Fires have traditionally burned an average of 2.5 million hectares of land in Canada yearly. But the 2023 fires were unusually large and widespread: by mid-July, 29 megafires, each exceeding 100,000 hectares, left a trail of destruction across the country. Canada released 647 megatons of carbon that year, generating approximately 31% of the global emissions from wildfires.

This year, wildfires swept across northern Manitoba and Saskatchewan. Smoke permeated the atmosphere in central Canada, the Great Lakes region and the northeastern United States, compromising air quality and reducing visibility in major cities.

Looking not too far into the future, the amount of forest burned by wildfire is projected to double as a result of a changing climate.

“A warming planet is contributing to longer fire seasons,” says Mike Flannigan, professor of wildland fire at Thompson Rivers University. “Alberta’s fire season used to start in April. Now we’re seeing fires in March and February. The warmer the planet gets, the more lightning we expect. And the atmosphere gets more efficient at sucking moisture out of vegetation, the fuel for fire. The drier that fuel on the forest floor is, the higher the intensity of the fire, which is difficult to impossible to extinguish.”

Given the new reality, the burning question is how can Canada be better equipped to battle blazes that have increased in intensity and size, especially in the boreal forests? 

Fight smarter with precision tech

Earlier this year, the federal government announced a new wildfire-fighting initiative called WildFireSat, which will be the first government-owned satellite mission specifically designed to monitor all active wildland fires across Canada on a daily basis.

Spending money on more resources to extinguish larger fires is a waste. You want to get the fire at the start. That’s where the investment needs to be.

 – Mike Flannigan, wildland fire expert, Thompson Rivers University

Set to launch in 2029, seven microsatellites will feed the tracking information back to fire-management authorities. The data is intended to help those on the front lines identify high-risk wildfires and deploy resources and crews more strategically.

In recent years, start-ups have been testing a variety of tools to aid in battling forest fires. One company, Pano, makes AI-enabled cameras to spot wildfires; another called Rain has been piloting autonomous helicopters to douse them. Others have developed satellites and drones to monitor forests and weather.

Flannigan explains: “Say we’ve got 100 new fires. Which ones do we fight? What if we’ve only got enough resources to fight 20? Which are the important ones to fight, and which are the ones we can deal with later or just let Mother Nature run her course? Using machine learning helps make an informed decision when faced with that kind of situation.”

In a related effort, researchers at the University of British Columbia’s Okanagan campus and B.C. Wildfire Service, the province’s wildfire-suppression service, have formed a partnership to develop a provincial wildfire camera network. Using 5G technology, the cameras detect smoke from wildfires and share real-time data to support evacuation planning, resource deployment and wildfire behaviour predictions.

The Washington Post reports that, since 2023, more than 100 new wildfire-related technologies have launched in the United States and around the world. Many employ artificial intelligence in wildfire detection, such as FireSat, an initiative undertaken by the non-profit Earth Fire Alliance, with funding from Google and the Moore Foundation. Drawing on “high-res multispectral satellite imagery,” FireSat is designed to feed updates in 20-minute intervals to first responders, citing the location of active fires. The data will be accessible through phones, tablets and laptops. A prototype was deployed in March this year.

For now, though, firefighters mainly rely on people to alert them of a wildland blaze. To facilitate reporting, some provinces have created apps specifically to call in a fire. B.C. Wildfire Service’s mobile app features a “Report a Fire” function that automatically generates the coordinates of a fire’s location and sends them directly to the closest fire-management agency.

The high cost of forest fires

Economic losses due to forest fires are significant and likely to rise if current fire trends continue. Assistance funds now average about $340 million per year; in 2016/2017 and again in 2020/2021, the Disaster Financial Assistance Arrangements program paid $1.7 billion in assistance. (According to a government media release, WildFireSat is expected to save the Canadian economy between $1 billion and $5 billion over its first five years of operations.)

The 2016 wildfire in Fort McMurray, Alberta, is considered the costliest natural disaster in Canadian history at an estimated $9 billion in direct and indirect physical, financial, health and environmental impacts.

Equally alarming are the health impacts of smoke inhalation. Research suggests that as many as 1.5 million people die globally every year as a result of wildland fire smoke. Even short-term exposure is detrimental as it can lead to bronchitis, worsen asthma and create other health problems, as reported by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

And there is the environmental cost, which itself contributes to worsening the main cause behind bigger, more frequent wildfires: a warming planet. Boreal forests have historically helped to slow climate change by storing carbon as trees grow rather than adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Forests absorb approximately a quarter of global carbon emissions.

With forest fires burning more than twice as much tree cover as they did 20 years ago, this vital carbon sink is shrinking.

The window of opportunity

Canada has been warming at about twice the global rate. Average temperatures in 2023 between May and October were 2.2°C above the norm over the previous 30 years and were largely responsible for the unusual weather patterns that fuelled the fires. Which is all to say that wildfire season will continue to last longer and burn more fiercely than before.

Flannigan believes fire-management plans should prioritize quick and early containment of wildfires to realize the highest return on investment. “Every fire starts small, whether it’s a campfire or lightning strike. That’s our window of opportunity,” he says. “Spending money on more resources to extinguish larger fires is a waste. You want to get the fire at the start. That’s where the investment needs to be.”

Read more of our wildfire coverage

Canadian groups call for dramatic increase to wildfire defence funding

Massive wildfires are forcing governments worldwide to budget more for disaster

Canada is under attack by wildfires. It’s time to respond like it’s national defence.

Emerging research reveals stark health threats from wildfire smoke

Flannigan also highlights the importance of establishing a centralized agency solely dedicated to addressing natural disasters. “[Canada needs] an agency like the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency to deal at the national scale with floods, earthquakes, hurricanes and fire,” he says, noting that each province and territory devises its own fire-management plan and may not be in a position to share resources when a neighbouring region requires extra support.

Most Canadians agree that such an agency should be created. Recent polling conducted by Abacus Data shows there is overwhelming support for a national forest-firefighting unit. As Flannigan succinctly observes, “We live in a flammable environment.”

Victoria Foote is a writer and editor who specializes in clean energy and climate.

The post The fight against wildfires is getting increasingly high-tech appeared first on Corporate Knights.

This story was originally published by Canary Media. It has been edited to conform with Corporate Knights style.

XGS Energy, an advanced-geothermal start-up, says it has completed crucial testing that proves its novel technology can operate reliably at commercial scale – without losing a drop of water in the process.

The post Closed-loop geothermal is getting a big boost in New Mexico appeared first on Corporate Knights.

As the United States reverses course on climate-change-related energy policies, Canada has a unique opportunity to take the lead on the transition to cleaner energy in North America. But realizing that potential will require much faster action to implement the clean-economy tax credits that were introduced by the previous Liberal government.

The post Can Canada be a clean energy superpower? Not without tax credits. appeared first on Corporate Knights.

At the same time, the Trump administration is pursuing major cuts to U.S. government programs, including incentives meant to drive the country’s transition to clean energy. All of this turmoil has roiled financial markets, threatened higher inflation and slower growth, and made investors leery of risking their money.

For tech companies in Canada, the combination of trade war and Trump’s opposition to action on climate change can be deadly.

Morgan Solar CEO Mike Andrade has spent his career managing supply chains in the electronics industry. He has built a diverse, global supply chain for the solar energy start-up that he believes will withstand tariffs. However, the second-order impacts of Trump’s policies – the economic uncertainty and threat of higher interest rates and slower growth – are tougher to manage for the Toronto-based company as it nears its goal of becoming fully self-sustaining so it can rely more on operating revenue than financing. 

“What uncertainty does at the very least is delay things, and at worst, stops things,” Andrade says. “For any company, this is a challenge. But for a smaller company, it could be the difference between survival or not.”

Reassessing supply chains and markets

The economic upheaval in the United States comes at a perilous time for Canada’s cleantech sector. The federal government’s flagship funder, Sustainable Development Technology Canada, has been paralyzed by a conflict-of-interest scandal over misallocation of funds, leading the innovation minister to halt funding for the arm’s-length program. At the same time, the Liberal government has been slow to finalize tax credits meant to spur investment in clean technologies. Prime Minister Mark Carney has promised to finish the job on those incentives, begun by his predecessor, but as of press time, the credits were still MIA.

Over the past few years, private-sector venture financing slumped under the twin impacts of inflation and higher interest rates. Start-ups looking to finance their commercialization from financial market investors often hit brick walls.

“The tariffs just make everything worse,” says Lynn Côté, executive director of the Canada Cleantech Alliance. “For the cleantech companies, insecurity about a whole bunch of elements has been there for a while.”

For any company, this is a challenge. But for a smaller company, it could be the difference between survival or not.

—Mike Andrade, CEO, Morgan Solar 

The Canadian cleantech sector exported some $9.8 billion worth of goods last year, with 77% of those exports going to the United States, according to Natural Resources Canada.

As of mid-April, the Canadian sector was spared the large tariffs that were levied against steel-, aluminum- and automakers, so long as they comply with the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement. However, many smaller start-up businesses never bothered to verify their compliance with the trade agreement because they faced no tariffs until now. 

Côté says the crisis is driving companies to reassess their supply chains and their markets, but those reviews take time and money to complete, and many cleantech executives are short on both. “If you are building a quality product and you have inputs that you know work, it may not be that easy to displace them. You have to test them out, and you have to guarantee your work.”

Côté says companies in the sector must diversify their markets, but few have the capacity to do so on their own. “If not the U.S., then where?” she asks. “I think this is where the government has the opportunity to do meaningful trade missions. And I tend to favour the EU because it’s closer; we have a meaningful free trade agreement, and the regulatory environment is better.”

Diversify or die trying 

Canadian tech firms like Morgan Solar, CarbonCure Technologies of Dartmouth, N.S., and Calgary’s Sensor Inc. are marketing technologies that promise both cost savings and decarbonization opportunities for their business customers.

Morgan Solar has two lines of products: analytics that drive monitoring, diagnostics and forecasting of solar plant performance; and photovoltaic blinds that produce solar energy and deliver it into a direct current (DC) microgrid. The sensor business is mainly selling into the United States, while Morgan has been testing its blinds in a few projects in Canada and is poised for a move into the U.S. market – subject to the emergence of a more stable business environment there.

“When we are shipping our product into solar projects, that’s part of a large capital investment,” Andrade says. “If they delay the installation, that delays our revenue.”

The solar industry is heavily reliant on China for silicon chips and photovoltaic panels; there is no way to diversify that supply chain. But all solar panels have long faced tariffs into the United States, so companies like Morgan Solar have had to adjust. 

Other components – circuitry and electronics and motors – have more geographically diverse supply chains, and the key issue with those items is to design your products so you are not reliant on a single source. “The more unique componentry that you use and the more unique manufacturing processes that you use, the greater the risk is . . . If any of your components are in a singular jurisdiction, you’re pooched,” Andrade says.

