it's adapt or die for canada's energy sector - home battery system

Let's stick to the best we do.
This sums up the reaction of Kodak executives when the company's own scientists talked about this amazing new way of taking photos without film.
Forty years ago, Steve Saeson, an engineer at Kodak, invented the first digital camera, recalling that he was told "it's cute --
But don't tell anyone about it.
We know how the story ends.
Kodak man Kodak's bread and butter is a product of film production and photo processing.
It chose to stay in this comfortable area and give up its leadership in the emerging world of digital photography.
This guarantees its demise.
For existing Canadian companies, while reducing greenhouse gas emissions, is the fate of finding, producing, refining, distributing and burning fossil fuels the same?
Gas emissions have become a moral imperative? Will zero-
Low carbon technology
Impact the business model to create new industry giants, destroy the old ones that can't adapt?
History is filled with companies and even the industry as a whole, blinded by innovation because they ignore a seemingly distant threat.
Streaming and downloading have destroyed blockbusters.
Cell phone kills pay-phone business.
LED lighting dim the future of Thomas Edison's incandescent lamp.
This can at least partly explain why companies in Fortune 500 in 1955 do not exist today.
Companies like Tesla Motors, SolarCity, Uber and AirBnB are likely to send more packages.
"Completely thinking out of the box, it's really necessary to see opportunities and not threats in this new energy reality," says Jules Kortenhorst, chief executive of the Carbon War Room.
A profitable think tank founded by billionaire Richard Branson.
"For corporate executives who spend their lives under the constraints of the old model, or for government officials who see taxes and create jobs from the old energy reality, it is very difficult to make such a spiritual shift.
Management at Kodak and Japanese rival Fujifilm have found the shift difficult, and they are all affected by arriving at the Digital party too late.
But Fujifilm is booming today, partly because when it takes action, it does so with the kind of commitment, urgency and vision Kodak lacks.
One of Fujifilm's initiatives, for example, is to decide to diversify its business beyond photography.
It's not just looking around for simple acquisitions, it's putting a lot of money in-house for research and development.
The company took stock of its core skills, assets and technical knowledge
How to identify the use of these emerging markets for new revenue.
Fujifilm is still selling digital cameras, but it is no longer just a photography company.
It makes films on solar panels and touch screens.
Great progress has been made in medical imaging, cosmetics and medicines.
In-
With expertise in nanotechnology, the company has been involved in dozens of emerging industries.
To achieve this long-term investment
The long-term vision is costly and damages the company's profitability in the short term, but the effort is worth it.
Fujifilm is today's lucrative giant with a market capitalization of $21 billion (U. S. ).
Kodak, which stood out from bankruptcy protection in 2013, is worth $0. 5 billion and is still losing money.
With climate change, the risks are getting bigger and the challenges are getting bigger, but here are some lessons for 20 years --
Century industries and companies built around fossil fuels.
One is that it would be a mistake to underestimate the speed of the transition to low level
Just because it took decades for the previous energy transformation to get on fire, the carbon economy was formed.
"We often fall into what we know and look at the world by looking back at the past," said Leah Lawrence, CEO of Sustainable Development Technologies Canada, a federal company that helps fund emerging clean technologies.
In this context, what has not been revealed in the past is that today there is an unprecedented awareness that climate change poses a threat to global security, health, biodiversity, food supply and water resources.
Nor in the past has it reflected the sharp decline in costs of clean energy technologies, particularly solar technologies, and the growing political will to start controlling greenhouses --gas emissions.
The knowledge of the past does not reflect the unknown of the future.
Or the writer, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, famously called the rare, unforeseen "Black Swan ".
"Innovation is a very uncertain process," Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates said in a recent interview with The Atlantic.
"As far as I know, even if we don't do research and development, some people will invent something in 10 years and it will solve the problem (climate change)thing.
You can bet thousands of people are trying.
For observers like Kortenhorst, the energy miracle is welcome but not necessarily needed.
There are a lot of core technologies that can scale better, cheaper and faster today.
What it needs is a new perspective, rather than being bound by the old energy paradigm that sees fossil fuels as eternal fuel --
Giving up is too important, the challenge is too dominant, and the failure is too great.
Kortenhorst believes that innovation centers like Silicon Valley in California do not feel this constraint.
"The reality of Silicon Valley's view of energy is that I don't know anything about energy, but I know everything about new business models and IT --
"With change enabled, I will do what I want at the speed I want," he said . ".
