[only in alberta]

would one spot a hummer (yes, there are quite a few here) with "oil man" pasted on the back window.

I know it's a little hard to make out but trust me, it does say "oil man."

[creative industry phd opportunities: queensland uni]

Calling for applications for the upcoming scholarship round at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation in Brisbane, Australia:

Queensland University of Technology
ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation (CCI)
Research Higher Degree Project Opportunities

                   
September 2009 Scholarship Round

If you are considering applying for a scholarship in the current September round to pursue postgraduate research studies you may wish to consider connecting with projects we have in development here at the Centre (CCI) and pursue your studies with us at QUT. These projects will link you with industry, government or other partners in order to enhance your networks, the applications of your research, and potentially open up career opportunities as a result of your studies.

Here are a few of the project areas to give you a taste of these opportunities:

* Innovation and sustainability in Australian games and interactive entertainment with companies such as Firemint and Infinite Interactive, and government agencies such as the Australia Council (key contact person John Banks Ph: (07) 3138 8764; email: ja.banks@qut.edu.au)

* Australia's creative engagements with Asia in such fields as design, architecture, fashion and digital media with partners such as Austrade (Key contact person Michael Keane Ph: (07) 3138 3757;email: m.keane@qut.edu.au)

* Designing creative clusters in China and Japan with partners such as Arup (Key contact person Justin O'Connor ph: 0402 395 008; email: justin.oconnor@qut.edu.au)

* International development and empowerment through ICTs in south Asia with partners such as Intel and UNESCO (Key Contact Person: Jo Tacchi Ph: (07) 3138 8178; email: j.tacchi@qut.edu.au)

* Urban regeneration and creative reuses of space with partners such as eastern seaboard city councils and state government agencies (Key Contact Person: Justin O'Connor Ph: 0402 395 008; email: justin.oconnor@qut.edu.au)

Please note the QUT closing date for scholarship applications is Wednesday 30 September for international students and Friday 9 October 2009 for domestic students.

To apply go to: http://www.rsc.qut.edu.au/future/scholarships/Annual_round_awards.jsp

If you have any questions in regards to the application process please contact Britta Froehling (Ph: (07) 3138 3716; email: britta.froehling@qut.edu.au).

General inquiries about the Centre's research agenda and supervision capacity can be addressed to the Director, Stuart Cunningham Ph: (07) 3138 3743; email: s.cunningham@qut.edu.au.

[social media and sustainability]

Recently I was asked to give a presentation to a group on the theme of social media and sustainability. I began with an introduction to some web 2.0 applications (blogs, wikis, twitter) and the usefulness of rss. Then I gave some examples of organisations employing aspects of social media to generate interest/support in an environmental issue or to garner information. Early into my introduction I asked the group (there were about 35 or so) to answer some questions to give me (and them) and idea of how they are situated in relation to social media.
The questions I asked included:

• Do you send txt msgs?
• Do you blog or comment on blogs?
• Do you listen to podcasts?
• Do you have a Facebook profile?
• Do you participate on an e-mail list?
• Have you watched a YouTube video?
• Do you Tweet?
• Do you have a Flickr account?
• Do you aggregate RSS feeds?

How do you think the group did? Would your prediction change if I told you this was research-oriented group? That mostly everyone there was over 35 (except perhaps for a few ph.d students who joined us and the speaker of course...)?

Well no one had a blog though a few did listen to podcasts and the question about tweeting generated a few giggles. Two people in the room had photo-sharing accounts but no one knew what RSS was so definitely no one was using a feed aggregator. Having said this, I think I'd have received similar answers with a younger group. In fact, having posed this questions to my first year and third year media undergrads they too did not have blogs but they watched and uploaded videos and shared photos and updates with facebook. No one there knew about rss either. So, not too dissimilar...which leads me to...