Strong returns make the difference

CarbonCure produces technology that mitigates the notoriously carbon-intensive process of making concrete from cement. It reduces emissions by on average 5% by locking the captured carbon into the concrete while reducing the amount of cement needed per tonne of concrete. CarbonCure technology is currently deployed at more than 600 plants worldwide, with three-quarters of those in the United States. CEO Robert Niven expects solid results for the future, but there are dark clouds on the horizon. The company relies on buoyant construction activity to sustain the concrete industry, and economists are forecasting slower growth in the United States and around the world because of Trump’s trade wars.

At the same time, the Trump administration’s opposition to climate action is resulting in “green hushing” as companies downplay climate goals that only a few years ago they loudly proclaimed. “It doesn’t mean that good climate activity isn’t still happening,” Niven says, “but it’s not being discussed as much.” CarbonCure also trades carbon credits it earns through carbon capture at concrete plants. The political backlash against climate action in the United States could also affect the value of those credits.

There may be a silver lining for the company. The United States imports cement to make concrete – lots of it. As the price of the raw material rises because of tariffs, companies will be looking for ways to reduce costs. The CarbonCure technology saves on costs by reducing the amount of cement needed per tonne of concrete produced.

In this political and economic climate, cleantech companies need to be able to clearly demonstrate their return on investment as well as their environmental benefits, Niven says.

Few short-term solutions

Evok Innovations is a late-stage venture capital fund that aims to support start-ups that can help existing firms, especially in the oil and gas industry, reduce their carbon footprints in a cost-effective way. Evok was initially capitalized by Cenovus Energy and Suncor Energy but has since broadened its investor pool to include mining companies and utilities like Ontario Power Generation.

Many of its small client firms are struggling, says Erin Madro, a principal at Evok. The tariff wars have led many Canadian start-ups to reassess their supply chains, which tend to be heavily reliant on Chinese suppliers. “In many cases, the alternative to Chinese may not exist,” Madro says. “It will take many years for supply chains to become re-envisioned and reoriented. In the short term, it just means everything is going to become more expensive and harder to get.”

At the same time, the venture capital market has shrunk significantly, and some Evok clients are running out of time to meet key milestones needed to raise more capital. The start-ups face unpalatable choices of diluting existing investors with expensive capital or cutting staff and overhead to stay in business.

Madro sits on the board of Calgary-based SensorUp, a start-up that offers software technology that helps oil and gas companies detect and repair methane leaks from their operations. The company has clients around the world, including supermajors from Europe and the United States. At this point, it’s unclear what impact the trade wars will have on SensorUp’s commercialization plans, Madro says. It shouldn’t be directly affected by tariffs, but its customers may be hit by higher costs for steel and other materials.

The tariffs just make everything worse. For the cleantech companies, insecurity about a whole bunch of elements has been there for a while.

— Lynn Côté, executive director of Canada Cleantech Alliance

Perhaps the bigger question is whether the oil and gas industry will invest in methane-reduction applications as pressure from the U.S. government subsides. Former president Joe Biden had set a target for the industry to reduce methane emissions by 35% from 2005 levels by 2035 and imposed a fee on emissions as an incentive for industry to cut them. In March, the Senate voted to repeal that fee, and the Trump administration has proven itself openly hostile to anything resembling climate-related constraints on the industry.

Still, Madro insists that oil and gas companies will continue to invest in technologies like those offered by SensorUp. Methane is a product in their pipelines, so there is financial interest in minimizing leaks, while companies still face pressure to reduce emissions in markets like the EU and China. “It makes good business sense to reduce methane leakage,” she says. “Companies are taking a bit of a pause to reassess and maybe delaying some initiatives” in light of economic uncertainty and slumping oil prices. “But ultimately they are still broadly committed.”

Those long-term assurances provide little consolation to the struggling cleantech start-ups that will have to hunker down and conserve cash in the short term. “Everybody is just looking for some hard ground to stand on before they action anything,” says Tyler Hamilton, senior director of climate tech at MaRS, Ontario’s cleantech incubator.

Companies with strong technology solutions and good business plans will survive to meet the needs of a transitioning economy, Hamilton says.

Shawn McCarthy is an Ottawa-based writer and senior counsel with Sussex Strategy Group.

The post Cleantech in the crucible appeared first on Corporate Knights.

“My parents and grandparents were in manufacturing, and they were the ones saying, ​‘Don’t do it,’” Nash recalled.

Nash disregarded their advice, embarking instead on a long career in manufacturing — first in textiles, followed by stints in aviation, automotive, and steel. Now she’s helping to bring higher-tech, higher-paying factory work back to the corridor between Atlanta and Chattanooga.

Nash is the general manager of the Qcells solar panel factory in Dalton, a town of 34,000 located 50 miles up I-75 from her hometown. It opened in January 2019, after the Trump administration imposed a fresh round of tariffs on Chinese-made panels. The Korean conglomerate Hanwha owns Qcells, and initially planned to hire several hundred people at the site, Nash told me on a recent visit to the factory. By the end of 2019, it employed more than 800.

Then, in 2020, Georgia helped elect President Joe Biden and sent two Democrats to the Senate, clinching a thin majority. Senators Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock got to work crafting detailed policies to promote domestic manufacturing of clean energy technologies, which China had dominated for years; they wanted solar panels and batteries made in America — specifically Georgia — instead of in China, a geopolitical rival.

Those measures made it into the Inflation Reduction Act, which passed in August 2022 — two years ago this week. The legislation created the nation’s first comprehensive policies to support domestic clean energy manufacturing. Qcells broke ground on a second facility in Dalton in February 2023. Completed that August, the expansion added two football fields’ worth of manufacturing space with four new production lines — which produce 1.5 times more solar panels than the original three lines, thanks to technological advances. Now the whole complex employs 2,000 people full time and makes 5.1 gigawatts of solar panels a year, more than any other site in the U.S.

Politicians have been promising for decades to retrain American workers and revive long-lost manufacturing, with little to show for it. Now, though, the U.S. has entered a new era on trade: Leaders of both parties have rejected the long-standing free-trade consensus and its penchant for offshoring jobs. Biden married that reshoring impulse with a desire to boost clean energy production, to both stimulate the economy and fight climate change.

This grand experiment remains in its infancy, and the success of the clean energy manufacturing revolution is by no means guaranteed. Cheap imports could outcompete even newly subsidized American products.

And if Republicans win the presidency and retake Congress, they’ve threatened to stop subsidizing low-carbon energy resources and instead double down on fossil fuel production. House Republicans — including Dalton’s representative, Marjorie Taylor Greene — have voted repeatedly and unsuccessfully to repeal the domestic manufacturing incentives in the IRA. (Greene’s press office did not respond to multiple requests for comment.)

“Donald Trump and his Republican allies promised to gut the Inflation Reduction Act if he’s reelected, so there’s a lot at stake here,” Representative Nikema Williams, who leads the Georgia Democrats, told me.

Since the IRA passed, Georgia has received $23 billion (all figures in USD) in clean energy factory investment, much of it flowing to northwest Georgia. I wanted to see what impact this is having on communities formerly hit hard by industrial decline, so I followed the money trail to Dalton earlier this summer.

I found a population that seems to like having advanced solar manufacturing in their backyard. Dalton’s solar jobs are boosting wages, invigorating the historic town center, and employing local high school graduates. Those benefits are starting to spread to nearby communities, where new solar factories are springing to life. In November, voters will weigh two very different visions of America’s energy future on the ballot, but Dalton is already reaping the rewards from slotting solar into its storied history of industrial production.

From carpets to solar

Both CSX and Norfolk Southern run Class I rail lines through Dalton, a testament to its industrial legacy, and freight trains bellow day and night.

That legacy harks back to 1900, according to local historians, when Catherine Evans Whitener sold a hand-tufted bedspread from her front porch for $2.50. The cottage industry took off in this land of forested ridges and stream-crossed valleys, and over time, local factories consolidated into global carpeting giants Shaw Industries and Mohawk Industries.

“The carpet industry was born here,” Carl Campbell, executive director of economic development at the Greater Dalton Chamber of Commerce, told me when I visited the Chamber. The New Georgia Encyclopedia states that 80% of America’s tufted carpet production happens within 100 miles of Dalton.

The conference room where we spoke sported large-format aerial photographs of the major factories nearby: the largest Shaw site, 650,000 square feet; and the new Engineered Floors colossus, 2.8 million square feet.

“You feel like there’s enough carpet in that building to cover the whole world,” said Campbell, who grew up in Dalton.

Dalton employment numbers peaked at 80,200 in 2006, per the Chattanooga Times Free Press. But the Great Recession crushed the homebuilding industry, cratering demand for Dalton’s carpeting products.

Dalton ​“was a ghost town in 2011, nothing going on because everybody was hurting,” Campbell added. From June 2011 to June 2012, Dalton notched the dubious distinction of most jobs lost of all 372 metro areas surveyed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. By that point, one-quarter of Dalton’s pre-recession jobs had vanished, and unemployment surged to 12.3%.

Since then, the industry has recovered somewhat. Engineered Floors, Mohawk, and Shaw still dominate local employment, with some 14,000 jobs among them, Campbell said. Those companies have had to adapt to evolving consumer tastes, shifting from wall-to-wall carpets to hardwood and other flooring materials. They’ve also automated aspects of production, reducing the number of workers needed.

In the wake of the Great Recession, local leaders sought to diversify Dalton’s industry. The county acquired an undeveloped lot south of town, and Campbell later pushed to clear and level the site, so it was shovel-ready for some future tenant. When Trump’s solar tariffs kicked in, Campbell’s counterparts at Georgia’s Department of Economic Development sent Qcells his way.

Qcells showed up in February 2018, looking to spin up its first American solar-panel factory in less than a year. ​“Suddenly, we had exactly what they needed,” Campbell said.

Thus Dalton managed to bring in new industry to balance out its base of carpets and flooring. Qcells originally promised to invest $130 million and hire 525 people within five years, Campbell said.

“They did it in three months,” he added. ​“In terms of an economic development project, they check all the boxes: Everything they said they would do, they did it faster than they said they would do it.”

Domestic solar manufacturing, by humans and robots

When I asked folks around town what they thought of Qcells, they kept mentioning the dozens of air-conditioning units arrayed on the factory roof, like a field of doghouses, easily visible from I-75. I later learned that Qcells brought in helicopters to install those units, which made for a bit of small-town spectacle. Still, it struck me as a surprising detail to dwell on for a business that somehow turns the sun’s rays into cheap, emissions-free electricity.

Once I crossed Qcells’ sizzling parking lot and stepped indoors, it started to make sense. Georgia gets hot, and carpet factories get hot, but the vast floors of the twin solar factories are quite literally cool places to work.

The climate control is not unique to assembling solar panels, but it is required for the sensitive, precisely calibrated product. The air conditioners are but one sign that high-tech manufacturing has arrived, and that it makes for pretty comfortable work.

