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Sydney is now using the world's first outdoor e-ink traffic signs to guide motorists during special events. The city's Roads and Maritime Services (RMS) agency was apparently fed up with the constant chore of changing signs, and developed the tech with a company called Visionect. Like your Kindle, the signs are easy to read in Sydney's bright sunshine, which also powers it via solar panels. There's a light for nighttime usage, and the messages can be updated remotely via a cell connection to an "internet of things" network. Sydney's tech is pretty basic, but e-ink holds enormous potential for signage. We'll no doubt see fancier outdoor displays one day, but for now the city's just hoping to save some money -- Los Angeles spends up to $9.5 million putting up temporary parking restriction signs, for instance. The group also developed anti-tampering and location detection tech, because you just know that someone's going to try to steal or hack them.VIA: The Register SOURCE: Visionect

Quebec funds effort to build $130M river turbine farm on St. Lawrence River BECANCOUR -- The Quebec government is helping to bankroll a $130-million project by RER Hydro, Hydro-Quebec and Boeing to generate clean energy on the St. Lawrence River in what officials say would be the world's largest river-generated turbine farm. The three-phase project could eventually culminate in nine megawatts of renewable power being generated in Montreal from 46 riverbed turbines, with installation beginning in 2016. The province could contribute up to a maximum of $85 million in equity and loans. That's on top of the $3 million it has already provided RER Hydro Inc. for its initial $230-million prototype testing phase that lasted three years. Quebec, which is a leader in production of hydroelectricity, hopes that the technology will take off and support the manufacture of about 500 turbines annually and some 600 direct and indirect jobs at RER Hydro's plant in Becancour, near Trois-Rivieres. Premier Pauline Marois said at the plant's official opening on Monday that the government is actively helping new industries that hold promise for the Quebec economy, such as its strategy to support the electrification of transportation. "Our participation in this partnership agreement will promote the development of the industrial sector of turbines, which has great economic potential for Quebec, particularly because of the significant export opportunities," Marois said, while also stressing the job creation potential of the project. The technology has global market potential and could supply electricity to isolated communities in Northern Quebec not currently connected to the provincial power grid. The second phase of the project, estimated to cost $51.5 million, would install and test six turbines generating three-quarters of a megawatt of power near the Pont de la Concorde bridge near the Montreal Casino on Ste Helen's Island. About 25 jobs would be created in Becancour and Montreal. It would mark the first commercial sale of RER Hydro's technology. If results are successful, about $81 million would be spent to install a demonstration fleet of 40 turbines beginning in 2016. That would create 90 direct jobs and 80 indirect jobs from various suppliers. Unlike dams, the "hydrokinetic" turbines generate clean power without disrupting the river flow or the natural habitat of fish or other marine life, said RER Hydro CEO Imad Hamad. "This new industry will help to further transform Quebec's natural resources for the benefit of Quebecers," Hamad said. RER and Boeing (NYSE:BA), the U.S. aerospace and defence giant, signed an agreement last year giving Boeing exclusive rights to market and sell the turbines around the world. Boeing is providing program management, engineering, manufacturing and supplier-management expertise, in addition to servicing the turbines. "This agreement between industry and government will deliver renewable power while protecting the environment," said Dennis Muilenburg, CEO of Boeing Defense, Space & Security. "It also builds on Boeing's long-term, strategic partnership with Canada, supporting customers from aerospace and defence to clean energy, generating high-quality jobs and making a difference in the community." Boeing says it works with 40 suppliers in Quebec, contributing to the $1 billion in economic activity the company generates annually across Canada. Read more: http://www.ctvnews.ca/business/quebec-funds-effort-to-build-130m-river-turbine-farm-on-st-lawrence-river-1.1539132#ixzz2kRX062Vp

(Courtesy of The Montreal Gazette)

