These were always obstacles for women who run their own businesses, long before COVID-19, especially women with small businesses and the self-employed. But the pandemic exacerbated them. 

A recent survey of 147 women entrepreneurs in Ontario by the non-profit PARO Centre for Women’s Enterprise shows that the pandemic added to the burden on women entrepreneurs, slowing their business growth and taking a toll on their mental health.  

Besides coping with pandemic-related restrictions, staffing shortages, supply chain issues and inflationary pressures familiar to most businesses, women entrepreneurs have had additional obstacles. These include gender biases when it comes to obtaining financial support for their businesses, having fewer mentors and networking opportunities than male entrepreneurs, a shortage of affordable childcare and eldercare options, which often falls on women’s shoulders, and lack of access to mental health services. 

The challenges for women entrepreneurs in rural and remote areas are even greater due to isolation, lack of proper infrastructure, unreliable internet, and lack of access to all health care services.  

Finding solutions to these problems is not just important for women entrepreneurs; it is essential for the country’s economic growth.  

Studies show women-owned businesses contribute over $150 billion to Canada’s economy and employ over 1.5 million people. Creating a climate in which women entrepreneurs can more fully participate in the economy and thrive benefits everyone.  

To foster this environment, governments at every level must eliminate systemic gender biases embedded in their policies and practices, especially around financial support for small businesses. The PARO survey revealed that the pandemic made it difficult for almost 30% of female entrepreneur respondents to meet their financial obligations. About 5% said they lost their business altogether. 

While the federal government provided financial supports to businesses during the first two years of the pandemic, many women entrepreneurs were not eligible for the supports or were reluctant to sign up for loan programs that would result in more debt.  

The federal government has also developed support programs specifically for women in business – a great first step. However, many women entrepreneurs are excluded from these programs because they do not include micro businesses (those with fewer than 20 employees) or solo-preneurs (self-employed workers), which are the main business models for women entrepreneurs. 

The federal government must design support programs that specifically target micro-businesses and solo-preneurs, enabling women entrepreneurs to obtain financing more easily.  

Governments must also champion women-centred organizations that mentor women entrepreneurs, provide networking opportunities for them – and, importantly, financial support.  

Women entrepreneurs often face systemic barriers when they apply for loans or grants through traditional lending institutions, which sometimes still view women-owned businesses as a ‘hobby’ or a ‘side hustle,’ and either reject a woman’s application or attach overly stringent terms to the financing.  

Government policy changes must also address the specific barriers that Indigenous women entrepreneurs face.  

Indigenous people in Canada start businesses at a rate that is nine times higher than non-Indigenous Canadians, with women driving much of the growth. However, Indigenous women face significant obstacles, including racism, poverty, violence, and a lack of infrastructure, adequate health care and educational opportunities.  

Policies and programs to address these issues are essential, as are better access to grants and non-repayable loans, mentoring, training and networking opportunities designed for Indigenous women. 

High costs and wait lists for childcare also continue to be a major roadblock for women entrepreneurs, despite the introduction of $10-a-day childcare policies. Governments must encourage more childcare centres to register under these programs, allowing for more childcare spaces at affordable rates.  

Policies and programs to help with eldercare responsibilities must also be developed. 

Access to mental health supports is also essential. Many women responding to the PARO survey said they experienced anxiety and depression during the pandemic due to financial stress, isolation, caring for children and/or elderly family members, and worrying about how they would maintain their business.  

The federal government needs to work with municipal and provincial governments to ensure that timely and accessible mental health services are available to all Canadians, especially those living in rural, remote, and Northern communities where services are often sparse.  

Women entrepreneurs are resilient and determined, but they need a more inclusive environment to reach their full potential. Governments need to act now to eliminate the obstacles impeding women business owners. Our economy will reap the rewards. 

Rosalind Lockyer is founder and CEO of PARO Centre for Women’s Enterprise-Ontario, PARO Canada, and board member for Women’s Enterprise Organizations of Canada. 

The post Are governments doing enough to end obstacles for women entrepreneurs? appeared first on Corporate Knights.

In 2013, the University of Victoria’s Peter B. Gustavson School of Business founded the Indigenous Advancement of Cultural Entrepreneurship (I-ACE) program. The program bills itself as Canada’s only Indigenous co-designed entrepreneurship program delivered in First Nations communities and centred on their priorities. Since then, the school has worked with 67 Indigenous communities in British Columbia, producing 604 graduates and 200 start-ups.

“We only do these programs when we are invited in to do so by communities or nations,” says Brent Mainprize, a Gustavson professor of entrepreneurship and Indigenous economic development, of I-ACE. “We work hand in hand with the community and nation to find [external] resources so we [are] not taxing a nation’s budget.”