I met my two tour guides, Wayne Lock and Alan Rodriguez, in the factory lobby, and they quickly confirmed the physical appeal of Qcells jobs. Lock, now a quality engineer at Qcells, previously worked in carpet manufacturing; he had to wear special heat-resistant gear to handle carpeting materials that would otherwise deliver third-degree burns. Rodriguez, an engineering supervisor at Qcells, used to apply the coating material underneath carpets.

“You’re sandwiched between the steamer and the oven, so it gets quite hot,” Rodriguez told me. Attending to those machines exposed him to temperatures that could exceed 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

Even more than Qcells’ air conditioning, though, people I spoke to kept bringing up the pay.

By offering more for zero-skill, entry-level positions than the other factories in town, Qcells started attracting workers and pushed up wages across Dalton, Campbell said: ​“Competition brings everybody, so everybody’s had to kind of equalize to keep employees.”

Now Qcells hourly wages for non-experienced hires start at $17.50 to $22 — that amounts to $36,400 to $45,760 a year for full-time work. Workers with experience in robotics and manufacturing can take home much more than that. Employees can raise their pay through a variety of on-the-job training, most of which involves handling and troubleshooting the in-house fleet of robots.

Lock, Rodriguez, and I walked into the newest factory, past meeting rooms with names like Naboo and Mandalore, Star Wars locales where quirky robots coexist with all manner of creatures. As we strolled across the floor, squat wheeled autonomous vehicles rolled past us down pathways marked by tape on the smooth floor, ferrying bales of materials or hauling out hulking boxes of finished panels.

“We try to stay out of their way, and if we don’t, they yell at us,” said Lock. ​“It’s fun.”

As we stood talking, I noticed that one such robo-buggy was waiting for us to move. Barely discernible over the background drone of machines, a female voice intoned, ​“Robot is moving. Please look out.” When humans hold up more time-sensitive deliveries, Lock explained, the voice switches to male and gets louder.

Other robots remain fixed in place, carrying out repetitive precision tasks. I stared, mesmerized, at one machine that split wafer-thin silicon cells in half, first scoring them with a laser, then slicing them with a concentrated jet of water. A taller machine grabbed nearly 8-foot metal frames and sliced them through the air like a master swordsman in a Kurosawa film, to slot them around glassed-in silicon panels.

Throughout the process, cameras scan cells and use artificial intelligence to shunt defective items off the line for manual correction.

In the 2019-era factory next door, humans carry out many of these tasks. Lock, though, didn’t see the robots as competitors — he said they were taking on more physically demanding jobs so the humans could step into higher-skilled roles tending to robots.

“The ergonomics are better for you,” he said, and the new lines are more productive.

Hiring local, spending local

When Qcells was first staffing up, it relied on Quick Start, a Georgia state program that funds worker training for new factories before they open — a major draw for executives deciding where to locate their factories.

Qcells still recruits to meet ongoing staffing needs, and it has been paying special attention to high schoolers who are graduating and looking for employment. Nash speaks passionately about Qcells’ recruitment efforts; she’s seen the civic fallout from decades when local families encouraged kids to avoid manufacturing.

“Small communities cannot thrive with kids graduating and leaving those communities to live elsewhere, to get high-paying technical jobs,” Nash said. ​“That’s what’s happening across the country. Bringing manufacturing back, and bringing highly automated manufacturing, is offering job opportunities where now these students are staying here.”

Some 56% of Dalton-area students enroll in postsecondary education within 16 months of graduating high school, said Stephani Womack, director of education and workforce development for the Greater Dalton Chamber of Commerce. For the remainder, the chamber wants to make sure family-supporting jobs are available.

For two weeks in June, Womack helped run Project Purpose, a crash course in how to start and navigate careers that pay living wages. Recent high school graduates prepped for interviews, shopped for professional clothes, and toured housing options and downtown hotspots — the kinds of places they could frequent once they join the workforce.

But the centerpiece of the program amounted to professional speed dating, as Dalton’s major employers offered tours and entry-level jobs. Last year, Dalton’s first time running Project Purpose, seven young adults completed the program, and Qcells hired one of them. This time, 18 finished, and Qcells hired 12 of them to start on July 1.

“Next year, we hope to double that, or more,” Nash said.

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Several participants came in knowing about Qcells, betting that the intensive crash course would increase their odds of landing good roles there, Womack told me over a table at Garmony House, a downtown coffee shop that draws lines for its statuesque strawberry cupcakes and coffee-glazed cinnamon rolls.

“Qcells is providing a diverse set of options for our students who need to go to work but want to stay in our community,” Womack said. ​“They see a climate-controlled facility with entry-level opportunities — that’s exciting for them. … Manufacturing isn’t what it used to be.”

For younger people to stay in town and build a life, Dalton needs more housing, and now it’s getting its first large apartment complex in over two decades, Campbell said. In total, 900 apartment units are slated to come online from last August through this November — not enough to catch up on a long-running housing deficit, but a step in the right direction.

That renewed real estate activity is reflected in downtown Dalton’s bustling core.

Locals pack the booths at the Oakwood Cafe, perhaps the only place in America that sells a platter of egg, sausage, toast, and grits for just $3.65. Multiple microbreweries beckon, as does a plush cocktail bar, the Gallant Goat, which stocks fresh mint by the fistful to garnish its drinks. Down the road, diners can sample ceviche of shrimp shipped in from coastal Mexico, succulent chicken wings, and high-end Southern cuisine.

This spring, the plush Carpentry Hotel opened across from the Oakwood Cafe, decked out with vibrant textile art to commemorate the town’s carpeting heritage.

“That’s been big for us, getting that hotel in downtown. That’s indicative of a robust local economy that people are coming to participate in,” local real estate agent Beau Patton told me as the late afternoon sun streamed into the Gallant Goat. Patton works with Qcells employees who want to buy homes in the area. He sees the factory’s decision to locate there as ​“very mutually beneficial” for Qcells and Whitfield County: ​“What you hope is Whitfield County grows with it, and it grows with Whitfield County.”

From Dalton to towns across Georgia

Dalton got in early on the national clean-energy factory revival, and has already seen its solar factory push up wages, enable high school graduates to stay and start careers, and inject money into a reinvigorated downtown. Many more communities in Georgia are following close behind with their own cleantech factories, seeking a similar economic jolt.

“There is a palpable and intense sense of excitement across the state about how these manufacturing and infrastructure policies are supercharging Georgia’s economic development,” said Senator Jon Ossoff, the Georgia Democrat who authored the IRA manufacturing incentives that Qcells is tapping into. ​“And I would add, it’s not just the primary industrial facilities; it’s all of the secondary and tertiary suppliers and vendors and service companies and the financial services firms needed to support them.”

Qcells is building an even bigger factory compound down in Cartersville, which won a conditional $1.45 billion loan guarantee from the Department of Energy on August 8. This facility will take advantage of Inflation Reduction Act tax credits to onshore more steps of the solar supply chain: slicing silicon wafers, carving them into solar cells, and assembling finished modules with even newer robots than the ones I saw in Dalton. Until now, those high-value precursors to solar panels were shipped in from overseas. Workers in Dalton complete just the last step: assembling modules. Cartersville promises to bring the dream of American-made solar a bit closer to reality.

To achieve that dream, the industry has a few other challenges to confront. For one, 97% of the glass that encloses solar panels comes from China. Besides the geopolitical implications of that dependence, glass is so fragile and heavy that its shipping costs make domestic production enticing both economically and environmentally.

“We need domestic glass to have an efficient supply chain,” said Suvi Sharma, founder and CEO of solar recycling startup Solarcycle. His company is breaking ground on a combination solar-panel recycling facility and solar-glass factory in Cedartown, some 70 miles southwest of Dalton. Sharma expects to invest $344 million in the community and hire 600 full-time employees.

Compared with Dalton and Cartersville, ​“Cedartown is more off the beaten path — this would be the first large-scale factory going up there,” said Sharma. After years in which the population declined and young people looked elsewhere for jobs, ​“this enables them to keep people and bring in more people. There’s a cascading impact.”

Solarcycle will use its rail spur to ship in low-iron silica from a mine in Georgia, plus soda ash and limestone. Over time, it will supplement those raw ingredients with increasing amounts of glass the company will pull from decommissioned solar panels, including those made by Qcells. The goal is to produce enough glass for 5 gigawatts of panels per year; Solarcycle will ship the glass to nearby customers. At that point, workers in northwest Georgia will have a hand in all the major steps of solar-module production except the processing of raw polysilicon. Hanwha recently became the largest shareholder in REC Silicon to secure access to domestic polysilicon from the Pacific Northwest.

Georgia also nabbed a hefty chunk of the electric-vehicle factory buildout catalyzed by IRA incentives. Hyundai is dropping nearly $1 billion on its ​“Metaplant” near the deepwater port of Savannah and building an adjacent $4.3 billion battery plant with LG. Kia erected a new EV9 SUV manufacturing line at its plant in West Point, about halfway down Georgia’s border with Alabama. The first EV9 rolled off the line in June — less than two years after the IRA was signed into law.

Dalton, then, is a leading indicator of the industrial invigoration that clean energy factories are bringing to cities and towns across Georgia. People broadly appreciate it — if not for the role in combating climate change or countering China’s industrial might, then for high starting wages, comfortable working conditions, and opportunities for advancement.

But for this nascent factory boom to endure, the policies that triggered it need to stay in effect. The people of Georgia played a decisive role in spurring this manufacturing revival; this November, they’ll have an outsize role in deciding if it continues.

This article by Canary Media is published here as part of the global journalism collaboration Covering Climate Now.

The post How a small city in Georgia became a solar manufacturing hub appeared first on Corporate Knights.

When testing begins next year, the “bioclimatic bus stops” will combine the oldest, most fundamental form of cooling (through heat transfer) with tried and true solar panels and the latest in high-tech thermal sensors to lower temperatures inside the shelters by as much as 20°C.

Such solutions are urgently needed in a city where the high temperature broke 40°C last week.

The Andalusian capital has always been hot and dry. But climate models show that Seville, the largest city in southern Spain with a population of 710,000, could face an average temperature increase of 4.5°C and a 20% reduction in rainfall by 2100.

With those future risks in mind, the European Climate Adaptation Platform Climate-ADAPT, a partnership between the European Commission and the European Environmental Agency, launched its LifeWaterCool initiative in July, 2020.

The project issued a call for urban planners, architects, and engineers to develop and test solutions that would help Seville cope with increasingly high outdoor and indoor temperatures, flash floods and, especially, drought.

With an extended drought looming large in Spain, water stands at the very heart of the LifeWaterCool initiative. The call for proposals states that Seville’s “urban water network will act as the basic structure for the development of urban green solutions and cooling measures to adapt to the effects of climate change, maximizing the sustainability of the city and citizens’ well-being.”

