Canada

Could it be that the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gas is the same country that spends more on green technology than any other country?

In the world of energy, the Canadian province of Alberta is best known for its enormous oil sands reserves. But soon, it will have another claim to fame:  home of the country's biggest biodiesel plant.

On the face of it, Americans seem to love trash. Canadians, not so much, as the story of Plasco Energy Group highlights.  The company is capitalizing on that apparently national desire to put trash in its place; in Canada’s case, diverting its municipal solid waste, or MSW, to waste-to-energy streams.

In October of 2010, Ameren Energy Resources, a division of Ameren Corporation, (NYSE: AEE), got a formal promise from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to commit $1 billion to the development of FutureGen 2.0.

A recent poll of Canadians and Americans suggests that Canadians believe in climate change and support government policies to mitigate its effect, including cap and trade; more so than their neighbours to the South.

Following an aggressive provincial mandate to eliminate coal power plants by 2014, four plants have been closed this month in Ontario, Canada.

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Speaking at a conference in Waterloo, Ontario, Environment Minister Jim Prentice outlined how Canada will dole out CDN$400 million in donated funds to help fight climate change.

Committed in June at the G8/G20 summit, the donation, which is part of a US$30 billion international fund for developing nations, is the largest in Canadian history.

Thorium – a chemical element named after the Norse god of thunder – is an emerging nuclear feedstock that is catching the interest of scientists, energy experts and policymakers around the world as an alternative to uranium-based nuclear energy.