Established industries
From mining or steelmaking to energy production or agriculture-
The message is that when the world around you starts to shift, it's not always the best way to stick to what you do best.
It is also possible that it will lead to a decline.
Some technologies that could undermine existing industries: Interior agriculture
Verdant Global-based companies have come up with an effective way to grow vegetables at indoor agricultural plants that can be built anywhere in the world.
Its agricultural plants use less energy and water and can remotely monitor all aspects of planting, producing 20 times more than traditional greenhouses.
Building factories that consume food eliminates the need for transportation and related greenhousesgas emissions.
"We need to find resources that are more scalable, more flexible and richer --
"By 2050, an effective way to feed 9 billion people," the company said . ".
Planeless papyrus in Winnipeg
The joint venture, co-founded by actor Woody halesen, has developed a way to make paper from small wheat straw waste using less energy, water and toxic chemicals, while reducing
A copy of the company has been sold through Staples, which says its first North American manufacturing plant will be powered by renewable energy.
The company is putting pressure on traditional paper makers to explore lower
An alternative that affects what they do.
Montreal says junk fuel "imagine fueling your car with garbage"
Based on Enerkem on its website.
The company knows how to convert waste that cannot be recycled into renewable chemicals and fuels such as methanol and ethanol.
Its process can handle anything that contains carbon, including wood, plastic, fabric and paper
There are no basic products in the recycling market.
In addition, the products it creates can be used locally, such as biofuels for waste handling trucks.
Enerkem's first commercial facility, which started operations in Edmonton this year, was able to increase the waste diversion rate from 60 to 90.
Traditional waste management companies are paying close attention.
Powered by PlasmaVancouver-
Based on universal fusion, a new method has been developed to compress the hydrogen isotope by hitting the metal ball hard and the shock wave squeezes the plasma to the point that triggers the fusion reaction.
There is a similar reaction in our sun, but the General Fusion program makes a small
React once a second in a metal sphere filled with a rotating mixture of molten lead and lithium.
The bottom line is: a lot of heat will be generated and captured to generate steam that will be used to generate a lot of carbon
Free electricity.
This is the assumption that the company will succeed.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is one of the more and more corporate funders who have high hopes for Amazon.
MarsJon Dogterom's point of view leads the clean technology practice in the Mars exploration area of Toronto, where he works with dozens of start-
Take the company to the forefront of the low-end marketcarbon economy.
Which technical trends have the most disruptive potential in addressing greenhouse issuesgas emissions?
One of the most disruptive trends we see is the convergence of different technologies.
For example, the clean technology integrated with information technology has opened up a new area of operational improvement for companies and new business models.
Can you give an example of this fusion in action?
One example is the Ecobee or Nest smart thermostat, which opens up a new business model for utilities while providing new features for homeowners.
Being able to remotely control your home energy use, or in the future pass that control to your utility or grid operator under certain conditions opens up new possibilities with the combination of physical hardware.
If you can control thousands of home thermostats at the same time, it is possible to avoid using a gas peak power plant.
Does this fundamentally change the role of utilities? For sure.
If they don't develop over time, most of their business will be replaced by others.
That's why utilities like PowerStream run a project that puts Fixed batteries in many homes.
The company can actually remotely control the charging or use of these home battery systems.
This creates a new relationship between the utility and the homeowner.
What other disruptions are on the horizon?
Another area where we see amazing innovation is the material side, and the material processing that fundamentally changes the properties of the material.
A smarter alloy is an example.
A company called NanoQuan has a way to mix the composite so you can adjust the properties of the material.
This can improve the efficiency of what you are doing and may reduce the material used to achieve the same functionality.
What challenges are there in the future?
The hardest part of the industry is to keep up with the pace of change and make sure they are part of it.
The biggest challenge here is to break the silos of the past and allow innovation to take place across industries in a smoother way.
This requires the team to work together and usually not together.
For example, the Transportation Department is not very often talking to power companies, and this is happening with the introduction of electric vehicles.
This article is part of a series of articles produced by Toronto Star and Canadian tidal Corporation to address Canada's series of pressing climate issues ahead of the United Nations climate change conference in Paris, December 2015.
Tides Canada supports this partnership to raise public awareness and dialogue on the impact of climate change on Canada's economy and communities.
The Toronto Star has complete editorial control and responsibility to ensure that the story is strictly edited to meet editorial standards.