Drawing on the age-old principle of “bioclimatic” construction, which relies on the natural environment in shared public spaces for heating and cooling, LifeWaterCool sought cost-effective “demonstrations of a bioclimatic comfort, for short-, medium- and long-term stays”. It defined a short-term stay as “one with a high density of occupation for a short period of time,” such as a bus stop or pedestrian crossing.

The bioclimatic bus stops are meant to be cooled by thermal radiation, the University of Seville team says. When sensors in the stop’s “intelligent” canopy register a waiting passenger, the system will send cold water from an underground tank through tubing in the back of the shelter, quickly lowering the inside temperature.

The canopy sensors will also monitor the outside temperature, ensuring that the cooling mechanism kicks in only on hot days, and only between 1:00 and 7:00 PM, typically the warmest hours of the day.

Solar-generated electricity will propel water from the underground tank and through the structure as needed during the day.

At night, the water in the tank will rise toward the solar panels through a separate set of tubes, to be cooled using the night sky as a heat sink. That natural action will be supplemented by “falling film technology,” which uses gravity to help a specially-designed liquid film accelerate heat transfer from the water inside the tubes into the colder night sky. The cooled water will then be returned to the underground storage tank for use when the sun is high.

The research team that designed the bus stop is also working on extending the concept to create climate shelters for children at school.

“We are installing a 1,000-square-metre roof at the Arias Montano school in Seville to block the sun and create a cool thermal sensation,” research lead José Sánchez told The Telegraph. “In this way, the children will be able to play and [learn] outside, even in the hottest moments.”

This article is republished from The Energy Mix. Read the original article.

The post These solar bus stops could combat heat stroke in blistering heat wave appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Four years ago, she and her partner, Leo Gillis, moved from Ontario to rural Newfoundland with the intention of starting their own mushroom farm to provide fresh local produce to food-insecure communities. The two experimented with using grow bags – plastic bags with air patches that can help plants germinate and root quickly – for the mushrooms. But it wasn’t working.

One day, Gillis thought he’d just crumple a bag and run it over with the lawnmower in the couple’s backyard, to put the mushroom nutrients into the soil. Instead, the mushroom’s root system “almost broke his lawnmower.”

The pair had discovered the tensile strength of mushrooms and decided to pivot. Within three months they had their first postage-stamp-sized sample piece of flexible material made out of just the root system of fungi, or mycelium. Two years later, their start-up, MycoFutures North Atlantic, is working on large-scale production of a mushroom fabric akin to leather or suede, but without the same environmental concerns.

Lipp and Gillis soon found themselves part of a quietly booming mushroom cleantech and wellness economy. “For many . . . mushrooms signify the future,” Lipp says.

Sprouting mushroom innovations

From the zombie fungus in The Last of Us to Netflix’s popular Fantastic Fungi doc, mushrooms are getting their moment in the sun. We’ve seen investors pour money into psychedelic mushroom start-ups recently, looking to harness their therapeutic potential. But non-magic mushrooms are having a moment, too.

Even the federal government is dabbling in part of the conventional mushroom economy. Last spring, as part of the Canadian Agricultural Partnership, the feds announced an investment of up to $340,000 in Mushrooms Canada to “seize new market opportunities.”

According to Mushrooms Canada, in 2021 Canada ranked second globally (behind Poland) in the value of fresh- or chilled-mushroom exports. Overall, Canada is the eighth-largest mushroom producer in the world; it exports most of that to the U.S., the fourth-largest mushroom producer globally, where mushroom sales brought in more than US$1 billion last year. In total, the mushroom sector is worth more than US$50 billion.

One of the biggest uses of mushrooms (outside of the fresh-food market) is in the wellness industry. Some estimates show that the functional mushroom (meaning mushrooms that advocates say offer health benefits in addition to their nutritional benefits) market hit US$15.3 billion in 2022 and will top $23 billion by 2030. Mushrooms such as shiitake have anti-inflammatory properties and are frequently used in skincare products.

Then there are the mushroom nutraceuticals, or supplements, where reishi, lion’s mane and maitake mushrooms are used to support cognitive health and lower blood sugar levels and inflammation in the body. Food scientists like those at Chinova Bioworks in New Brunswick are making mushroom-based preservatives. Researchers at the University of Manitoba, Stanford University and New York’s Columbia University are looking to capitalize on the same strength that Lipp and her partner found when they nearly broke the lawnmower to make building materials that are twice as strong as concrete. The U.K.-based start-up Biohm is already using mycelium root systems to make net-zero building insulation without petrochemicals.

Like Lipp, luxury retailers such as Hermès, Balenciaga, Mercedes-Benz and Stella McCartney are also experimenting with mushroom-based leather. With Myco​Futures, Lipp’s goal is to make mushrooms accessible for customers looking for affordable, sustainable, bio-based materials and to inspire consumers to think more about the materials they use. “It’s a really valuable lesson for thinking about how we can use our resources more efficiently and in cooperation with what’s around us,” Lipp says. The chemicals used to tan leather are responsible for polluting waterways around the globe, and many leather suppliers have been linked to deforestation. Pleather is not a great alternative either, as it’s just another word for plastic.

MycoFutures is currently in the research and development phase, as Lipp and Gillis find the right balance of moisture in the fabric so that it doesn’t get brittle but is still permeable for needles and fabrication into jewellery, handbags and perhaps furniture. Because they use the root system of the mushrooms, Lipp is also experimenting with growing conditions and beds to create bigger sheets of fabric. “We’re trying to create a dense mat of biomass,” she says.

The next task is experimenting with coatings, dyes and longevity, testing how the mycelium will wear and last, against materials like leather. “If I have a wallet, I don’t want it for a week,” she says. “I want it for a year, two years, five years.”

Wake up and smell the shrooms

While a full mushroom-based wardrobe might be a few years away, mushroom coffee is taking over mugs everywhere, right now. California-based MUD\WTR, which makes a coffee alternative, has grown to a national company, with its products sold in all 50 states, and some high-profile funders, including Alumni Ventures. MUD\WTR CEO Shane Heath created the drink mix when he was experimenting with recipes to give him that morning jolt without the jitters. He started with cacao and chai, and then turned to mushrooms.

“I heard about lion’s mane and its benefits for the mind, cordyceps and its benefits for physical performance, and chaga and reishi for immune support and stress, so I would start my day by mixing together a mug with all of these amazing ingredients,” Heath says via email. Chaga and reishi fungi are both found in forested areas, while cordyceps is a fungus found on insect larvae, like caterpillars. All three mushroom species are purported to have health benefits and have been used in Eastern medicine for centuries.

As more consumers become aware of the many mushrooms available to them, companies like MycoFutures and MUD\WTR have seen increased interest from consumers. Sohaib Qid, CEO of PureShrooms, a Canadian company also creating mushroom coffee, tea and supplements, says there’s a broader acceptance of their products and a “growing awareness of the potential benefits these fungi can offer.”

However, Qid says, as mushrooms get more popular, there have been changes in terms of supply. “We’ve noticed a surge in mushroom farms emerging throughout Canada. While this is a positive development for the industry, the pricing for fruiting body mushrooms in the domestic market remains less competitive compared to other sources in the U.S.,” he says in an email.

For MUD\WTR, expansion into international markets is on the horizon. “It’s an exciting time to be in . . . the mushroom space,” says Heath. “A rising tide raises all boats, and an increase in the popularity of mushrooms is a positive thing for everyone.”

Emily Baron Cadloff is a Halifax-based journalist. She often writes about pop culture, food and education.

The post The fungi start-ups behind a booming mushroom economy appeared first on Corporate Knights.

But far greater than the irony of Weihl’s voicelessness is the symbolism of his determination to be heard. Possessed of the urgency of the climate crisis, Weihl is using all the means at his disposal to continue to broadcast his message: that Big Tech needs to step out of the shadows, take a decisive stance on the climate crisis and put its full financial and political weight behind climate policy and action.

“Tech companies are viewed as forward looking,” Weihl types into the chat function of our Zoom conversation. “They have enormous influence. And they’re innovators. We need innovation at this point.”

Weihl knows the tech industry from the inside. He spent the first decade of his career as a professor of computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before shifting into the tech sector to land the position of “green energy czar” at Google in 2006 and later acting as director of sustainability for Facebook. He acknowledges the significant efforts these companies were making to mitigate climate change: buying billions of dollars of clean energy to power their operations, maintaining venture investment funds for cleantech start-ups, investing heavily in the research and development of decarbonization technologies. And yet, as the climate clock ticked on, Weihl could also see that the sector wasn’t doing enough.

“We were winning, but we weren’t winning fast enough, and with climate, winning slowly is the same as losing,” he said in a 2020 TED Talk. The same year, he founded ClimateVoice.

Inspiration for the project stemmed in part from what Weihl had observed in 2015/2016, as the American corporate world mobilized around LGBTQ2S+ rights. Companies like Apple, Walmart and the National Basketball Association threatened to pull out of states that were considering, or passing, regressive sexual- and gender-rights legislation. Weihl watched business affect social policy, and it got him thinking.

Most companies talk about how urgent climate is. And how committed they are to it. But when doing something on climate conflicts with or risks their core business, the profit concerns win.

He knew that the tech industry – with its forward-looking leaders, focus on innovation and massive influence on culture and politics – had a major role to play in climate action. But he also realized that despite the progress made – the innovations and cost reductions in renewable technologies and investments in green energy – the tech sector was failing to exploit its biggest lever: its potential to influence public policy.

Rather than stand up to the fossil fuel industry, as they were uniquely positioned to do, he saw tech companies playing at best a passive, and at worst an obstructive, role.

To illustrate this point, Weihl cites the fact that only one of the U.S.’s five Big Tech companies – Microsoft – was prepared to endorse last year’s Inflation Reduction Act. Containing a US$369-billion investment in climate-related programs, the IRA represented the most significant single step the U.S. Congress has ever taken to tackle climate change. Only after it passed into law, in August 2022, did Google let out a quiet cheer – in a tweet from its chief sustainability officer.

“Most companies talk about how urgent climate is,” Weihl types. “And how committed they are to it. But when doing something on climate conflicts with or risks their core business, the profit concerns win.” He says that tech companies are deeply compromised by their memberships in trade associations that consistently oppose climate bills, chief among them the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which bristles at any mention of corporate tax hikes.

The tech sector’s hypocrisy on climate plays out in many ways. Earlier this year, Amazon effectively killed a bill put forward in the Oregon legislature that would have impelled large data centres and crypto miners in the state to use only clean energy by 2040. Data centres are big business in Oregon, many of them owned by Seattle-based Amazon, and they require vast amounts of power – equivalent to a small city – to cool their armies of computers. The Oregon utility that serves Amazon has long since exhausted its renewable supply and been forced to buy fossil-fuel-backed electricity; its emissions per kilowatt hour have increased 543% since 2010.

Young employees want to see climate action. And recruitment and retention are big pain points, so companies have to pay attention to employee sentiment on this.