The New York Times July 15, 2008 Country, the City Version: By BINA VENKATARAMAN What if “eating local” in Shanghai or New York meant getting your fresh produce from five blocks away? And what if skyscrapers grew off the grid, as verdant, self-sustaining towers where city slickers cultivated their own food? Dickson Despommier, a professor of public health at Columbia University, hopes to make these zucchini-in-the-sky visions a reality. Dr. Despommier’s pet project is the “vertical farm,” a concept he created in 1999 with graduate students in his class on medical ecology, the study of how the environment and human health interact. The idea, which has captured the imagination of several architects in the United States and Europe in the past several years, just caught the eye of another big city dreamer: Scott M. Stringer, the Manhattan borough president. When Mr. Stringer heard about the concept in June, he said he immediately pictured a “food farm” addition to the New York City skyline. “Obviously we don’t have vast amounts of vacant land,” he said in a phone interview. “But the sky is the limit in Manhattan.” Mr. Stringer’s office is “sketching out what it would take to pilot a vertical farm,” and plans to pitch a feasibility study to the mayor’s office within the next couple of months, he said. “I think we can really do this,” he added. “We could get the funding.” Dr. Despommier estimates that it would cost $20 million to $30 million to make a prototype of a vertical farm, but hundreds of millions to build one of the 30-story towers that he suggests could feed 50,000 people. “I’m viewed as kind of an outlier because it’s kind of a crazy idea,” Dr. Despommier, 68, said with a chuckle. “You’d think these are mythological creatures.” Dr. Despommier, whose name in French means “of the apple trees,” has been spreading the seeds of his radical idea in lectures and through his Web site. He says his ideas are supported by hydroponic vegetable research done by NASA and are made more feasible by the potential to use sun, wind and wastewater as energy sources. Several observers have said Dr. Despommier’s sky-high dreams need to be brought down to earth. “Why does it have to be 30 stories?” said Jerry Kaufman, professor emeritus of urban and regional planning at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. “Why can’t it be six stories? There’s some exciting potential in the concept, but I think he overstates what can be done.” Armando Carbonell, chairman of the department of planning and urban form at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy in Cambridge, Mass., called the idea “very provocative.” But it requires a rigorous economic analysis, he added. “Would a tomato in lower Manhattan be able to outbid an investment banker for space in a high-rise? My bet is that the investment banker will pay more.” Mr. Carbonell questions if a vertical farm could deliver the energy savings its supporters promise. “There’s embodied energy in the concrete and steel and in construction,” he said, adding that the price of land in the city would still outweigh any savings from not having to transport food from afar. “I believe that this general relationship is going to hold, even as transportation costs go up and carbon costs get incorporated into the economic system.” Some criticism is quite helpful. Stephen Colbert jokingly asserted that vertical farming was elitist when Dr. Despommier appeared in June on “The Colbert Report,” a visit that led to a jump in hits to the project’s Web site from an average of 400 daily to 400,000 the day after the show. Dr. Despommier agrees that more research is needed, and calls the energy calculations his students made for the farms, which would rely solely on alternative energy, “a little bit too optimistic.” He added, “I’m a biologist swimming in very deep water right now.” “If I were to set myself as a certifier of vertical farms, I would begin with security,” he said. “How do you keep insects and bacteria from invading your crops?” He says growing food in climate-controlled skyscrapers would also protect against hail and other weather-related hazards, ensuring a higher quality food supply for a city, without pesticides or chemical fertilizers. Architects’ renderings of vertical farms — hybrids of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and Biosphere 2 with SimCity appeal — seem to be stirring interest. “It also has to be stunning in terms of the architecture, because it needs to work in terms of social marketing,” Dr. Despommier said. “You want people to say, ‘I want that in my backyard.’ ” Augustin Rosenstiehl, a French architect who worked with Dr. Despommier to design a template “living tower,” said he thought that any vertical farm proposal needed to be adapted to a specific place. Mr. Rosenstiehl, principal architect for Atelier SOA in Paris, said: “We cannot do a project without knowing where and why and what we are going to cultivate. For example, in Paris, if you grow some wheat, it’s stupid because we have big fields all around the city and lots of wheat and it’s good wheat. There’s no reason to build towers that are very expensive.” Despite its potential problems, the idea of bringing food closer to the city is gaining traction among pragmatists and dreamers alike. A smaller-scale design of a vertical farm for downtown Seattle won a regional green building contest in 2007 and has piqued the interest of officials in Portland, Ore. The building, a Center for Urban Agriculture designed by architects at Mithun, would supply about a third of the food needed for the 400 people who would live there. In June at P.S.1 Contemporary Arts Center in Queens, a husband-wife architect team built a solar-powered outdoor farm out of stacked rows of cardboard tube planters — one that would not meet Dr. Despommier’s security requirements — with chicken coops for egg collection and an array of fruits and vegetables. For Dr. Despommier, the high-rise version is on the horizon. “It’s very idealistic and ivory tower and all of that,” he said. “But there’s a real desire to make this happen.” ---------------- Peut-être pour Dubai en premier? Et le silo no.5, un de ses jours?