Former Haida Nation council president Miles Richardson says the success of I-ACE, which initially received $1 million in funding from the Bank of Montreal, demonstrates that business schools “need to be flexible in their approach and delivery.” As chair of the National Consortium for Indigenous Economic Development, a University of Victoria research initiative with Indigenous governments, Richardson says First Nations communities are seeking a productive economic relationship with Canada.

“To do that, our people need to be trained and educated, and to gain capacity we have to do it in a way that is consistent with our values and who we are as a people,” says Richardson.

In Australia, the University of Melbourne, in partnership with Indigenous leaders, designed a culturally safe on-campus executive education program for Indigenous entrepreneurs in 2012. The university’s Faculty of Business and Economics added a graduate certificate in Indigenous leadership in 2019 that can ladder into degree programs.

“We are creating as many pathways into business school as we can for Indigenous people,” says Mitch Hibbens, a Wiradjuri tribe member and program director of the entrepreneur program.

Sometimes, topics define the relationship.

Recent specialty programs at the Spears School of Business at Oklahoma State University, which include certificates in tribal leadership, gaming leadership, and tribal finance and accounting, came at the request of the 38-tribe Oklahoma Tribal Finance Consortium.

“A growing number of tribes need assistance with finances and accounting,” says Julie Weathers, director of Spears’s Center for Executive and Professional Development. “The people in those positions rotate in and out, and so there is a lot of learning that needs to take place quickly.”

Vancouver Island University (VIU), with Heiltsuk Tribal College and North Island College, delivers a seven-month Indigenous Ecotourism Training Program for eligible students supported by their local bands. The program’s instructors travel to Indigenous communities to teach. VIU also offers other credentials that can feed into a business diploma or degree.

At Manitoba’s Assiniboine College, located on the traditional territories of Treaty 1 and Treaty 2 First Nations, the business faculty delivers an in-community advanced diploma in Indigenous financial management. “The more we can include the community in [the] development of the course, the more meaningful it will be for the students who eventually take the courses,” says business dean Bobbie Robertson.

That responsiveness is essential, says Mike Henry, dean of business at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, which works with the Indigenous-led Tulo Centre of Indigenous Economics to design courses in demand by local communities.

“Indigenous communities are taking control and saying, ‘This is what we need,’” he says. “Non-Indigenous communities are starting to listen closer and respond to what Indigenous leaders need, not what we think they need, to manage their own affairs.”

Jennifer Lewington is an intrepid reporter and writes regularly on many topics, including business school news.

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But the lowly pallet is an essential link in the global supply chain. One could say the global economy rides on its ubiquitous back.

By 2017 it’s estimated there will be nearly 10 billion shipping pallets in global circulation, half being newly purchased each year. Between now and then, the market is expected to grow by an average of 5 per cent annually and reach a value of $52 billion (U.S.), according to The Freedonia Group.

Needless to say, what those pallets are made of, how often they’re reused, and how they’re managed will become increasingly important in a low-carbon economy. That’s what attracted auto parts executive Richard MacDonald to the market.

In 2010, after 23 years working his way into senior roles at auto parts giant Magna International, MacDonald decided to take what he learned in the car manufacturing business and apply it to the art of skid making.

“We basically did automotive engineering on a pallet,” said MacDonald, one of three co-founders of Vaughan, Ont.-based Axios Mobile Assets, where he is president and chief executive. “

For example, Axios makes its pallets out of calcium carbonate – that is, common chalk – the same material that Magna uses to manufacture some of its composite car parts, such as fenders and hoods for Vipers and Corvettes. The non-toxic calcium carbonate is mixed with a soy-based resin and biofibres to create a kind of “eco-pallet” that Axios says is 30 to 40 per cent lighter than wood pallets.

Currently, slightly more than 90 per cent of all pallets produced today are made from wood, while about 4 per cent are manufactured from plastics and 1 per cent from metal, such as aluminum. Each has its own strengths and weaknesses.

How they stack up

Wood pallets may be the cheapest, but they don’t last very long, are susceptible to insects and rot, represent a fire hazard, can carry contaminants that pose a risk to health, and are difficult to clean. They absorb water when wet, adding weight – and cost – to shipping. Nails and splinters also have potential to harm workers, tear packaging and damage product.

There’s also an ongoing debate over the contribution of wood pallets to deforestation and climate change. The Union of Concerned Scientists, for example, cites the fact that 30 per cent of total hardwood produced in the United States each year is used to make wood pallets and containers that are typically used once and then discarded, often in landfills. It estimates that wood pallets represent up to 3 per cent of all waste that ends up in U.S. landfills.

However, groups like the Canadian Wood Pallet and Container Association counter by pointing out that pallets are largely made from otherwise unmarketable lumber that’s left over after trees are harvested for building materials, furniture and flooring. “Trees are rarely harvested with the sole purpose of making pallets,” the association says.