Someone at the talk implied that *we* (harumph) are digital immigrants and that our students and the groups we're trying to target (in this case, to instill change and be proactive about the environment) are digital natives, ergo they *know* this *stuff*... Firstly, I disagree that technology-use is a generational thing (think of silver surfers). Secondly, just because you or your child or your niece or whomever...has access to a nintendo ds or a psp or txts all the time does not mean that they are literate and know how to protect themselves online and recognise issues related to identity theft, bullying and even future employment (do you really want your future employer to see evidence of a drunken saturday night - I know my first and third years did NOT realise this).

I think there's often talk about helping students become *literate* (or transliterate) in the online environment - how do they navigate all the different modes alongside identity and IP (especially for researchers) etc...but what about the teachers? Where is the acknowledgment that those doing the teaching also need time to learn, absorb and choose how and if they're going to implement web 2.0 applications? I'm wondering more about this because although the group I was talking with weren't there in terms of pedagogy the questions they asked were just as applicable:

• why *should* we use [enter application here, twitter/facebook/blogs/podcasts/youtube/flickr]?
• doesn't this just add more work?
• what are the benefits?

I think it's to be expected that there is anxiety with new things; adding to our work and generating frustration but I think the examples I showed of organisations leveraging social media to share ideas and generate buzz illustrated well the potentials. I quite like what ForestEthics, Greenpeace and Sierra Club BC, the three leading environmental groups that have worked with the B.C. government, First Nations and industry leaders to British Columbia’s globally unique Great Bear Rainforest. Together, they launched a social media campaign using facebook, twitter, blogs and youtube videos. They also made it easy for supporters to send pre-written protest e-mails and add their voices to the campaign. On the 31st of March 2009 the social media efforts paid off:

"March 31, 2009, Vancouver, British Columbia – The promise made three years ago to protect one-third of British Columbia’s globally unique Great Bear Rainforest and develop the foundations for a conservation-based economy in the region has been fulfilled. Today’s announcement is greatly welcomed by ForestEthics, Greenpeace and Sierra Club BC, the three leading environmental groups that have worked with the B.C. government, First Nations and industry leaders to ensure the promise would be kept. Today’s announcement lays out the tremendous ecological and economic gains for the region and the long-term commitment to ensure the health of the rainforest and communities."

Have a look at the youtube video:

The questions after the session were enlightening. Most were excited to explore social media themselves but admitted that they didn't really know about "these sorts of things." They wanted to learn but weren't sure whether they had the institutional support. So key the to us being able to pass on knowledge is institutional/work support in terms of teaching the teachers (employees etc...) and giving them the time to learn how to use tools effectively (of course this goes for anything right? not just social media or computer technologies). I must say, the IOCT is brilliant in that respect - using twitter and facebook and blogging are recognised aspects of research and demonstrate interaction with/in the field. (disclosure: I am employed as a Research Fellow at the IOCT).

[credit crunch craft]

I've heard of re-purposing record album covers as wall art. I suppose you could also use the smaller cardboard covers that come with cassettes (if anyone still has these kicking around). But what do with the actual tapes that remain?

Well, Mary over at the Audiobooker Blog links to an interesting idea by iri5. iri5 has a set of "ghost in the machine" flickr photos which show some excellent examples of eco-craft. I feel some creativity coming on....

[dac conference]

DAC09 will be held on the campus of the University of California Irvine,for three and a half days in mid-December 2009.

The Themes for this iteration of DAC:

* Embodiment and performativity
* Mobile/locative/situated/wearable practices
* Software/platform studies
* Environment/ sustainability/ climate change
* Interdisciplinary pedagogy
* Cognition and Creativity
* Sex and sexuality

More information can be found at the conference website: http://dac09.uci.edu

DAC09 is now accepting paper proposals, and inviting offers of participation in other aspects of the conference.

The site and the conference are at this point a work in progress.

New and updated material will be added regularly.

