policies, which create a tax differential between zero-emission vehicles and traditional cars, to accelerate the transition to electric cars.

Ontario is the 2nd largest car manufacturing center in North America after Michigan, so seeing it embracing Car 2.0 is really heartening. Ontario is also rolling out a Smart Grid project under Hydro One Networks so this should make the job of rolling out the charging (and billing) infrastructure that much easier.

As part of the announcement, Better Place has announced that it will be sourcing electricity from Bullfrog Power, who will provide all of the renewable energy needed to power the Better Place network.