A single wood pallet is said to represent about 27 kilograms of carbon. What happens at the end of its short life determines its impact on the climate. Sending it to landfill is worse than recycling it into other wood products or even burning it for energy. One example: Viridian Wood Products of Portland, Oregon, reclaims and upcycles wood from shipping pallets and crates that have been discarded at local shipyards, turning them into high-value flooring, decking and panelling products.

Plastic pallets, on the other hand, are more expensive but have gained favour because, compared to wood, they’re pest resistant, lighter, longer-lasting, recyclable, and often made from recycled materials. They can also be cleaned and sanitized fairly easily, though because they are made from a fossil fuel they are a fire hazard. This is why the plastic used must often be embedded with fire retardant chemicals such as decabromodiphenyl ether, which has caused concerns about the potential for contamination in the food industry.

And metal pallets? They have most of the benefits of plastic with the added advantage of ruggedness. Problem is, they’re significantly more expensive and typically heavier, which leads to increased transportation costs, fuel consumption and associated emissions. This is why they are used mostly for the heaviest cargo and niche markets.

Striking the right balance

MacDonald believes his company’s calcium carbonate-based pallets strike the best balance between cost and benefit. Like plastic pallets, they tend to last 10 to 12 years compared to up to a few years for wood – assuming the wood pallets aren’t prematurely discarded. And they’re 30 to 40 per cent lighter than comparable wood pallets, which translates into lower cost and a reduction in transport-related emissions.

Bugs and water can’t penetrate them, they’re easy to thoroughly wash after each cycle of use, and they can be recycled. Where they part with plastic, however, is that they are inherently fire resistant, meaning no chemical additives are needed – appealing to food and produce shippers and buyers. “We’re less cost with higher value,” MacDonald said.

From a greenhouse-gas emissions perspective, however, what the pallets are made of is only part of the story. A core part of Axios’ business is a service called pallet pooling. In essence, it rents out its pallets as part of long-term contracts. Through such contracts, it manages and tracks the movement of the pallets, cleans them, and stores them when necessary.

Each of its pallets contain four radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags and a bar code that allows the company to track the pallets – and the goods loaded onto them – through every step in the supply-chain cycle. Sensors that measure temperature, shock, and even CO2 exposure and humidity can also be added to both the pallets and the trailers used to transport them. Handlers equipped with electronic wands simply scan each pallet as they’re unloaded and loaded.

“We’re the Internet of things as it relates to the $12 billion (U.S.) pallet market,” said MacDonald.

With this ability to so closely and accurately track pallets as they move through the supply chain, Axios says there’s room to drive logistical efficiencies. The software behind its pallet management service can also calculate what the reduction in GHG emissions would be relative to using wood pallets that aren’t tracked. This calculation takes into account such metrics as distance travelled and pallet weight, and translates them into a carbon credit value.

In its first pallet-pooling project earlier this year, Axios supplied 4,000 pallets to Trillium Farms of Ohio and Centrum Valley Farms in Iowa, which used the system to manage and track egg shipments destined for retailers such as Walmart. After four months, they calculated that the carbon-equivalent of 26.6 tonnes of GHGs had been offset, the equivalent of not burning nearly 29,000 pounds of coal.

“For retailers or vendors who use millions of pallets and transport their products millions of miles over the course of business each year, significant verified carbon reductions can be applied against a business’s carbon footprint and in some cases monetized,” the company said in a statement after releasing its findings.

Consider if this approach was applied to the billions of wood shipping pallets in circulation around the world. The U.S. egg industry, which transports 90 billion eggs annually, requires on its own more than a million pallets handling 15 to 20 shipment cycles a year. The carbon benefits would quickly add up.

Sylvain Charlebois, a business and economics professor who researches food safety and traceability systems at the University of Guelph, was briefed on the Axios pallet system earlier this fall and walked away impressed.

“It’s a great product and they have a sound strategy,” said Charlebois, adding that the approach makes good sense from a sustainability perspective. “That said, it will be a challenge for Axios to change entrenched habits in the industry, particularly in the food industry where traditions are king.”

But the interest is there. MacDonald said his company now has contracts in place to put 30,000 of its pallets into circulation, assuming he can overcome one substantial barrier. “We’re having trouble raising the capital to expand our pallet fleet,” he said, pointing out that over the next year up to 150,000 pallets will need to be manufactured to meet expected demand.

The problem? The $3 million Axios is looking for is a lot of money, and investors don’t get very excited about pallets, even those based on the same materials used to make Corvettes. Mention “pallet” in your pitch and venture capitalists yawn. Banks tune out, even if the payback on each pallet is under a year.