[canada & snow]

Leaving Friday morning from Heathrow on the way to California for a conference I was mentally preparing myself for sun and warmer weather. Instead, my flight was overbooked and I ended up going via Calgary to San Francisco. Part of the (still going) adventure was the massive snow storm last night in Calgary which successfully grounded pretty much all flights! Airport staff told us the airport was shutting down and sure enough, after a few hours there really weren't many people around (especially if you don't count those like us in the queue to find out what to do while in Calgary). Though it's not snowing now in Calgary it is -34 degrees C (with the wind chill) and yes, I do count that because the wind is fierce now, blowing snow around making for pretty poor visibility. People's cars are not starting (and these are rugged big jeeps and pickups) and the hotel doors have frozen open.

[attack racism]

Apparently "Margaret Wente is one of Canada's leading columnists." Apparently "she provokes heated debate with her views... Fine. I think we'd agree that heated debate and discussion are central to the sharing and deepening of knowledge. However, read these statements: "it is simply not permissible to say that aboriginal culture was less evolved than European culture or Chinese culture – even though it's true" and "The fact that North American cultures never evolved further."

I think most open-minded people would agree that there are some huge (unfounded) generalisations being made here. Wente begins her "article" with a nod towards the recent racist comments made by Dick Pound (International Olympic City) [he said: "We must not forget that 400 years ago, Canada was a land of savages, with scarcely 10,000 inhabitants of European origin, while in China, we're talking about a 5,000-year-old civilization."]. While Wente admits that Pound's remarks were "stupid" she explains why, not simply because his line is hugely offensive, but importantly because "The last thing they [B.C. government and VANOC] want is for native protests to "steal the spotlight. Comments about “savages,” in whatever language, are not helpful." Nice. So basically, say what you like, offend whom you like, as long as business can carry on as planned.

As Nick Reo at Turtle Talk notes, "her conclusions are poorly founded, contradictory, and backward-ic."

Wente attempts to support her views by referencing an "academic" text about to be published by McGill-Queenh's University Press called Disrobing the Aboriginal Industry (I won't add a link as they really shouldn't get any more publicity - plus, since when is a culture an industry?). In this book, Wente explains that the authors

"knoc[k] the stuffing out of the prevailing mythology that surrounds the history of first peoples. That mythology holds that aboriginal culture was equal or superior to European culture. At the time of contact, North America was occupied by a race of gentle pastoralists with their own science, their own medicine and their own oral history that was every bit as rich as Europe's.

The truth is different. North American native peoples had a neolithic culture based on subsistence living and small kinship groups. They had not developed broader laws or institutions, a written language, evidence-based science, mathematics or advanced technologies. The kinship groups in which they lived were very small, simply organized and not very productive. Other kinship groups were regarded as enemies, and the homicide rate was probably rather high. Until about 30 years ago, the anthropological term for this developmental stage was 'savagery.'"

and

"Today, “traditional knowledge,” which generally resides among the elders, is sought after by governments, studied in universities around the world, and recognized in environmental assessment processes. But Ms. Widdowson says most of it is useless – a heap of vague beliefs and opinions that can't be verified or tested. Why have the muskoxen drifted west? Because, according to the elders, the animals were “following the people because they missed them and wanted their company.”

The references in the book by Widdowson and Howard also cannot be taken at face-value, as substantiation of their wild views because also those academics and their ideas have been "distorted, taken out of context, and at times used to support conclusions that are diametrically opposed to our own [those of us who have been writing on indigenous oppression and self determination] perspectives." As Deborah Simmons further explains:

"In short, Widdowson and Howard have the temerity to argue that indigenous societies are a throwback to an anachronistic Neolithic stage of social history. In the face of rational modernisation, indigenous people are inherently inferior and constituted by lack: they are illiterate, dysfunctional, dependent and corrupt. The population explosion in their communities is causing serious problems.

