Innovation Toronto

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EARLIER this year, with the oil price at record heights, T. Boone Pickens, a celebrated Texas oilman, seemed to confirm the unstoppable growth of the clean-technology industry when he announced plans not only to build the world’s biggest wind farm, but also to spend $58m of his personal fortune promoting the cause of wind power. On October 30th, with oil prices having fallen by more than half, he told a television reporter that the boom he had foreseen in wind would be “put off”, due to the unexpected fall in the price of fossil fuels and the sudden difficulty of borrowing money.

Mr Pickens is not the only clean-tech investor caught out by the credit crunch. New Energy Finance, a research firm, calculates that the amount of project finance devoted to clean-energy projects around the world fell by almost 25% in the third quarter, to $18 billion. The firm expects it to fall further before the end of the year. It also expects firms to raise less money on stockmarkets, due to the financial turmoil. NEX, an index that tracks clean-tech stocks globally, has tumbled even faster than the market as a whole.

Big American utilities are slashing their investments in alternative energy. Florida Power & Light has cut its planned investment in wind power next year by 400 megawatts. Duke Energy of North Carolina has lopped $50m off its budget for solar power. And on October 31st VeraSun Energy, one of America’s biggest ethanol producers, caught out by gyrations in the prices of corn and petrol (gasoline), filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. In the European Union the price of carbon permits has fallen from a high of almost €30 in July to around €20, making clean-tech investments less attractive.

But Michael Liebreich, the boss of New Energy Finance, expects total investments in clean energy to fall only slightly in 2008, thanks to a strong performance in the first part of the year. Venture-capital and private-equity investments actually rose slightly in the third quarter. The price of oil aside, he says, the issues that stoked interest in clean tech, including global warming and energy security, are as prominent as ever.

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In a bid to win over future business, Microsoft has announced a programme to give some start-ups free software and support.

BizSpark is a global project open to private companies that have been in business for less than three years with less than $1m in annual revenue.

The software giant is partnering with business networks around the world as well as government agencies.

“We’re building a customer base for the future,” said Microsoft’s Dan’l Lewin.

“The rising tide of people building new companies, building successful companies using our product is good for us because we share in that over time. The goal is to remove any barriers to getting going.” he told BBC News.

To take part in BizSpark, selected start ups must also gain the recommendation of a venture capital firm, business network or a so-called “Microsoft Champ”, one of the 1,000 company employees around the world focused on software developers.

Those who qualify will get a three-year subscription to the Microsoft Developer Network as well as cloud services technologies.

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Congratulations to all of our American friends on the success of President-elect Obama.

We at Innovation Toronto wish you well in a challenging situation.

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Approximately two-thirds of Americans voting in the November Presidential election will cast their votes on paper ballots. How can voters be assured their votes are counted and kept private?

GW Assistant Professor of Computer Science Poorvi Vora and doctoral student Stefan Popoveniuc discussed and demonstrated “voter-verifiable” voting system, Scantegrity, a multi-university project. Scantegrity involves optical scan ballots, invisible ink, and a fool-proof way for voters to ensure their ballots are correctly tallied.

Scantegrity is a vote-counting system that enables individuals to verify that their ballots have been collected and accurately tabulated. Scantegrity is the only such system in the country that can be used with current optical scan ballots and does not change the voting experience for users.

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Scientists in Italy are reporting that a new process could eliminate key obstacles to expanded use of coal gasification to transform that abundant domestic energy resource into synthetic liquid fuels for cars and trucks. 

In the study, Maria Sudiro and colleagues note that coal is the only conventional energy source with the potential for meeting global energy demands in the near future. World coal reserves, they note, are 25 percent greater than crude oil and the United States alone has enough coal to supply its own energy needs for centuries. However, existing processes for converting coal into much-needed liquid fuels are uneconomical and release too much carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, and other air pollutants.

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