But they may well want to pay attention. As Charlebois said, more non-food retailers such as Walmart and Costco are doing well in the food space. “They are more inclined to embrace new technologies which may be consistent with their core competency, which is logistics,” he said.

The post Making climate-friendly pallets palatable appeared first on Corporate Knights.

What’s in that stink?

SC Johnson, the Wisconsin-based maker of household cleaning and air freshening products, said Thursday it would start disclosing the fragrance ingredients in specific products in spring 2015. The company, like many in the industry, does disclose overall ingredients but has not previously tied those ingredients to particular products. It will begin this new disclosure initiative in the United States and Canada, then Europe, starting with air care products and expanding from there into other categories. It may be the right thing to do, but it’s also a reaction to main competitor Clorox, which announced in late September it would start product-specific ingredient disclosure. It’s a big shift for the industry, which has historically been extremely secretive about fragrance ingredients.

Control of dot-eco domain goes to Canada

Corporate Knights reported Thursday that ICANN, the world’s Internet domain regulatory body, has given control of the new “dot-eco” top-level domain to a small Vancouver-based company called Big Room, which in its application had the backing of a global coalition of more than 50 environmental organizations. It took Big Room seven years, and a short-lived battle with another applicant backed by former U.S. vice-president Al Gore, to convince the regulator it would give the dot-eco domain a higher social purpose. The company hopes to have its dot-eco name registry operating sometime next year.

CK launches workplace safety web series

Visit corporateknights.com throughout the rest of October to follow our just-launched workplace safety web series, starting with today’s in-depth piece by award-winning journalist John Lorinc. In his story, Lorinc identifies fundamental shifts in our economy that are making traditionally low-risk, “safe” jobs – such as part-time retail and hotel service positions – more dangerous. The series is a partnership with the Canadian Society of Safety Engineering and the Center for Safety and Health Sustainability. Over the coming three weeks, we’ll also look at which industries are best and worst at disclosing workplace safety data, as well as the challenge of making sure safety standards trickle down through the supply chain. Another question we’ll answer: Why are injury claims in Canada’s east falling faster than in the west? Finally, we’ll end with a report on Canada’s latest worker safety data.

California tops at preparing for climate change

A new online tool developed by the Georgetown Climate Center lets users easily find out which U.S. states are making the most progress with climate adaptation and which ones are lagging behind. And, perhaps to no one’s surprise, California has come out on top, followed by Massachusetts and New York, reports Grist.org. This is exactly how Corporate Knights scored the Top 3 states in its Green Provinces and States ranking, which we released this past June. The difference is that instead of focusing on climate adaption plans, CK’s ranking scored states and provinces on 10 key performance indicators across six categories – air and climate, water, nature, transportation, waste, energy and buildings. We also had a 10-point bonus system that rewarded jurisdictions for having certain environmental programs in place. What’s interesting – and sad – about the Georgetown ranking is that just 14 out of 50 states have a finalized climate plan.

Tesla Unveils Powerful Model D

For all you Elon Musk fans out there, we would be remiss to not mention the unveiling yesterday of Tesla Motors’ new Model D electric car, or officially called the P85D. Wired.com is calling it Tesla’s “most powerful car ever.” That’s assuming, of course, you consider 0 to 60 miles per hour in 3.2 seconds fast. The Model D – basically a sportier, turbo-boosted version of the Model S – will also have all-wheel drive and an autopilot feature. “Tesla is adding a radar that can see through fog and snow; a camera with image recognition capability to spot traffic signs and lights, as well as pedestrians; 360-degree ultrasonic sonar; and a system that combines all the data those produce with navigation, GPS, and real-time traffic systems,” according to Wired.com.

The post October 10, 2014 appeared first on Corporate Knights.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the agency that regulates all Internet addresses, announced Tuesday that Vancouver-based social venture Big Room can have exclusive control and operation of a new Internet registry for the dot-eco top-level domain.

It means domain names like cars.eco and construction.eco – even corporateknights.eco – could soon be the home for new environmentally focused websites, and groups such as Greenpeace and 350.org could be part of the network approved to sell them.

It’s a landmark achievement for the little Canadian company, which was co-founded in 2007 by Jacob Malthouse, Trevor Bowden and Anastasia O’Rourke, who met while working together at the United Nations Environment Programme in Geneva.

Competition for the dot-eco extension has been intense. At one point a California-based company called Dot Eco LLC, backed by former U.S. vice-president Al Gore, was lobbying aggressively to be selected as operator of a dot-eco registry.

Not that Big Room was going to be intimidated. To be favoured by ICANN, applicants had to demonstrate a high level of community support for their bids. Big Room’s founders not only worked full time over the years building widespread support within the global environmental community, they also structured the for-profit company as a community-based social venture that has since been certified as a B Corporation.