Water plan for St. Lawrence unpredictable, critics charge Joint commission hearings. River levels might have to be artificially elevated, environmental coalition fears CHRISTOPHER MAUGHAN, The Gazette Published: 7 hours ago The environmental and economic impact of a proposed plan to change how water flows into the St. Lawrence River is potentially disastrous and in many ways unpredictable, critics said last night. The International Joint Commission - which manages how much water passes into the river from Lake Ontario - held public hearings in Montreal last night to discuss concerns about their proposal to allow water levels to rise and fall more sharply than they now do. The IJC is an independent, bi-governmental organization that manages the Great Lakes. It controls water flow to Quebec via the Moses-Saunders dam, which runs across Lake Ontario from Cornwall, Ont., to Massena, N.Y. Their commissioners have argued that more drastic changes in water levels would allow for the establishment of more diverse flora and fauna along Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence. But at the hearings last night, critics seemed far from convinced that the proposal would result in a net environmental gain. "We haven't put enough effort into forecasting the different climate change scenarios," said Marc Hudon, a director at Nature Québec, an environmental coalition that represents 100 smaller groups. Hudon worried that the IJC plan would allow water levels on the St. Lawrence to drop so low that Quebecers would be forced to artificially elevate the water, which could cause major environmental problems. "If you have less water, you concentrate the contaminants in it," said Hudon, adding that even if the issue were addressed, the St. Lawrence would still suffer. "We would have to keep the levels up artificially by slowing the water down. That makes the water hot. When the water's hot, fish flip upside down - they can't survive." That's why Hudon is dead-set against the IJC's proposal, which is known as Plan 2007. A slightly modified proposal that takes wetland restoration into account shows promise, he said, but is too short on details to be adopted now. "We like the idea, but we don't want to go into it blind." Montreal executive committee member Alan DeSousa echoed Hudon's concerns about a lack of specifics. "We want to make sure we know what we're getting into and at this point we're not entirely sure we can say that," he told members of the IJC. "There remain many questions as to the potential impact of the various plans, especially downstream." DeSousa wondered whether the IJC had environmental contingency plans in place to deal with any serious environmental impact. "We don't have any information at this time as to the scope of the (IJC's) mitigation measures," he said. Marine transportation officials also expressed concerns, worrying about the potential impact on the economy. "Just a 10-per-cent loss of the (volume of) the seaway would result in 28 more days a year the seaway would have to be closed," said Kirk Jones, director of transportation services at Canada Steamship Lines. "Ten percent or 28 days could add up to $250 million in losses." Source http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/story.html?id=a37baa36-107d-4bc0-a482-78c6e52c158b

Will Quebec be a gas, gas, gas? Fund managers are making big bets on juniors targeting the Utica shale region SHIRLEY WON From Wednesday's Globe and Mail May 28, 2008 at 7:21 AM EDT Quebec may seem like an unlikely hot spot for natural gas exploration, but some investors are digging deeper into unconventional resource prospects in the province. Shares of junior gas explorers targeting the Utica shale region in the St. Lawrence lowlands have surged recently, with some fund managers making big bets on potential winners. "It could be a very large gas discovery for Canada and Quebec," said Eric Sprott, chief executive officer and a manager with Sprott Asset Management Inc. "We probably