Amazon takes every opportunity to tout its Climate Pledge, a commitment to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2040; the arena it built in 2021 for Seattle’s new NHL franchise is named Climate Pledge Arena and aspires to become the first net-zero-certified arena in the world. At the same time, Amazon was willing to lobby hard – and successfully – to ensure that that clean energy bill died on the floor this spring, claiming that Oregon’s transmission lines and energy infrastructure wouldn’t support the switch.

Weihl says that this kind of duplicity doesn’t wash well with the tech sector workforce and that ClimateVoice is working hard to harness its frustration. “Young employees want to see climate action,” he types. “And recruitment and retention are big pain points, so companies have to pay attention to employee sentiment on this.”

ClimateVoice engages with tech workers, informing them of what their employers are doing on the climate front – both in and out of public view. Weihl says that when he launched his non-profit, most workers were oblivious to their companies’ lobbying activities and trade association involvement, but the more they learned, the more inclined they were to advocate. In the fall of 2021, he was pleased to see a loud chorus of tech workers speak out in support of the Build Back Better Act and again last summer in favour of the Inflation Reduction Act.

Weihl believes that this is how to foment change – from below. “In my experience, it’s very hard to persuade management on purely moral grounds, or on what’s best for society,” he types. “But if the workforce is clamouring for something, that makes it a near-term operational issue.”

In Weihl’s estimation, the tech industry has already developed some 80% of the technological solutions required to help mitigate the climate crisis. Now it has to deploy them faster, innovate further and, most importantly, speak louder and with one voice.

The post Meet the man calling out Big Tech’s climate hypocrisy appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Sounds like a climate activist’s wish list. But a group of dynamic young Canadian companies are already working on making these solutions an everyday reality.

This is the Future 50, Corporate Knights’ second annual ranking of ambitious entrepreneurs who are trying to solve big problems in climate, energy, the environment, transportation, healthcare, waste disposal – even the Canadian diet. In an economy where legacy suppliers have been slow – or outright reluctant – to create significantly greener products and systems, entrepreneurs like these are forcing the issue, taking huge risks to develop greener batteries, smarter buildings, less toxic energy sources and climate-friendly business models.

Covering both public and private companies, most of them recent start-ups, the Future 50 is a daring snapshot of the energy transition. It points not just to where Canadian businesses are making their mark in the climate emergency – but where additional attention and support are also needed.

Fair warning: not all these companies will become stock-market winners and role models. Innovation is a long road, and this list is based on two decidedly short-term metrics.

The Future 50 ranks 25 public companies based on their short-term revenue growth (the rise in 2021 sales over 2020) and private companies based on the capital they’ve raised. Disruptive start-ups need cash, and their ability to raise funds as needed can be a major indicator of success. So the ranking of private companies is based on the percentage difference between the amount of capital each company raised in its most recent funding round and the amount raised in its previous round.

This is an unusual business metric, as early-stage funding has little to do with long-term market success. But it helps us spot the sectors that are attracting smart money from savvy venture capitalists and institutional investors. Case in point: the no. 1 company on our private list is Evanesce Packaging Solutions, a Vancouver-based innovator in plant-based certified compostable packaging solutions (think straws, fast-food containers and institutional meal trays). Led by experienced financial executive Douglas Horne, a former member of B.C.’s Legislative Assembly, Evanesce raised $123,000 in start-up capital in 2018 – and a whopping $14 million in 2021.

That growth rate of 11,282% was twice that of the no. 2 company, Surrey, B.C.‘s CheckSammy Technologies, which offers business customers proprietary systems for mastering their junk removal, recycling and waste-management challenges. CheckSammy raised $367,000 from investors in 2020, and two years later raised $20.3 million – a jump of 5,431%.

Topping the “public” list is Li-Cycle, which provides end-of-life recycling and resource recovery for lithium-ion batteries. Between 2020 and 2021, the Toronto-based company grew its sales from $1.05 million to $9.1 million – a gain of 766%.

Possibly even more remarkable are the three giant companies on the public list that achieved 2021 revenue numbers in the nine figures: Vancouver healthcare-services provider CloudMD Software ($102 million); Toronto plant-protein producer Global Food and Ingredients ($124 million); and Delta, B.C., greenhouse growers Village Farms International ($339 million). (While greenhouses aren’t usually considered energy-efficient, Village Farms heats its Delta facilities with methane from local landfills.)

Together, these two lists point the way to an exciting new economy – and a changing future for Canada itself.

Fifteen of the Future 50 companies produce sustainable consumer and business products – including seven companies involved in plant-based foods and three building electric vehicles domestically. Fourteen firms offer sophisticated new specialty business-management services, such as Kontrol Technologies’ smart-building controls and NorthStar Earth & Space, which uses space-based sensors to track the sustainability of earth and space resources.

Eleven firms supply complex systems and techniques that allow businesses to better manage their energy use and emissions, including ChargeLab’s North American network of charging stations and FigBytes’ software platform that helps organizations integrate sustainability, performance and reputation. Eight companies perform engineering or environmental services, such as Carbon Engineering’s portfolio of carbon-capture systems.

And two firms offer innovative energy production and distribution systems: Hydrostor, which stores energy as compressed air in underground caverns, and Eavor Technologies, which harvests geothermal heat from the earth for commercial heating applications.

Perhaps most intriguingly, the Future 50 could signal a reordering of business leadership in Canada. Where 20th-century business centred on Montreal and Toronto, the Future 50 leans west. British Columbia – mainly, the Vancouver region – accounts for 21 companies on this year’s Future 50. Ontario comes second with 15, while Quebec has 10, Alberta three and Nova Scotia one.

Not all these companies will be successes. Consider the Very Good Food Company, a Vancouver producer and distributor of plant-based burgers and other green groceries. Very Good appeared on last year’s Future 50 and would have made this year’s list, too, with 2021 sales of $12 million. Just last November, Very Good added 3,000 new distribution points in Canada and the U.S. But the company had prioritized growth over efficiency and profitability; it shut down in February, out of cash and out of time.

Business success doesn’t come from avoiding setbacks but from managing them well.

New to the Future 50 this year, ElectraMeccanica, a B.C.-based manufacturer of sporty, one-person electric cars, recalled 429 of its three-wheel “Solo” models in February, due to both performance (occasional losses of power) and regulatory issues. Now CEO Susan Docherty is plotting to disrupt the four-wheel world: “We believe that major opportunities remain for an experienced maker of smaller, nimbler EVs with eye-catching design and personalized features.”

If optimism rules the Future 50, it should be well placed. The energy transition is now one of the biggest megatrends in business. In January, BloombergNEF reported that global clean-energy investment hit US$1 trillion in 2022, matching, for the first time, industry’s total investment in fossil fuels. The Canadian Venture Capital and Private Equity Association says that venture funds invested a record $1 billion in cleantech last year, up 52% from 2021. And now, the 2023 federal budget promises $20 billion in new funding for clean power and green infrastructure.

Capital is out there. As this list proves, the opportunities are boundless. The future of the Future 50 is the future of Canada.

Alberta Innovates is the launch partner for the Future 50.

READ CAPITAL PATHWAYS REPORT

Top 25 fastest-growing publicly traded companies

1

Li-Cycle

growth rate*: 766%

In March, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau toured a recycling plant in Kingston, Ontario, with the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen. The attraction? They watched lithium-ion batteries of all types and sizes get shredded apart so their scarce, critical materials – especially lithium, nickel and cobalt – can be reused.

The “Kingston Spoke” plant was the first commercial facility of Toronto-based Li-Cycle, whose goal is to make lithium battery production “circular and sustainable” – and 95% efficient. Founded in 2016 by CEO Ajay Kochhar and executive chair Tim Johnston, Li-Cycle now has four plants in North America and will open two more this year, in Germany and Norway. The key output of these facilities is a mix of materials that will be sent to a large plant under construction in Rochester, New York, where they will be used to produce battery-grade materials, recycling the shredded equivalent of 90,000 tonnes of lithium-ion batteries a year.

Like Trudeau and von der Leyen, investors also love Li-Cycle. Through seven rounds of financing – counting a US$375-million loan commitment in March from the U.S. Energy Department – Li-Cycle has now raised more than US$1 billion to fund its vision of a green energy future.

2

CloudMD Software & Services

GROWTH RATE*: 581%

To address problems such as Canada’s aging population, chronic disease, absenteeism and mental health, Vancouver-based CloudMD has created a health management platform for businesses and governments that supports integrated, high-quality, personalized healthcare. The company’s main product, an employer well-being program called Kii, provides services from telemedicine and occupational health to vision care, mental-health coaching and even caregiving advice. Clients – who include companies like Sun Life, Sanofi, Scotiabank and Unilever – say CloudMD’s services save them money and time while improving employees’ health outcomes and encouraging reluctant patients to seek out needed treatments.

3

Steer Technologies

GROWTH RATE*: 831%

Toronto-based Steer began as a ride-hailing business, but it’s evolved into a diversified transportation innovator. Its electric vehicle subscription service lets individuals rent Teslas and electrically powered Jaguars and Jeeps month-to-month. Steer also provides environmentally friendly business services, such as restaurant supply and food delivery and third-party delivery in cities from Edmonton to Halifax. The company stumbled, however, after winning a $2.5-million Ontario contract to develop a contact-tracing device during the COVID-19 pandemic. News reports indicated Steer had bought cheap bracelet devices from China. In April, the Ontario Securities Commission accused the firm of issuing misleading press releases regarding its TraceSCAN devices.

4. Reliq Health Technologies  

Growth rate: 485%

Hamilton-based Reliq develops remote patient monitoring and telemedicine solutions – enabling patients to access medical services when needed, without taking up costly hospital beds. Reliq’s wearable iUGO device helps patients monitor their own health and can notify a wearer’s care team if their condition suddenly changes. A major focus for Reliq is the southern U.S., where high numbers of retirees can benefit from its services. In April alone, the company signed contracts with physicians and health agencies in Texas, Nevada, Arkansas and California that could bring 5,000 new patients a month to its iUGO platform.

5. Kontrol Technologies 

Growth rate: 367%

Cooling and heating buildings accounts for 28% of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the World Green Building Council, which means homes, offices and factories will need massive makeovers to meet the 2050 net-zero goal. Vaughan, Ontario–based Kontrol Technologies uses the internet of things and cloud-based technologies to turn any structure into a “smart” building that monitors its own operations and continually adjusts its energy use. Kontrol offers three key services: energy management, installation of complex HVAC systems and emission compliance.

6. Sharc International Systems 

Growth rate: 328%

Hot water down the drain is a waste of energy. Worse, many cities drain wastewater directly to the sea, speeding up ocean warming. Sharc International of Port Coquitlam, B.C., develops patented technology for capturing warmth from wastewater to heat buildings and water systems. Its Sharc product, used for industrial buildings and energy districts, and its Piranha model, for offices and apartment buildings, produce heat for 20% of conventional heating costs. As buildings face ever-tighter energy regulations, CEO Lynn Mueller says that “there’s a six-inch hole in the basement where half of the energy used in the building flows out every day. And Sharc is the only company doing anything about it.”