Notwithstanding their expanding population, according to Widdowson and Howard they do not qualify for nationhood, dispersed as they are in small communities across the continent. Thus self-determination is not an option. The solution for all their “problems” is for indigenous people to submit to the evolutionary nature of history; to recognize the inherent superiority of scientific methods; to relocate from their traditional territories to urban centres; and to become “socialized” (ie. assimilated) into Canadian capitalism. Widdowson and Howard don’t hold out much hope for this solution to be workable in the near term, given “tribal” superstitions and resistance to progressive innovations. Clearly the only logical solution for the present is to cut funding for indigenous organisations and continue what they describe in positive terms as the “warehousing” of indigenous peoples on the margins of Canadian society."

Matthew L.M. Fletcher offers a response:

"First off, broad generalizations about the hundreds and thousands of North American cultures prior to, say, 1492, are utterly worthless, except for persons trying to make a political point. None of the above statements, taken together, is true for any specific group anywhere in the world. I’m from Michigan, as is my family’s communities, and they weren’t so savage. They had enormous agricultural output, even north of the so-called freeze line in mid-Michigan. In fact, these “unproductive” Indians fed the British (later American) fort at Michilimackinac in the 18th and 19th centuries with surplus corn, sqaush, beans, and other veggies."

Though the article is deeply misinformed, unfounded and largerly generalist, scarily, "we can expect it to have a long shelf life and misinform scores of people." Scary too are the myriad of comments to the Globe article that perpetuate and support these kinds of generalisations and misinformation.

[aboriginal pedagogy and language]

I've just started reading Robert Bringhurst's The Solid Form of Language. A fantastic read and the book itself is a beatiful artifact, all texture and typography, just demanding to be touched.The image of the book on the left is from phil dokas on flickr. He's done a great job of capturing the texture of the book. "Drop a word in the ocean of meaning and concentric ripples form. To define a single word means to try to catch those ripples. No one’s hands are fast enough." ... poet, typographer and linguist Robert Bringhurst presents a brief history of writing and a new way of classifying and understanding the relationship between script and meaning.

Beginning with the original relationship between a language and its written script, Bringhurst takes us on a history of reading and writing that begins with the interpretation of animal tracks and fast-forwards up to the typographical abundance of more recent times. The first four sections of the essay describe the earliest creation of scripts, their movement across the globe and the typographic developments within and across languages.

In the fifth and final section of the essay, Bringhurst introduces his system of classifying scripts. Placing four established categories of written language – semographic, syllabic, alphabetic and prosodic – on a wheel adjacent to one another, he uses the location, size and shape of points on the wheel to show the degree to which individual world languages incorporate these aspects of recorded meaning. Bringhurst’s system is based on an appreciation that indeed no one’s hands are fast enough and that no single script adheres to or can be understood within the confines of a single method of transcription."

As I'm reading this book on typographic and linguistic developments I also have learnt that First Nations peoples of Manitoba (I wonder if this is true for all First Nations peoples?) prefer to use language as their main identifier:

For me this seems to highlight the importance of an oral culture and the tradition of passing on history, stories, teachings - a kind of "collective memory" that wouldn't get passed on if there wasn't the knowledge of language.

Image above of "Plains Cree Inscription" at the Forks Park in Winnipeg, found on wikipedia.

[breathing earth]

During my presentation yesterday for the Creative Writing & New Media Online Master's students (who met in Leicester f2f for one week) I referred to some interesting narratives that are merging story with geographic information and/or maps. Two projects I referred to were The 21 Steps and a school trip project by Emerson College. In line with my developing interest on the role of geographic information (and the like) in narratives, the following project fits right in - linking cultural narratives (of co2 emissions, births and deaths) with countries. Thanks to a tweet today by @fromthehip aka Ingrid Kopp, I found The Breathing Earth Simulation:


The countries in red (at the time of this screen capture) - US, China and Saudi Arabia - are "currently emmitting 1000 tonnes of CO2." It's also interesting to see how the birth/death rates compare:
Someone dies/is born every:
China: 3.5 seconds/1.8 seconds
Saudi Arabi: 8 minutes/42.7 seconds
US: 12.8 seconds/7.3 seconds

In Canada: 2.1 minutes/1.5 minutes
In the UK: 51.8 seconds/ 48.9 seconds - so in the UK deaths and births seem to be pretty balanced. While Greenland seems to be the country with the slowest death and birth rates: 20 hours/9.8 hours


The project is created by David Bleja.

