Patrick Boake
Business Edge, Vol. 1, No. 1
January 20, 2005

A fifth Centre of Excellence has been added in Ontario – this time for energy.

The Centre of Excellence for Energy will receive $8 million in provincial funding over the next four years, Economic Development and Trade Minister Joseph Cordiano said earlier this month.

The new centre is intended to encourage research and development in leading-edge and emerging energy sources and technology. It is mandated to focus funding on new, made-in-Ontario green energy solutions, as well as shepherding completed projects to market with the help of Ontario businesses.

Cordiano said he believes the new centre will play an important role in Ontario’s long-term energy strategy.

The energy centre is the first new Centre of Excellence since 1987 when David Peterson’s Liberal government launched the program.

The original four centres were: Communications and Information Technology Ontario; Centre for Research in Earth and Space Technology; Materials and Manufacturing Ontario; and Photonics Research Ontario.

The new centre is the latest step in a multi-year rejuvenation process. The Ontario government-owned, not-for-profit corporation took on its current form last April when the four individual centres became divisions of Ontario Centres of Excellence (OCE) Inc. Each division has its own advisory board operating under OCE’s management board.

President and CEO Mark Romoff and a new board of directors were appointed last October. OCE is currently looking for a managing director for the centre, and the planning committee and OCE board are developing a business plan.

“[OCE] is a matchmaker between industry and Ontario’s academic community,” OCE Inc. chair David McFadden says.

“Last year alone, nine startup companies were formed as a result of OCE-sponsored research. Through the years, over 50 companies have been launched as a result of OCE.”

Provincial NDP environment critic Marilyn Churley is upbeat about the government moving forward on innovative energy strategies, but questions the substance of the announcement.

“Parts of the announcement echo the NDP’s call for investment in the green energy sector. We like to have our ideas stolen when they are good ideas,” says Churley.

“The concern is making this announcement without plans, goals and timetables in place, it may be a PR exercise rather than a real push to move forward,” she says. “It’s disappointing to me to hear that they don’t have a plan because if there’s no plan of action and no goals in mind, then I think the result will be very disappointing.”

Centre for Energy planning committee member Tom Adams acknowledges the centre is still a work in progress. He is optimistic.

“This is changing the culture and the way we think about energy in Ontario,” says Adams, who is executive director of the energy advocacy group Energy Probe.

“I’m looking for ways to score some big wins. That depends on identifying the major (energy trends) and trying to bring forward technologies that will have a life,” Adams says.

“There are three principal areas of focus: Markets, systems, and new and emerging energy technologies,” president and CEO Romoff says, adding that there already are a number of energy-related projects under way in the other centres.

“By bringing the centres together we get a critical mass that allows us to make progress in all these areas of focus,” he says.

OCE takes no commercial interest in the outcome of the projects and the Centre for Energy plans to minimize overhead by using existing administrative infrastructure and not building specialized facilities.

“This is going to be a lean operation with a very modest staff,” Romoff says.

OCE has linked approximately 800 companies to nearly 4,000 academic researchers and attracted more than $24 million in investment from the private sector, according to a government news release.