7. PlantX Life 

Growth rate: 315%

Styling itself “the digital face of the plant-based community,” Vancouver-based PlantX is a blooming conglomerate, with several online platforms, restaurants, storefront retail outlets (located in B.C., Toronto’s Yorkdale Mall and Venice, California, to name a few) and local and nationwide delivery services. Its inventory includes groceries, cosmetics, pet foods and indoor plants. Last year, PlantX acquired e-commerce website VeganEssentials, which calls itself “the longest-operating cruelty-free retailer in the U.S.” Company sales have softened this year as it refocuses on profitable growth, CEO Lorne Rapkin reports, but he foresees a big boost from the expansion of its XMarket vegan food hall in Chicago.

8. ElectraMeccanica Vehicles 

Growth rate: 267%

When Jim Henson sang “It’s not easy being green,” he might have been talking about Burnaby, B.C.–based ElectraMeccanica Vehicles. EM has produced a custom “mobility solution” for urban commuting, a one-seat, three-wheel electric vehicle called Solo. But supply chain problems slowed production at its Chinese plant last year, and in February EM recalled all 429 of its Chinese Solos for “unexpected loss of propulsion.” The good news: EM just commissioned a new 235,000-square-foot plant in Mesa, Arizona, where it will build a line of electric off-road vehicles for Volcon ePowersports while designing a four-wheel replacement for the ill-fated Solo.

9. Good Natured Products 

Growth rate: 266%

With its growing line of compostable food packaging, Vancouver-based Good Natured Products reports it has displaced 31 million pounds of petroleum-based plastics since 2006. Good Nature uses renewable, plant-based materials (without harmful chemicals) to make products such as takeout packaging, stretch wrap, egg crates and transparent clamshells for fruits and veggies. With $100 million in sales, the company is constantly innovating; its most recent products include tamper-evident clamshells, plant-based bins for your kitchen garbage and a new line of “Good to Go” containers, the first high-clarity food packaging that is both microwaveable and certified by the Compost Manufacturing Alliance.

10. Loop Energy 

Growth rate: 161%

 Burnaby, B.C.–based Loop Energy designs and manufactures hydrogen fuel cell systems, whose light weight and power density may make them a better fit over electric batteries to green heavyweight trucks and buses. Loop’s multi-patented eFlow technology reduces fuel consumption by 16% compared to existing fuel cells while supplying 90% more peak power. By 2030, Loop estimates its market will be worth $70 billion. While the company continues to win industry awards, sales growth has slowed, and the firm notes that its plans to raise more growth capital may not be possible before 2024.

11. Greenlane Renewables 

Growth rate: 146%

One of the oldest companies on the Future 50, Greenlane has been building biogas upgrading systems since 1986. These systems produce renewable natural gas (RNG) from organic waste sources such as landfills, wastewater treatment plants, dairy farms and food waste – reducing emissions from them while creating a transportation fuel without producing any incremental carbon (although there have been questions about how green RNG actually is). With more than 140 systems in 19 countries, Burnaby, B.C.–based Greenlane is now exploring a new growth strategy: investing in its clients’ biogas projects globally to expand the industry, sell more systems and create recurring income.

12. Lion Electric Company 

Growth rate: 145%

After 50 years of building school buses, Quebec-based Corbeil Bus Corp. closed its doors in 2007. But two Corbeil executives, Marc Bédard and Camile Chartrand, jumped into the driver’s seat, launching the company that would become Lion Electric in 2008 to leverage Quebec’s expertise in making school buses. In 2017, the company committed to building all-electric medium- and heavy-duty buses. Today, its 1,400 employees produce four bus models, primarily in Saint-Jérôme, Quebec. But Lion is also establishing operations in Joliet, Illinois, to meet demand for “made in America” vehicles. Recently, the company worked on a pilot project that would see P.E.I.’s 82 Lion school buses use bidirectional chargers to supply electricity to community relief centres in case of power outages.

13. Planting Hope Company 

Growth rate: 134%

Planting Hope is a women-managed and -led company in Vancouver that develops plant-based foods and drinks. Its brands include Hope and Sesame sesame milk, Mozaics Real Veggie Chips, Veggicopia veggie snacks and RightRice, a medley of rice, lentils, chickpeas and peas that offers double the protein of white rice and five times the fibre. And the company sells its products through large retailers such as Kroger, Loblaws, Whole Foods, Amazon and Walmart. With research indicating that 50% of consumers identify as “flexitarian,” Planting Hope is hoping to grow sales by a factor of five.

14. Vicinity Motor Corp. 

Growth rate: 126%

Founded in 2008 in Aldergrove, B.C., to provide mid-sized buses mainly to Canadian transit systems, Vicinity has been selling some electric vehicles since 2018. The company is set to ramp up the percentage of vehicles it sells that are electric to take advantage of new subsidies for green transportation in Canada and the U.S. EVs accounted for 20% of Vicinity’s vehicle sales in 2022, but this year they’re expected to reach 80%. Last year, Vicinity started delivering its VMC 1200, the first electric Class 3 commercial transport truck. With a US$150-million order backlog, the company will soon begin production at its new U.S. plant, just across the border in Ferndale, Washington.

15. Clear Blue Technologies  

Growth rate: 103%

From telecom towers in rural Rwanda and Peru to an electrical transmission barge in Delaware Bay, Clear Blue Technologies supplies what it says are “smart,” off-grid power solutions to businesses, communities and governments. Clear Blue’s secret sauce is its Illumience Cloud Control system, which allows remote monitoring of all components and reduces the costs of extending lighting, power and telecom services to remote communities. With this system, Clear Blue says its 62 telecom transmission sites built in the Marshall Islands three years ago have required no maintenance visits. The company expects to benefit from future growth in off-grid power systems, driven by the internet of things and increased global demand for connectivity.

16. Global Food and Ingredients 

Growth rate: 102%

Toronto-based, with a network of 500 farmers and four processing plants in Western Canada, Global Food and Ingredients is building a “farm to fork” producer of what it says are traceable, sustainable and plant-based food and dog-food products shipped to 37 countries. Its packaged brands include Bentilia (gluten-free pasta) and a line of ready-to-eat meals called Five Peas in Love. As CEO David Hanna notes, peas and lentils are among the most affordable protein sources, and their cultivation boosts soil health, reducing the need for chemical fertilizers.

17. PyroGenesis Canada 

Growth rate: 75%

PyroGenesis Canada has evolved from a Montreal-based engineering firm into a provider of high-tech solutions to heavy industry. The company uses its expertise in ultra-high-temperature industrial processes to help clients reduce carbon emissions. For instance, the company’s powerful, zero-emission plasma torches are being tested as replacements for the diesel or natural gas furnaces traditionally used to produce iron ore pellets and aluminum. PyroGenesis now focuses on three key categories: emissions reduction, recovery of metals and critical minerals from industrial waste, and waste remediation, including the safe destruction of hazardous materials.

18. Organto Foods 

Growth rate: 70%

“We inspire consumers to eat pure, natural healthy and tasty organic food, whenever, wherever.” That’s the goal of Vancouver’s Organto Foods, which processes and sells fresh organic and non-GMO fruit and vegetable products to customers in 18 European countries. Suppliers are located around the globe, so Organto can supply fresh food year-round while minimizing its carbon footprint. The company’s goal is to build a trusted brand in a fragmented marketplace: each product in its “I AM Organic” family comes with a QR code that links to a story that explains where that product came from, how it was grown and how it got into consumers’ hands.

19. Village Farms International 

Growth rate: 56%

Since Village Farms started growing tomatoes, bell peppers and cucumbers in a greenhouse 35 years ago in the Lower Mainland region of B.C., it has built an expertise in sustainable food production. The company has looked to reduce water use, use beneficial insects to control pests, recycle carbon dioxide to encourage plant growth, and capture methane from a local landfill to create heat and electricity. Now the company is focusing on indoor innovation in three key sectors: vertically integrated greenhouse grower Village Farms Fresh, responsible cannabis grower Pure Sunfarms, and Balanced Health Botanicals, which produces sleep aids, CBD gummies and other health products derived from hemp.

20. Vision Marine Technologies  

Growth rate: 45%

2022 was a big year for Vision Marine Technologies, of Boisbriand, Quebec. In February it turned heads at the Miami International Boat Show, which for the first time devoted a special pavilion to electric boats – battery-powered vessels that promise quieter rides, no exhaust and zero pollution. In August, a 32-foot catamaran powered by two of the firm’s E-Motion electric engines became the first electric boat to break the 100-mile-per-hour barrier. It was sweet payoff for two decades of R&D, designed to position electric motors as the future of boating. Vision is now building a network of rental fleets in ports around North America, to complement a marina it bought in 2017 in Newport Beach, California.

21. Guru Organic Energy 

Growth rate: 37%

Guru Organic Energy has been making energy drinks since 1999, distinguishing itself from category leaders like Red Bull and Monster by focusing on natural ingredients. A 2015 U.S. survey found that 64% of millennials consume energy drinks – but 74% of them worry about the safety of those caffeine drinks with all their artificial sweeteners. Guru’s products are plant-based and certified organic, focusing on natural caffeine sources such as guarana beans, matcha and green tea, along with healthy doses of ginseng, echinacea and monkfruit. Noting that its first product was developed for clients of Montreal nightclubs, Guru now says that “we spend less time partying and more time outside reconnecting with nature.”

22. Dundee Sustainable Technologies 

Growth rate: 35%

Miners around the world are looking for better, safer ways to extract gold from low-grade mineral concentrates and mine tailings. Enter Dundee Sustainable Technologies, a Montreal-based company owned by Toronto mining investment firm Dundee Corp. DST’s mandate is to commercialize two promising extraction technologies: CLEVR, a cyanide-free extraction process that uses sodium hypochlorite in acidic conditions to put the gold into solution; and GlassLock, a process that sequesters the toxic arsenic often associated with copper, gold and silver deposits. The company is testing the latter process as part of a $4-billion project to clean up highly toxic arsenic dust left behind at the Giant goldmine in Yellowknife.

23. Legend Power Systems 

Growth rate: 34%

As more solar- and wind-power projects feed into our electrical grids, utilities find it harder to deliver stable voltages. Fluctuating power can reduce the efficiency of HVAC and other building systems, raising building owners’ costs and shortening their systems’ operating lives. Legend Power Systems of Burnaby, B.C., has a solution: an energy management system, SmartGATE, that monitors electrical system performance and manages power-grid volatility. Result: lower costs, fewer repairs and happier residents/employees. In April, Legend reported that its latest SmartGATE platform reduces building energy bills by 6% and saves clients $2 in maintenance and repair for every dollar of energy savings.