“It’s operated more like a public-private partnership, so the community will be written into the contracts of ICANN,” explained Malthouse in an interview. “We’re a company, yes, but the community is in charge.”

That community is essentially a coalition of more than 50 environmental organizations from around the world, including WWF, Greenpeace, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Carbon Disclosure Project, the David Suzuki Foundation, and Conservation International.

“It’s a huge coalition, one of the largest the environmental community has ever put together, and they all wrote in to support our application,” Malthouse added.

Green Cross International, a group founded by former Soviet Union president Mikhail Gorbachev, also threw its support behind Big Room. Eventually, Gore saw the writing on the wall and backed off, Malthouse speculated. “Once his team saw there was another application that was community-based and had the support of WWF and Greenpeace, I think he thought our approach was a better way to go.”

The former U.S. vice-president wasn’t the only one with a change of heart. Climate activist group 350.org, founded by U.S. environmental journalist Bill McKibben, initially supported the U.S.-centric Dot Eco bid but decided later to switch its allegiance to the broader-based Big Room.

In the end, Big Room had three competitors going after dot-eco – Planet Dot Eco LLC, which had some environmental backers, and two domain industry companies that just saw dot-eco as an opportunity to print money. Had Big Room failed to convince ICANN of its higher purpose, the process would have defaulted into an auction that would result in dot-eco going to the highest bidder.

That the Vancouver venture was successful has created excitement within the environmental community. “The potential for the global environment movement to collaborate like never before has been unleashed,” WWF International’s Richard McLellan said in a statement after learning of Big Room’s winning bid.

The Hard Work Begins

Winning control of dot-eco wasn’t easy, or cheap. The application fee alone was about $200,000, and additional funding was required for administrative and legal work, not to mention the time and effort that went into building a global coalition. Some social investors stepped up, providing the funding that Big Room needed.

But now, in many ways, the real work begins. “The community has a tonne of work to do to figure out how to do this right,” Malthouse said. “The important thing now is not to rush it, but to make sure the community has a model we’re all happy with.”

And when can organizations and individuals start registering for their dot-eco addresses? “I would hesitate to put a timeline on it, but sometime next year for sure. We have our work cut out for us to make sure this happens,” he added.

Good governance will be key. The coalition of environmental groups that backed Big Room calls itself the Dot Eco Community Organization (DECO), which has developed a set of by-laws aimed at unifying members around a common set of goals.

A community council of DECO members makes recommendations to its board, which works with Big Room to make sure the policies that result are put into practice. The International Institute for Sustainable Development, headquartered in Winnipeg, provides secretariat services for the coalition.

Big Room and the dot-eco council, co-chaired by WWF’s McLellan, have some difficult questions to answer before they launch the registry. If the dot-eco domain is to only be used for the greater good, how will that “good” be defined? Who can and can’t register a dot-eco extension?

Under what conditions, if any, can oil.eco or coal.eco be registered? Nuclear.eco and naturalgas.eco could be even more controversial. How will the community decide if a company, such as ExxonMobil or TransCanada, can register the dot-eco extension to their own brand names? Will so-called greenwashing be forbidden, and if so, how will this be monitored and enforced?

“There’s a whole discussion that needs to take place about what it means to be qualified as dot-eco,” said Malthouse. “We have to make sure we give the right access to the names, and eliminate squatting.”

On the other hand, the Big Room-operated registry has an opportunity to get quite creative with how dot-eco name extensions are sold. Typically, a registry approves registrars to sell the extensions. Malthouse said one option being considered is to allow established, trusted organizations like Greenpeace to become registrars – basically domain-name resellers – under an arrangement in which Greenpeace gets a percentage of the proceeds that it can put toward its own environmental initiatives and campaigns.

The rules for such an arrangement would have to be carefully crafted, but the benefits it could bring to the environmental community are potentially huge.

Dot-Eco Has Competition

An online environmental war of sorts is likely to take place over the next few years as dot-eco battles to be seen as more credible and popular than its rival dot-green domain, control of which was won by auction back in March by Afilias, the world’s second-largest domain registry.

Malthouse and others in the environmental community worry that dot-green domains will be sold to anyone willing to pay, and that this will result in a corporate rush to lock up dot-green extensions as part of industry greenwashing efforts. Websites such as coal.green and oilsands.green could soon be promoted on highway billboards, bus shelters, print advertisements and TV commercials.

Over time, this might not be a bad thing – as word spreads about the watered-down nature of dot-green domains, it could make dot-eco names that much more legitimate and respected in the eyes of consumers.

Dot-organic is another “green” domain that became available earlier this year, but it is more narrowly focused than dot-eco. While not community-governed like dot-eco, the dot-organic registry does require that any company applying for a dot-organic domain have products carrying a certified organic seal and be third-party qualified.