started [accumulating stock] six months ago, but we went in earnest eight weeks ago." Toronto-based Sprott Asset Management, through several of its funds, holds 14 per cent of Gastem Inc., 15 per cent of Questerre Corp. and 13 per cent of Altai Resources Inc., according to Bloomberg. Forest Oil Corp. The Globe and Mail The Quebec shale play, which involves drilling for gas by fracturing dense rock, focuses on an area south of the St. Lawrence River between Montreal and Quebec City. Interest has grown in the region since April, when Forest Oil Corp., a Denver-based oil and gas company, announced a significant discovery there after testing two vertical wells. Forest Oil said its Quebec assets may hold as much as four trillion cubic feet of gas reserves, and that the Utica shale has similar rock properties to the Barnett shale in Texas - the largest U.S. onshore gas field. Quebec has been known to have natural gas reserves, but advanced horizontal drilling techniques and higher gas prices are now only making the play potentially economically viable, observers say. Forest Oil, which has several junior partners in the region, will drill three horizontal wells in Quebec this summer. It has targeted its first production for next year, and full-scale drilling for 2010. Calgary-based Talisman Energy Inc. also plans to drill in Quebec in late summer. The presence of the majors gives this play more credibility, said Wellington West Capital Markets analyst Kim Page. "Talisman has indicated it is budgeting $100- to $130-million for Quebec," Mr. Page said. "The return opportunity, if this play is commercially viable, is very high." But it is the juniors that "provide the greatest upside potential," when investing, said analyst Vic Vallance of Fraser Mackenzie Ltd. The analyst has a "buy" rating on Gastem and Questerre, saying they have properties in the "sweet spot" of the play. He has no price targets on these juniors because "it's so early stage and speculative." Montreal-based Gastem is partnered with Forest Oil, Questerre and Epsilon Energy Ltd. in the Yamaska permit of the St. Lawrence lowlands. An important catalyst for Gastem's stock could come from results of the drilling of two of Forest Oil's wells this summer, Mr. Vallance said. Forest's third well is in partnership with Junex Inc. Drilling results are also a potential catalyst for the stock of Calgary-based Questerre, which is also partnered with Talisman in its drilling program, Mr. Vallance added. Toronto-based Northern Rivers Capital Management Inc. owns 11 per cent of Gastem through its four funds. "The fact that it is in all the funds reflects how bullish we are," said Alex Ruus, a hedge fund manager with Northern Rivers. Mr. Ruus was on site when Forest Oil began drilling on Gastem's property last summer. "I became quite convinced that there was probably a commercial discovery here." It was Gastem's management that got Forest Oil interested, he added. "Forest Oil is the operator that is driving this [play], going forward." He has scenarios valuing Gastem from $1 to $40 a share, but his target is now more than $10, based on current data. The play is attractive because there is a ready-made local market, as Quebec imports gas from Western Canada, and there is a network of nearby pipelines, he said. "If this thing becomes as big as we think it will, you will see Quebec starting to export natural gas to Ontario, and New York State." Paul MacDonald, with Marvrix Fund Management Inc., sold all of his shares in Junex during their recent rally, but still holds more than 750,000 of its warrants in three Marvrix resource flow-through funds. Mr. MacDonald bought Junex at $1.25 to $1.30 a share, but the stock shot well past his near-term target of $2.25. "With the best-case assumptions, you can see $30 on Junex," he said. "But there are still risks to the downside. ... It's still high risk, high return." http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080528.wrgas28/BNStory/SpecialEvents2/Quebec/