3 ways to supercharge clean tech

john stackhouse
3 min readJan 17, 2020

We need bold new ideas to tackle climate change, and two dozen of them were put to the test, Dragons’ Den-style, in Ottawa this week.

At the Breakthrough Energy Solutions Canada Forum 2020, up-and-coming Canadian clean tech companies demonstrated just how close we are to some major tech breakthroughs that could bend the arc of carbon emissions globally.

Think about a new powertrain technology to allow batteries for electric vehicle fleets to charge much faster. Havelaar Canada is working to do just that with Ford, Bell Canada and Purolator.

Or consider finding a way to make concrete much more carbon efficient. CarbonCure, out of Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, is aiming to do that with technology installed at concrete plants. Concrete accounts for about 7–8% of global emissions; if it were a country, it would be the world’s third-largest emitter (and maybe bigger as global cement production is projected to grow by 23% by 2050).

And then there’s the challenge of cutting the amount of energy we use to produce materials. Smarter Alloys, based in Waterloo, is doing groundbreaking work to produce power from lower-grade heat, partnering with Enbridge.

These companies were in Ottawa to compete for investments from a new partnership between Natural Resources Canada and Breakthrough Energy Ventures. The Bill Gates-backed fund is investing $1-billion globally in zero-carbon energy technologies; NRCan has committed up to $30 million for clean tech investments in the Breakthrough initiative.

We don’t know the winners of the competition yet, but I was able to help cap the day with Michael Denham, the CEO of BDC, the Business Development Bank of Canada, and we agreed every entrepreneur in the room needs to focus on global scale. Otherwise, they won’t have global impact.

To scale, entrepreneurs need at least three things:

1. Big, patient customers. Canadian companies and governments at all levels can do better at procurement from start-ups, especially in clean tech. California law requires state authorities to award state infrastructure contracts to construction contractors using low-carbon emitting versions of designated materials. It’s one reason CarbonCure is looking more to the U.S. — and Asia — than its own backyard. It’s also why it’s encouraging to see Canadian companies like Enbridge, Linamar and Bell partnering with clean tech pioneers.

2. Smart, patient finance. When entrepreneurs develop a breakthrough technology, they tend to need a lot of money in a hurry. Equally important, they need financial backers who understand their sector, and can help them think about rapid growth. That’s where Breakthrough Energy Ventures can play a key role, by connecting Canadian firms with some of the world’s best investors. Bonus: BEV is fine if its investments don’t provide a return for up to 20 years.

3. Diverse, global talent. Canadians are good at the research side of clean tech, developing technologies that help the planet. But too often Canadian firms lack management teams that know how to quickly take a company to global scale once its technology has been proven. It’s why our clean teach pioneers often sell their IP and turn to their next project. If Ottawa expands its highly skilled immigrant program, a clean tech focus would be worth considering. But attracting talent to the sector is about more than immigration. Clean tech entrepreneurs need to go after talent from other sectors, and work with a range of faculties — business schools, for instance — to provide coop placements and internships for students from different academic backgrounds.

To be eligible for BEV’s money, a startup needs to demonstrate a scientifically sound technology that has the potential to reduce annual global greenhouse-gas emissions by at least 500 million metric tons. Global emissions currently measure about 40 billion metric tons a year.

Startups that have these technologies usually struggle to scale, either because the engineering challenge is too big or the business environment to support the companies doesn’t exist.

Bill Gates knows all about that: “People think you can just put $50 million in and wait two years and then you know what you got,” he has said. “In this energy space, that’s not true at all.”

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