Other than the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA), which is the rule-setter and registry for dot-ca name extensions, Big Room is the only other Canadian organization that has exclusive registry status for a top-level domain.

Over the past few years, ICANN has considered nearly 2,000 applications for more than 1,000 top-level name extensions, ranging from dot-blog to dot-wine. Of those, 17 applicants – including Big Room – asked for a “community evaluation” as a way to lock up a domain extension before it goes to auction. A community evaluation is based on a 16-point scoring system. A score of 14 is required to pass.

Of those, only dot-eco, dot-radio, dot-hotel and dot-Osaka met or exceeded the 14-point threshold. One that surprisingly didn’t win approval was a group seeking to control dot-gay. As the U.K.-based news site The Register put it, “The application was, the evaluators complained, simply not gay enough.”

The post Canadian group wins dot-eco rights appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Nearly 6,000 clean technology companies from 60 countries were nominated for consideration, so the fact that Vancouver, B.C.-based General Fusion made it onto such an elite list begs the question: After more than half a century of trying, is commercial-scale nuclear fusion finally just around the corner?

The list was created with the input of an 84-person expert panel, so it’s not like a couple of people in a room arbitrarily picked their favorites over a beer. General Fusion was compared against thousands of companies with far less risky and ambitious goals, but it still rose above. Not to suggest it wasn’t a controversial pick among the judges. The company also made it onto the Marmite list – like the English breakfast spread, you either love it or hate it.

“Many panelists admire the company for ‘attempting something so audacious,’” the report’s authors pointed out. “Will it be commercial in the next 10 years? Is it too dependent on fickle government regulations? Conclusion: The company has the potential to revolutionize power generation if it can succeed with its technical milestones. A binary bet, it seems.”

I’ve been a close observer of General Fusion for a decade now, having written a chapter about the company in my book Mad Like Tesla. Corporate Knights also mentioned General Fusion last year in a series on the future of nuclear. So like Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, who is an investor in General Fusion, I may be biased. I hate Marmite, but I like General Fusion.

Canada Doesn’t Gain, or Slide

Canadian companies continued to do relatively well on the 2014 Cleantech 100 list. Like the lists from 2013 and 2012, five companies made it onto this year’s list – three of them returning, two of them new.

In addition to General Fusion, water treatment company Axine Water Technologies, also from Vancouver, is a newcomer to the list. In fact, three of the five Canadian companies on the list are based in and around Vancouver. Axine has developed a chemical-free system that can treat high concentrations of toxic compounds that are otherwise difficult to chemically break down. Its system can be scaled up, and is currently being aimed at the treatment of oil and gas process water.

The other Vancouver-based company on the list is Ostara Nutrient Recovery Technologies, which has been a permanent fixture on the list for the past five years. Ostara recovers phosphorus and nitrogen from municipal and industrial water streams and transforms them into eco-friendly fertilizer products that can boost food production.

Also in the 2014 group is Montreal-based Enerkem, which uses a thermal-chemical process to turn non-recyclable municipal solid waste into biofuels and other chemicals. The company launched its first full-scale commercial facility in Edmonton in June

The final Canadian company is Calgary-based FilterBoxx, which, like Axine, has technology for treating process water from oil operations – specifically from enhanced oil recovery and unconventional drilling projects.

Other Observations

Three scientists – two Japanese, one American – won the Nobel Prize in physics on Tuesday for inventing blue light-emitting diodes (LEDs), so it’s fitting to point out that three companies on the 2014 Cleantech 100 list are LED innovators: Glo from Lund, Sweden, a developer of nanowire-based LEDs; Digital Lumens of Boston, a designer of intelligent LED lighting systems for industry; and Dutch company LUXeXcel Group, which uses 3D printing technology to make LED optics.

Why is the development of blue LEDs important? We know LEDs are super-efficient and long-lasting forms of lighting, but until the development of blue LEDs all we had was green and red – that is, an important part of the light spectrum was missing. By adding blue to the mix, white LED lights could finally be created, in effect opening up the possibility for LED technology to go mainstream as a high-efficiency lighting standard.

Overall, 17 countries are represented on this year’s Cleantech 100 list, though the United States dominates with 62 companies. The most popular and fastest-growing sector appears to be energy efficiency, which is represented by 24 companies. Solar made a bit of a comeback with nine companies, up from six companies in 2013.

Cleantech Group, the organization that produces the Cleantech 100, identified the following six “mega themes” from this year’s batch:

• Growth of consumer-centric business models.
• A focus on emerging market demand and the next go-to markets.
• Intensification of cleantech applications for use in the oil and gas industry.
• A trend toward more decentralized energy services and “downstream” solar products and services.
• A continuing push to transform waste into wealth.
• A rise in big data solutions for utilities.

