Green energy is no baby any more. These days it's more like an over-achieving graduate student. The sector that has birthed itself in a climate of denial, financial and fiscal crisis and policy ping-pong is doing surprisingly well despite getting its higher education in this school of hard knocks.

Innovation is still the essential ingredient required to bring all the pieces together to make clean energy and money, too. Two new projects that are coming to light right now give a great glimpse of the outside-the-box approaches that are bridging the new industry's needs for breadth, resilience and, above all, financing. Thank goodness, because that's what we still so desperately need.

New details are emerging that indicate the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan is far worse than previously known, with three of the four affected reactors experiencing full meltdowns. Meanwhile, in the U.S., massive flooding along the Missouri River has put Nebraska's two nuclear plants, both near Omaha, on alert. The Cooper Nuclear Station declared a low-level emergency and will have to close down if the river rises another 3 inches. The Fort Calhoun nuclear power plant has been shut down since April 9, in part due to flooding. At Prairie Island, Minn., extreme heat caused the nuclear plant's two emergency diesel generators to fail. Emergency-generator failure was one of the key problems that led to the meltdowns at Fukushima.

A reporter, describing the devastation of one city in Japan, wrote: "It looks as if a monster steamroller had passed over it and squashed it out of existence. I write these facts ... as a warning to the world." The reporter was Wilfred Burchett, writing from Hiroshima, Japan, on Sept. 5, 1945. Burchett was the first Western reporter to make it to Hiroshima after the atomic bomb was dropped there. He reported on the strange illness that continued to kill people, even a full month after that first, dreadful use of nuclear weapons against humans. His words could well describe the scenes of annihilation in northeastern Japan today. Given the worsening catastrophe at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, his grave warning to the world remains all too relevant.

Holy Samsung. The green energy dream is not just waking up, it's moving in. Who knew it would have a brand name and be an immigrant from Korea? Has the provincial government sold our renewable soul to some foreign demon?

Ontario announced a $7 billion breakthrough deal for green energy last week that fans say puts the province in the forefront of the North American renewable energy industry. It's supposed to generate 16,000 jobs in the building, installing and operating of new energy projects and 1,440 more in the manufacture of wind and solar tech in four plants that will export products across North America.

The agreement will also add 2,500 megawatts of wind and solar energy to the grid, and two of the plants will be ready to go as soon as 2013.