24. EcoSynthetix 

Growth rate: 32%

Burlington, Ontario–based EcoSynthetix produces renewable, bio-based manufacturing materials that replace products containing harmful chemicals – at competitive prices. Its flagship products are EcoSphere biolatex, which supplants petroleum-based styrene butadiene in the paperboard packaging sector, and DuraBind biopolymers, which replace formaldehyde binders in the production of wood composite panels. The company believes the shift from fossil-fuel-based products to green alternatives is now inevitable, and it aims to become a global leader in the development of bio-based materials. EcoSynthetix recently received a platinum designation from ratings agency EcoVadis for its contribution to the sustainability of global supply chains.

25. Vitreous Glass 

Growth rate: 25%

This may be the simplest company on the Future 50. Based in Airdrie, Alberta, just north of Calgary, Vitreous Glass collects and crushes waste glass, and then sells the resulting “cullet,” called GlasSand, to three Alberta companies that use it to make fibreglass insulation. According to one investment report on the firm, Vitreous’s major clients are Johns Manville Canada, in nearby Innisfail, and Owens Corning Canada, in Edmonton. The report noted that the company’s quick access to both locations constitutes a simple but effective “moat” that shields Vitreous from other competitors.

 

Top 25 fastest-growing private companies

1

Evanesce Packaging Solutions

GROWTH RATE: 11,282%

Over six years as a Liberal MLA for Coquitlam, B.C., former financial executive Douglas Horne became fascinated by sustainable products. After his political career expired (he lost a federal race in 2015), Horne acquired the rights to a technology to produce moulded food trays from vegetable starch and fibre and founded Evanesce. The product looks like Styrofoam, but it decomposes within 90 days. “A circular economy starts with soil,” says Horne. “Our motto is ‘Dirt to dirt.’” A much healthier outcome than recycling programs that rarely rescue more than 15% of consumer plastics.

After years of development and three patents, Evanesce is now bringing its products to market in the form of food trays, foam cups and other staples of fast food and food service. Meanwhile, the company has shared technologies with Taiwan-based Minima, which produces cups, plates, cutlery and drinking straws that feel like plastic – but are made from fully compostable, upcycled plant-based biopolymers. Last year, Evanesce sold $3-million worth of straws to clients such as AMC Theatres; Washington, D.C.–based Compass Coffee; and Colorado-based Eco-Products – and the firm now is talking to McDonald’s about a deal for 2.5 billion straws.

While Evanesce’s starch products cost about 30% more than comparable foam, Horne notes they’re “half the price of anything else that’s certified compostable. You have to factor in the end-of-life costs.”

2

CheckSammy Technologies

GROWTH RATE: 5,431%

CheckSammy is a waste removal company headquartered in Surrey, B.C., that specializes in recycling solutions for businesses, cities and institutions (such as airports, schools and hospitals) across North America. Its track-and-trace systems give clients a “chain of custody report” for all their waste, complete with date and time stamps. When a peanut butter company recalled 65 tons of its product, it enlisted CheckSammy to keep almost 60,000 kilograms of peanut butter out of landfills. The firm found a buyer for the jar lids – which had never touched the contaminated product – and it shipped the peanut butter to an anaerobic digester that converted that waste to biogas, creating low-cost community energy.

3

Green Matters Technologies

GROWTH RATE: 3,688%

Based in Langley, B.C., Green Matters Technologies develops technologies that it says are both environmentally sustainable and commercially viable. Its CE-K500 industrial heat-recovery system can heat spaces or domestic hot water using waste heat from multiple sources, such as water-chiller cooling loops, ambient air or low-temperature boilers. One early client, a Marriott hotel in Puerto Rico, says the system has cut its energy costs by more than $120,000 a year and reduced net CO2 emissions by 75%. Green Matters’ key target markets include hotels, sports venues, healthcare facilities and multi-storey buildings around the world – with a preference for tropical regions where air conditioning runs 24/7.

4. Hydrostor  

Growth Rate: 3,447%

Hydrostor claims to be the world’s leading developer of advanced compressed-air energy-storage projects. Such projects green the energy grid by storing energy from intermittent sources, such as wind and solar, in underground caverns as compressed air – enabling direct replacement of fossil-fuel-based energy sources. Toronto-based Hydrostor is now developing projects in Canada, the U.S., the U.K. and Australia, aggregating 1,200 megawatts. In January, Hydrostor signed a 25-year contract with California non-profit Central Coast Community Energy to supply stored energy from its Willow Rock Energy Storage Center, now under construction northeast of Los Angeles. Over the next decade, Hydrostor estimates that the global market for long-duration, grid-scale energy storage will reach 140 gigawatts.

5. MacCormick  

Growth Rate: 3,293%

Toronto-based MacCormick Inc., doing business as The S Factor Co., is a data and analytics firm that provides social risk ratings and investment solutions, mainly for companies in the global mining industry. Its February 2022 report analyzing four case studies identified a direct link between companies’ material social performance (the “S” in ESG) and positive financial outcomes. Operating companies, asset managers and investors all follow The S Factor Co.’s rankings closely. Mark Moody-Stuart, chair of the Global Compact Foundation, has called S Factor’s social-performance data “the most comprehensive and systematic rating system the sector has ever seen.”

6. e-Zinc 

Growth Rate: 1,581%

Founded in 2012, e-Zinc explains itself in four words: “Storing electricity in metal.” The company (whose official name is e-Zn) has developed an electrochemical technology for storing energy in zinc metal – a low-cost energy solution of long duration (meaning up to several days) to provide renewable energy in remote locations and harsh environments, even at night or in bad weather. Its technology uses battery-like electrochemical cells in which zinc has been dissolved in a liquid electrolyte. It’s an advance on similar systems that use lithium, since zinc is more abundant and easier to recycle. Its investors include Toyota Ventures, Bioindustrial Innovation Canada, Graphite Ventures and Anzu Partners.

7. Oneka Technologies  

Growth Rate: 1,329%

Oneka Technologies of Sherbrooke, Quebec, is developing a “freshwater as a service” business model for coastal regions lacking drinking water. Its floating desalination buoys use offshore wave action to power the water-filtration process and pump drinking water onshore. In March, Oneka announced a $14-million “utility-scale” project off Cape Sable Island, in southeast Nova Scotia, in conjunction with Canada’s Ocean Supercluster. “This sustainable source of water will make coastal populations and industries across the globe, including the Barrington Municipality in Nova Scotia, more resilient to impacts of climate change,” said Oneka CEO Dragan Tutic.

8. Audette Analytics 

Growth Rate: 1,205%

The commercial real estate industry is responsible for 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions. And according to Victoria-based Audette Analytics, the sector “is far behind on the road to decarbonization.” Audette helps building owners get started on their journey to green. Its AI-based management platform enables clients to monitor their buildings’ equipment data and utility use, compare decarbonization approaches, and then track and verify their efficiency gains. The company’s target markets include multi-unit property owners (such as pension funds) looking to green their real estate portfolios and city managers planning decarbonization initiatives.

9. CarbiCrete  

Growth Rate: 1,024%

Production of cement, which is mainly used to bind mixtures of sand, gravel and stone into durable concrete, accounts for 8% of total global CO2 emissions. Montreal-based CarbiCrete is commercializing a process developed at McGill University for making cheaper, cleaner concrete. It replaces cement with steel slag, a by-product of steelmaking. As this process involves injecting CO2 into the hardening concrete, CarbiCrete says its solution is actually carbon-negative. It hopes to sell its process, materials and support services to concrete manufacturers in Ontario, Quebec and Europe. CarbiCrete says every tonne of concrete produced its way removes 150 kilograms of CO2 from the atmosphere.

10. Hydrogen Technology & Energy  

Growth Rate: 985% 

Hydrogen Technology & Energy’s mission is to hasten the green transition by building out hydrogen production and distribution infrastructure. In 2013, the Vancouver-based company built the world’s first hydrogen station, serving fuel cell buses in Whistler, B.C.; five years later it opened Canada’s first retail Shell hydrogen station for cars and trucks near Vancouver International Airport. Today, HTEC operates more than 17 hydrogen stations in North America, and it’s developing electrolysis facilities across Canada to supply hydrogen to its network and third-party clients. The company also leases hydrogen-powered trucks to fleet operators and advises transit systems on switching to the fuel.

11. Mangrove Lithium 

Growth Rate: 682%

Mangrove Lithium (formerly Mangrove Water Technologies) spun out of a five-year University of British Columbia research project on converting industrial waste – specifically, brines made of gases and high-salinity wastewater – into desalinated water and valuable chemicals. Mangrove now focuses on converting raw lithium found in brines, hard rocks or clay into lithium hydroxide, enabling efficient production of battery-grade lithium close to the point of extraction. Mangrove’s tech also provides more efficient recycling of lithium batteries. Its investors include BMW i Ventures, the Business Development Bank of Canada, National Research Council Canada, Emission Reductions Alberta and Breakthrough Energy.

12. Carbon Engineering  

Growth Rate: 584%

Squamish, B.C.–based Carbon Engineering plans to capture carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere at industrial scale. Direct air capture (DAC) creates opportunities for hard-to-decarbonize industries to offset their emissions. In 2015, CE’s pilot plant in Squamish, B.C., proved it could capture one tonne of atmospheric CO2 per day; two years later, the plant converted waste CO2 into low-carbon liquid fuel. In May, after years of testing, CE and partner Occidental Petroleum finally broke ground on a commercial-scale DAC plant in Ector County, Texas. The plant will capture up to 500,000 tonnes of CO2 a year.

13. Ionomr Innovations 

Growth Rate: 525%

Ionomr Innovations develops ion-exchange membranes that improve the economics of hydrogen production, water treatment and grid-level energy storage. The quality of ion-exchange membranes is crucial to the efficiency of electrochemical processes such as fuel cells and electrolyzers (used to create green hydrogen). Vancouver-based Ionomr markets two game-changing membrane systems: Aemion, for water purification and clean energy generation; and Pemion, a proton-exchange membrane that reduces the cost of hydrogen fuel cells through less use of precious metals and a longer operating life. The company says its systems help green energy companies “accelerate down the cost curve earlier than anticipated.”

14. Clir Renewables 

Growth Rate: 353%

Clir Renewables of Vancouver has developed a data and analysis platform that allows the owners of wind- and solar-energy farms to continuously monitor and improve the performance of their sensitive, expensive equipment. Clir draws on AI, machine learning and a database covering 200 gigawatts worth of production to help asset managers improve yields, better manage maintenance, and maximize their value when they buy or sell. CEO Gareth Brown, a former industry consultant, founded Clir based on his observations that turbine owners “don’t actually understand the assets all that well” – and that some turbine vendors prefer to keep that knowledge to themselves.