Cleantech Group also found that large corporations are more active than ever as partners with cleantech startups, whether through investment, licensing, or acquisition. General Electric was identified as most active, followed by Siemens, Google, BP and utility E.ON.

The post Cleantech 100 goes nuclear appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Wine and beer are no exception. Both appeal to consumer appetites for local and authentic. In Canada, craft beer, made on a small scale and with natural local ingredients, is the fastest growing segment of the beer market and, as Canada’s relatively young wine industry extends its regional reach, a small but growing number of wineries are challenging themselves to produce organically.

Because the results taste good, it’s less a matter of twisting consumers’ arms to make responsible choices than simply giving them what they want. As Heather MacGregor, a spokeswoman for the Liquor Control Board of Ontario, put it, “We respond to what our customers like and this market just continues to grow across the board, on both imports and domestic.” She’s referring to a fourfold increase in organic beer sales and a doubling in organic wine sales in the last four years.

Organic doesn’t capture the full breadth of sustainability which, in the realm of wine and beer, also encompasses energy efficiency in production and reduction in water use, packaging and transport. And while it may feel like a contemporary sensibility, it’s nothing new.

When two Bavarian dukes decreed on April 23, 1516, that the only allowable ingredients in beer were barley, hops and water, they were not really concerned about taste. The so-called Bavarian Purity Law, which gets flaunted on beer labels to this day, was in fact designed to stop brewers from pillaging local wheat and rye crops, a practice that was leading to bread shortages and even starvation, and to reduce illness from additives (whether this was more about consumer safety or protectionism from north German beers that featured weird and wonderful psychoactive herbs remains a matter of debate).

The decree also regulated prices (no more than a penny per litre) and defined the beer-making season (April 23 to September 29) in order to cut back on fires caused by brewing and spoilage for lack of cool storage in the summer months. Although no mention is made of yeast – integral to beer – it’s clear the ingredient was understood as earlier medieval documents regulate yeast-sharing protocols between brewers and bakers.

Efficient brewing

Today, the scant resource in beer-making is water and the energetic challenges are to heat efficiently, recapture heat loss and optimize water purification and bottle-cleaning. Elmira, Ontario-based environmental consulting firm Enviro-Stewards has specialized in beer and wine production. By reducing water and gas consumption, product losses and the use of caustics, wineries and breweries increase their output and minimize their loads on local water treatment facilities. Realizing this, and that reducing industrial water consumption is cheaper than digging more wells, several Canadian municipalities and public utilities have, in the last few years, begun to co-fund environmental assessments and refits.

The City of Guelph and Union Gas, for instance, helped Canadian brewer Sleemans to reduce its water and natural gas consumption by 8 per cent and 20 per cent respectively, boosting the brewery’s output and its bottom line by $330,000 a year, with an annual return on investment of over 100 per cent.

In Europe, Dutch beer giant Heineken has paired with the Austrian government in a “Green Brewery” project whose ultimate objective is carbon-neutral beer. Their pilot project at 500-year-old Göss brewery in southeastern Austria uses a combination of solar thermal systems and residual heat from a nearby sawmill for brewing. Almost all of the brewery’s waste heat is used to warm the municipal water supply and in the winter, outdoor air is used for cooling. External electricity used at the brewery, like all breweries in Austria’s Brau Union group (the country’s biggest beer conglomerate), is renewable.

Such ambitions may be more realizable and at a larger scale in a European context – where, for example, Austria is aiming for energy self-sufficiency by 2050 thanks to its extensive wind and hydropower. But Canadian breweries are making strides as well. One major shift here is towards local production.

When Steve Abrams, co-founder of Mill Street Brewery, decided to launch Ontario’s first organic beer in 2002, he had to import his organic hops from New Zealand and his organic malt from Germany, a painful contradiction for a local craft brewer. In the absence of a Canadian standard, he also had to turn to the U.S. Department of Agriculture for organic certification.

Twelve years later, Mill Street’s organic ale (one of the brewery’s more than 40 beers) accounts for 60 per cent of the company’s sales. The brewery is now one of over 30 craft breweries in Ontario and Abrams is able to source all his ingredients within the province.

Hops on the ups

The boom in craft breweries has, among other things, brought hops back to Ontario following a dry spell that Ontario Hop Growers’ Association vice-president Hugh Brown believes dates back to prohibition. Founded four years ago, his association now comprises roughly 30 commercial hops growers, up from “next to none” five years ago.

Most are producing organically and on a small scale but Brown believes that, given the high local demand, bigger commercial players are soon to enter the market. He sees Ontario’s beer industry undergoing what the province’s wine industry went through a decade ago – a move towards estate production, with ingredients being grown and processed on site, a situation where sustainable practice takes on greater immediacy.

