@The Convergence of ICT, the Environment, Climate Change, EV and HEV Transportation & Distributed Renewable Energy

The Canadian government is taking another step towards aligning Canadian vehicle standards with those of the U.S.

Denis Lebel, Canadian Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities, announced yesterday that the Government of Canada is continuing its commitment to advance clean vehicle technologies with the launch of the second phase of the ecoTECHNOLOGY progam.

The Clean Transportation Initiatives focus on aligning Canadian regulations with those in the United States and with international standards, improving the efficiency of the transportation system and advancing clean technologies.

The second phase of the ecoTECHNOLOGY for Vehicles Program was launched by Minister Lebel. In the words of Minister Lebel: “this program will assess the safety and environmental performance of new vehicle technologies to ensure that innovations can be introduced in Canada in a safe and timely manner.”

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Can the startup accelerator model work for battery companies? The folks behind CalCharge, the brainchild of Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and California Clean Energy Fund (CalCEF) that hopes to attract some 30 battery companies in the San Francisco Bay Area, think so.

Through CalCharge, battery tech developers will be able to enlist the help of researchers and use equipment at Berkeley Lab and other research institutions, participate in seminars and forums, recruit engineers and other employees and network with each other to trade information. Companies can do all this on their own, of course, but they might find better results when they go through an organization that pools resources to serve a larger community.

“What I’ve been hearing for a while is that in the Silicon Valley and the software industry, there is an ecosystem to bring everybody together,” said Venkat Srinivasan, head of energy storage and distributed resources department at Berkeley Lab. “We recognize that battery companies want an ecosystem to work together.”

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