[chris joseph and NRG]

Today Chris Joseph, digital writer in residence at the IOCT presented his latest project, NRG. A culmination of his two years at the IOCT resulted in an impressive hybrid piece of electronic art that highlights issues pertaining to digital literacy, digital art, art reception, performance, narrative, multimodality, interaction, performance and the environment. Chris is well known for his work on multimodal digital fiction Inanimate Alice (with Kate Pullinger) and his work has frequently been nominated for a variety of prizes. Some examples:

2008:

Finalist (Interactive productions category), Learning on Screen Awards 2008, British Universities Film & Video Council, UK 2007: Selected Finalist, 2008 CULTURAS Intercultural Dialogue Awards, Madrid, Spain [Alicia Inanimada, Episodio 1: China] Selected Finalist, 8th Seoul International Film Festival, Seoul, Korea [The Surveys] IBM New Media Prize, 20th Stuttgarter Filmwinter, Stuttgart, Germany [Inanimate Alice, Episode 1: China] Selected Works, 20th Stuttgarter Filmwinter, Stuttgart, Germany [Inanimate Alice, Episode 1: China and Inanimate Alice, Episode 2: Italy]

Today Chris presented NRG at the IOCT. This work is a combination of bicycle, human power, narrative, multimodality and a laptop. Chris notes that he was initially very interested in raising the question of sustainability in electronic art, a question seemingly often overlooked. Spurred on by the success of The Magnificent Revolutionary Cycling Cinema, Chris attempted his own pedal-powered system. Players or readers or interactors must cycle to generate the story which appears on a laptop hooked up to the bike. As Chris says:

It's 2010 and you have been appointed to lead the new World Energy Directorate, with the power to control international spending and research on energy sources and production. Your decisions will influence the life of billions of humans, countless species and the Earth as a whole. How will your choices change all our lives during the planet's next forty years of industrial development?

Part environmental game, part multimedia artwork, NRG (short for En-er-gy) is self-sustaining, people-powered installation. No previous knowledge about energy issues is assumed or required, but NRG is intended to stimulate thought and discussion about energy consumption, its links to global warming and the need for the development of lifestyle alternatives.

***

Over the past fifty years electronic art has grown to become an established genre, yet energy – specifically the power required to view a work, as well as create it - is rarely acknowledged. But a electronic writers, artists and musicians must confront the fact that natural resources (converted to electricity) are continually required in order for the work to be experienced by both physical and virtual audiences. So in responding to the IOCT - an institution at the forefront of electronic creation - it seemed natural that my residency work should consider energy, both as a narrative theme and in the practical realisation of the piece.


NRG resides on a laptop that is not connected to the mains, but instead requires power to be periodically supplied by its ‘players’ through a bicycle generator. To play, simply select which energy sources the world should invest in, choosing as few or as many as you wish. Just as in the real world, the choices made will have significant impacts upon energy supply and use, population, carbon dioxide levels and other planet-wide measurements over the next five decades.

Perhaps the reading/kind of performance required to understand this work is a good example of transliteracy and of transdisciplinarity - various modes and disciplines coming together.

Congratulations Chris and best of luck!