15. FigBytes 

Growth Rate: 342%

In a recent report, California-based Coherent Market Insights said the global market for sustainability and energy-management software is growing 11% a year. And in this burgeoning sector, the company named Ottawa’s FigBytes as a key player, alongside such giants as IBM and Schneider Electric. Founded in 2009, FigBytes markets an online software platform that helps companies collect data and develop strategies based on their sustainability efforts in areas like climate accounting, water use, supplier transparency, ESG risk management, and philanthropy, diversity and inclusion. One client reports that with the FigBytes software, “we can spend less time tracking data and more time reducing our environmental impact.”

16. GHGSat  

Growth Rate: 337%

GHGSat believes that industrial polluters in coal mining, oil and gas, and other industries need to see their emissions before they can manage them. With a fleet of five satellites (and six more launching later this year), plus sensor-mounted airplanes and high-resolution detection equipment, the Montreal-based company helps clients monitor and manage their methane emissions site by site, to achieve their carbon-reduction goals. In May, Fast Company named GHGSat’s platform the top World Changing Idea in the climate category. “We want to get to the point where we’re monitoring every single facility in the world on just about a daily basis,” CEO Stephane Germain told Fast Company.

17. SWTCH Energy 

Growth Rate: 310%

As electric vehicle use grows, more local government policies will require developers and building operators to provide access to EV charging. But few buildings can handle the surge in electricity demand when everyone wants to charge their vehicles at once – especially at dinnertime. Toronto-based SWTCH Energy has a solution: its load-management software controls buildings’ energy use and allocates charging to lower-demand times – increasing the property’s charging capacity by up to 10 times and saving the buildings’ owners millions of dollars in upgrades. SWTCH’s software gives building managers insight into and control over their charging systems, including access controls, customizable rate structures and driver billing.

18. Eavor Technologies  

Growth Rate: 288%

Calgary-based Eavor Technologies has a vision: “Local clean energy autonomy, at scale, everywhere.” Its Eavor-Loop system harnesses nearly limitless geothermal heat from 4,500 metres underground to power commercial heating applications. Eavor’s proprietary technology consists of two vertical wells that circulate a fluid (much like a car’s radiator fluid) through a closed-loop pipe; the fluid picks up thermal energy underground, conducts it to the surface, and then goes down for more. Eavor says a single Eavor-Loop installation can generate industrial-scale electricity, or enough heat to serve 16,000 homes. Its first commercial system is now under construction in Geretsried, Germany.

19. Ostara Nutrient Recovery Technologies  

Growth Rate: 281%

Phosphorus is a key crop nutrient but a dwindling mineral resource. Vancouver-based Ostara solves two problems at once by cleaning up phosphates in municipal and industrial wastewater, using a treatment licensed from the University of British Columbia that processes that waste into fertilizer pellets. Ostara’s unique fertilizer, Crystal Green, maximizes yield by slowly giving off nutrients in the presence of growing plants – reducing the common risks of leaching and runoff with conventional fertilizers. Treatment plants that install Ostara’s nutrient-management system usually recoup their investment through savings in chemicals and maintenance costs – and possibly a share of Ostara’s fertilizer sales.

20. Summit Nanotech  

Growth Rate: 277%

In April, Tesla boss Elon Musk called for more entrepreneurs to work on lithium extraction to overcome an extraction bottleneck holding back the EV revolution. The Financial Times countered by writing an article on Calgary geophysicist Amanda Hall, who founded Summit Nanotech in 2018 to use nanomaterials to extract lithium from brine water in days, rather than months. In January, Summit closed a $67-million funding round. “It really does allow us to accelerate our growth faster than we expected, which is super important because the customer demand for our technology is so high,” Hall told the Calgary Herald.

21. FTEX  

Growth Rate: 261%

Four years ago, three Montreal entrepreneurs – developer Ramee Mossa, marketer Silvana Huaman and engineer Alexandre Cosneau – joined forces to build better motor controllers that give drones longer flight times. But when COVID-19 grounded everything, the partners realized their technology could improve motor efficiency in a bigger market: electric vehicles. Today FTEX designs and manufactures power-management and motor-control systems for light EVs – scooters, e-bikes and motorcycles. Using new gallium nitride semiconductors (in place of silicon) enables FTEX to use smaller and more efficient components, extending its vehicles’ range by up to 30% on a single charge. Next step: electric cars.

22. Manifest Climate  

Growth Rate: 260%

Toronto lawyer Laura Zizzo bleeds green. First she started Toronto’s first climate-centric law firm: Zizzo Allan Climate Law LLP. Then she launched a climate consulting firm, which she later turned into tech startup Manifest Climate. Its software platform uses AI and deep industry knowledge to assess companies’ risks and opportunities in managing climate change. Manifest helps clients like Bell, Teck Resources and Manulife deal with disclosure, industry benchmarking, opportunity identification, climate scenario analysis and best practices. “We help our clients understand how to talk about this, how to track climate-related business trends,” Zizzo says in a company video. “We help them organize their information and stay on top of what’s really important.”

23. ChargeLab  

Growth Rate: 254%

Toronto-based ChargeLab calls itself “the operating system for EV chargers.” Besides developing charging stations, it’s created a management software platform that enables fleets, charger manufacturers and owners of charging networks to connect, control and monetize their charging stations. Among its clients are Ford, Hilton and Mobil. In April, ChargeLab announced a US$15-million top-up to its 2022 Series A funding round, bringing that total to US$30 million. In the deal, ChargeLab welcomed two new strategic investors: charging network operator Silver Comet and power-management firm Eaton. “The EV charging industry remains nascent, making strategic partnerships essential for building a resilient ecosystem,” said ChargeLab CEO Zak Lefevre in a press release.

24. NorthStar Earth & Space 

Growth Rate: 248%

As more satellite operators hit the launchpad, space is running out of room. “The new space economy is on a collision course with debris and congestion,” says Montreal-based NorthStar. “Current space monitoring systems cannot handle the traffic.” The firm offers the first commercial service to monitor space from space, through its own satellites with dedicated optical sensors, to enable safer space-faring. Back on Earth, NorthStar is also developing a global environmental information platform to monitor issues such as deforestation, water supply and crop risk.

25. Outcast Foods 

Growth Rate: 223%

Nearly a fourth of all produce ends up as waste, mainly due to bruises and other cosmetic shortcomings. If it rots in a landfill, it emits harmful methane gas that’s 20 times more powerful than carbon dioxide. Founded in 2017, Halifax-based Outcast Foods is tackling this problem by rescuing food waste – such as bruised beets, misfit carrots or underripe bananas – and washing, chopping and grinding it into nutritious plant and protein powders. Outcast produces its own protein powder for sale at Sobey’s and independent retailers and sells ingredients such as tomato, blueberry and sweet potato powders to make sustainable juices, snacks and pet foods for processors that include Wholly Veggie and Happy Planet. Tagline: “It’s what’s inside that counts.”

2023 Future 50 Table

 

How did we find the Future 50?

Corporate Knights used two different but complementary criteria to determine which companies made the Future 50. We drew from 4,513 publicly listed and 4,163 privately owned companies headquartered in Canada and determined the ones that earn most of their revenues from clean energy themes (including energy efficiency), according to the Corporate Knights Sustainable Economy Taxonomy. The public companies were then ranked according to their one-year revenue growth rates (2021 sales over 2020 sales). For privately held companies, we tapped the S&P Capital IQ database, with data on recent fundraising rounds, and sorted them based on the percentage growth of capital they raised from the two most recent years of fundraising rounds over the 2018 – 2023 period. This enabled us to identify qualifying companies that are still “pre-revenue” – giving us early access to new ventures. From this, we pulled out the top 25 private and 25 public companies that earn the majority of their revenue from sustainable sources to select our Future 50.

The post These are Canada’s 50 fastest-growing green companies of 2023 appeared first on Corporate Knights.

]]> https://corporateknights.com/food-beverage/this-company-growing-food-using-heat-from-data-centres/ Thu, 18 May 2023 15:50:20 +0000 https://corporateknights.com/?p=37299 QScale is building a 130-acre data centre campus in Lévis, Quebec, where it will use warmth from servers to grow more than 80,000 tonnes of produce a year

The post This Canadian company is planning to grow tomatoes using heat from computers appeared first on Corporate Knights.

]]> There are more than seven million data centres in the world, housing servers that store massive amounts of digital information.  They act as the world’s IT brain or hive, receiving and transmitting all sorts of information and enabling everyday conveniences like online shopping. But these facilities, which are notorious for their high electricity consumption and enormous carbon footprints, may soon have a new spin-off function: helping grow food.

A Canadian company called QScale is developing a $1-billion 130-acre data centre campus in Lévis, Quebec, and will use the warmth that emanates from its servers to grow more than 80,000 tonnes of produce in adjacent greenhouses every year.

Indoor farming, which is often hailed as the future of food production, is also very energy-intensive. So being able to recycle some of the heat from data centres could be a big win for both.

“Data centres consume something on the order [of] 4% of the planet’s energy. So if we could use that as a heat source, we could . . . kill two birds with one stone,” said QScale’s co-founder and head of strategy, Vincent Thibault, in an interview with Sustainable Biz Canada.

The size of data centres varies, but the largest have thousands of servers running 24 hours a day, sucking up a huge amount of electricity and giving off a lot of heat. The United States is home to the most data centres, with more than 2,600 (as of 2022). Canada has the seventh-largest number (behind the U.S., the U.K., Germany, China, the Netherlands and Australia), and those server farms use 1% of Canada’s annual electricity consumed. Just a handful of companies are behind most of the global energy used by data centres – Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Alibaba, Facebook and Apple are all among the top users (although many of these companies are trying to curb their carbon footprints by tapping into renewable energy).

Some companies and governments have taken action to make data centres less energy intensive, so that less stress is put on the electricity grids that power them. The European Commission unveiled regulations in 2019 that set up technical standards to lessen the centres’ environmental impacts. And data centres must become carbon neutral by 20230 under the European Green Deal. The U.S. Energy Act (enacted in 2021) included several initiatives aimed at making data centres more energy efficient.

QScale, for its part, says it’s trying to make data centres more sustainable. It’s trumpeted the fact that its campus in Lévis will run on 99.5% renewable sources (thanks to Quebec’s hydro-heavy grid), and its waste-heat-recovery system will help make its energy use more circular. The company will also be able to grow a decent amount of veggies. QScale says that the greenhouses on its Lévis campus will be able to produce 2,800 tonnes of small fruit a  nd 80,000 tonnes of tomatoes per year.

Farming isn’t the only innovative solution to recycle all the heat waste that data centres generate. Last year, Microsoft announced that two of its data centres in Finland would heat homes and businesses in Helsinki. A Swiss IT company called GIB-Services is heating a public swimming pool in Zurich from a data centre that was built in an old military bunker.

QScale expects its heat recovery system to be up and running at its Lévis campus in early 2024. The company says part of its mission is to set an example for the industry so that other firms will follow.

“I think by giving the example that it can be done, we can force the Google[s], Amazon[s] [and] Microsofts of the world to put some effort into actually reusing all the heat that’s generated by those facilities,” said Thibault.

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