[pavement art]

[spring blossoms]

[smaller than a smart car]

"The City Car is a stackable electric two-passenger city vehicle. The one-way sharable user model is designed to be used in dense urban areas. Vehicle Stacks will be placed throughout the city to create an urban transportation network that takes advantage of existing infrastructure such as subway and bus lines. By placing stacks in urban spaces and key points of convergence, the vehicle allows the citizens the flexibility to combine mass transit effectively with individualized mobility. The stack receives incoming vehicles and electrically charges them. Similar to luggage carts at the airport, users simply take the first fully charged vehicle at the front of the stack. The City car is NOT a replacement for personal vehicles, taxis, buses, or trucks; it is a NEW vehicle type that promotes a socially responsible and more effective means of urban mobility.
The City car utilizes fully integrated in-wheel electric motors and suspension systems called, "Wheel Robots." The wheel robots eliminate the need traditional drive train configurations like engine blocks, gear boxes, and differentials because they are self-contained, digitally controlled, and reconfigurable. Additionally, the wheel robot provides all wheel power and steering capable of 360 degrees of movement, thus allowing for Omni-directional movement. The vehicle can maneuver in tight urban spaces and park by sideways translation. This technology is patented-pending and under design development at the MIT Media Lab."

Source

As requested Paul:

I wonder if the IOCT needs one....

[save energy, save the world]

we can all be a little bit of a hero...even when searching the 'net:

"Blackle was created by Heap Media to remind us all of the need to take small steps in our everyday lives to save energy. Blackle searches are powered by Google Custom Search.
Blackle saves energy because the screen is predominantly black. "Image displayed is primarily a function of the user's color settings and desktop graphics, as well as the color and size of open application windows; a given monitor requires more power to display a white (or light) screen than a black (or dark) screen." Roberson et al, 2002
In January 2007 a blog post titled Black Google Would Save 750 Megawatt-hours a Year proposed the theory that a black version of the Google search engine would save a fair bit of energy due to the popularity of the search engine. Since then there has been skepticism about the significance of the energy savings that can be achieved and the cost in terms of readability of black web pages.
We believe that there is value in the concept because even if the energy savings are small, they all add up. Secondly we feel that seeing Blackle every time we load our web browser reminds us that we need to keep taking small steps to save energy."

[choking china]

Read This:

"But just as the speed and scale of China’s rise as an economic power have no clear parallel in history, so its pollution problem has shattered all precedents. Environmental degradation is now so severe, with such stark domestic and international repercussions, that pollution poses not only a major long-term burden on the Chinese public but also an acute political challenge to the ruling Communist Party. And it is not clear that China can rein in its own economic juggernaut.

Public health is reeling. Pollution has made cancer China’s leading cause of death, the Ministry of Health says. Ambient air pollution alone is blamed for hundreds of thousands of deaths each year. Nearly 500 million people lack access to safe drinking water."

And what about this:

"The government rarely uses market-oriented incentives to reduce pollution. Officials have rejected proposals to introduce surcharges on electricity and coal to reflect the true cost to the environment. The state still controls the price of fuel oil, including gasoline, subsidizing the cost of driving.

Energy and environmental officials have little influence in the bureaucracy. The environmental agency still has only about 200 full-time employees, compared with 18,000 at the Environmental Protection Agency in the United States.

China has no Energy Ministry. The Energy Bureau of the National Development and Reform Commission, the country’s central planning agency, has 100 full-time staff members. The Energy Department of the United States has 110,000 employees.

China does have an army of amateur regulators. Environmentalists expose pollution and press local government officials to enforce environmental laws. But private individuals and nongovernment organizations cannot cross the line between advocacy and political agitation without risking arrest.

At least two leading environmental organizers have been prosecuted in recent weeks, and several others have received sharp warnings to tone down their criticism of local officials. One reason the authorities have cited: the need for social stability before the 2008 Olympics, once viewed as an opportunity for China to improve the environment."

[walking in queen elizabeth park]

Today we enjoyed a vigorous 3 hour walk through Hampshire's biggest country park. Although we didn't actually walk the whole 20 miles of trails, at times it did feel like it (there were lots of inclines!).

[ontario goes solar]

Tyler Hamilton
Energy Reporter

The Ontario government has given approval for a California company to construct a massive solar "farm" near Sarnia that will blanket an area larger than all three Toronto islands with hundreds of thousands of sun-soaking panels.

It will be the largest solar power station in North America and among the most expansive in the world to use photovoltaic cells that produce electricity when exposed to sunlight. Once complete, the 40-megawatt Sarnia project will be able to supply enough emission-free electricity to power between 10,000 and 15,000 homes on sunny days.

"This is certainly the most exciting thing I've ever worked on," said Peter Carrie of OptiSolar Farms Canada Inc., a subsidiary of Hayward, Calif.-based OptiSolar Inc. "We want to take solar mainstream."

The Ontario Power Authority has agreed to purchase the electricity under a 20-year contract that will see the clean power go into the provincial grid. An official announcement is expected today from the energy ministry.


Stanton said solar panel systems, once relegated to the rooftops of homes, farms and commercial buildings, are growing in size as technology costs fall and government incentives increase. "There's also an increasing recognition of the public benefits associated with solar energy production," he said.

"Solar power is carbon-free, it's pollution-free, it doesn't need water, doesn't make noise. Solar also produces power during peak business hours, so it displaces natural gas," he said.

But compared to coal, nuclear power, even wind, solar's squeaky-clean image comes at a high price. OptiSolar is selling the electricity to the province under its new standard offer program, which pays a premium for electricity that comes from small-scale renewable projects. In the case of wind, it's 11 cents per kilowatt-hour. Solar fetches 42 cents per kilowatt hour, nearly four times as much.

Deborah Doncaster, executive director of the Ontario Sustainable Energy Association, said the premium may seem high but is justified given the environmental benefits. She said it's often forgotten that solar-generated electricity tends to offset natural gas during peak periods when air conditioners are blasting and electricity rates are at their highest.

"Forty-two cents compared against 6.4 cents for nuclear is comparing apples to oranges," she said, adding that the publicly touted costs of nuclear power and fossil fuels never reflect environmental costs, health impacts, and industry subsidies.

"I think the issue around 42 cents has to be looked at in the proper context of hidden costs," Doncaster said.

And while large on a solar scale, the Sarnia project is a lightweight compared to nuclear or coal plants. Peak electricity consumption in Ontario yesterday was 18,055 megawatts. OptiSolar's farm could at most supply .2 per cent of that power.

Carrie said OptiSolar chose Ontario over its home base of California, because of the 42-cent offer, which isn't available anywhere else in North America. Only European countries have taken such an approach, explaining why world solar leader Germany installed seven times more solar panels than the United States in 2006.

OptiSolar hopes the premium offered through the Ontario program will give it a return on its investment over the life of its 20-year contract with the province, said Carrie.

The company hopes to break ground in 2008 after getting the necessary municipal zoning approvals and building permits. It has already purchased the real estate it needs, mostly low-value farm and industrial land, and has full backing of the local community.

Carrie said the Sarnia area was chosen because it has the right mix of land and good access to the electrical distribution network. It's also in the most southerly region of Ontario, meaning it offers the best "sun hours."

Solar tends to be a low-maintenance technology, but several local contractors will be hired to help install and connect thousands of solar panels.

"There will also be ongoing contracts for property maintenance, grounds maintenance, security and equipment cleaning," said Carrie, a Canadian and former employee of the energy ministry. He most recently ran his own solar installation business in California.

If all goes according to schedule, the Sarnia solar farm will be fully functional in 2010 and will continue supplying clean electricity to the grid for the next 30 to 50 years.

Not much is known about OptiSolar, though many of its private investors are Canadian. It was co-founded by Randy Goldstein and Phil Rettger, who previously founded the Calgary-based oil sands technology and project developer Opti Canada Inc.

The company says it has developed a way of mass-producing solar cells in a way that dramatically lowers the cost of the technology, making it competitive with conventional forms of electricity generation.

Carrie said the goal in Ontario is to showcase OptiSolar's technology and demonstrate its performance, while at the same time generating revenues from electricity production.