Crannóg Ales, founded in 2000 in British Columbia’s interior, is one such on-farm brewery and the first in Canada to get organic certification. Crannóg brews 1.5 million litres annually: “minuscule” in the words of its co-founder Rebecca Kneen (craft brewery is anything below 40 million litres). For Kneen, who grew up on a farm, it “only made sense” to farm and brew on site. Crannóg grows its own organic hops, propagates its own yeasts, draws its own spring water and has its Prairie barley malted by a local maltster. All spent grains and waste water are used on the farm.

Having found no solar or wind systems practical for its scale of operation, Crannóg’s solution has been to keep its energy needs low by eliminating two of the most energy-intensive processes in beer-making: thermal pasteurization and bottling.

“Why spend so much attention on the ingredients if we’re just going to filter out the goodness and flavour?” asks Kneen. Being non-pasteurized, the beer can’t be sold through the liquor board, but Crannóg has a cult following locally and nobody complains that the beer is only available in kegs or “growlers” (which get cleaned and reused rather than recycled) or that it has to be stored cold because it’s “alive.”

Breaking tradition

Crannóg harbours no dreams of expansion beyond the B.C. border: “One important piece of sustainability is being content at a place of sufficiency,” says Kneen. “Constant growth isn’t necessarily sustainable. When things go industrial, they also become invisible.”

Bill Redelmeier, owner of Southbrook Vineyards in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, is something of a kindred spirit in the world of wine. Southbrook boasts biodynamic, organic and Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certifications – making it unique in Canada.

Biodynamic takes organic farming to another level. Redelmeier, a third-generation farmer, dispenses with fungicides and pesticides, raises sheep for their manure and cultivates wild yeasts and moulds “right out of the sheep’s rear end.” He considers the difference between conventional and organic farming to be one of degree, whereas biodynamic farming is more one of kind. By tolerating low levels of infection in the vineyard, the grapes cultivate thick skins rich in tannins and bio-flavonoids and by using wild yeasts, fermentation takes longer and occurs in unique succession. “It’s the difference between a note and a chord,” he says referring to the taste, adding that Ontario’s two biodynamic wineries take home more than their share of national awards every year.

Redelmeier would like to see far more organic vineyards in Ontario, but understands that risk and expense are real obstacles for most grape growers. Organic vineyards typically yield less than half that of conventional ones and they’re more vulnerable to blights and weather irregularities. When taking the leap to organic, growers often look for advance purchasing commitments from wineries to protect themselves financially.

Nor is it universally agreed that organic is better. J-L Groux, winemaker at Stratus Vineyards, just down the road from Southbrook in Niagara-on-the-Lake, argues that organic doesn’t always correlate with quality or sustainability. Originally from the French Loire with wine-making experience on both continents, Groux talks about the downsides of organic production. Grapes need to be sprayed more often, he says, and that requires more fuel. There’s also the need to occasionally pick grapes prematurely to avoid disease, and in the past, organic sprays such as copper and sulphur have taken a toll on soils.

While not organic, Stratus believes deeply in sustainability, which Groux calls “the overall picture.” The winery, built in 2005, was the first building in Canada and the first winery in the world to get LEED certification – a distinction that applies to both its construction and ongoing operation. Groux talks about a “gentle on the earth” approach – which, along with no use of herbicides, includes largely natural pesticides, compost fertilizers, electro-magnetic sprayers rather than irrigation, bio-fuelled tractors and labour-intensive production that uses gravity rather than pumps. Because the parcels adjacent to Stratus are less than 30 feet away and farmed conventionally, the vineyard is not eligible for organic certification. But even if it were, Groux wouldn’t subject his wines to that corset. For him, the young, experimental culture of winemaking in Canada is what makes it more exciting than in the tradition-bound old world.

Taste trumps

For many winemakers like Groux, the term “sustainable” implies virtues rather than restrictions. California’s Sonoma County is embracing it whole hog, aiming to become America’s first 100 per cent sustainable wine region by 2019. Wine has a long tradition in Sonoma, its vineyards dating back to the 1820s and many still in family hands; it’s also big business, accounting for 60 per cent of the county’s GDP and one in three jobs.

According to Karissa Kruse, president of the Sonoma County Winegrowers, the body behind the sustainability initiative, it seems a logical step to make sure winemaking is sustainable. “The marketplace is going this way,” says Kruse. And she’s right. In its 2014 Culinary Forecast, the U.S. National Restaurant Association cited sustainability as the top trend in food and beverage for the coming decade.

While the initiative is completely voluntary, Kruse says that all of Sonoma’s 1,800 grape growers and almost half its 450 winemakers have opted in. And it’s not just a marketing ploy – the region’s susceptibility to drought makes optimal canopy management, drip irrigation and frost protection vital to survival.

Sustainable breweries and wineries, while growing, still represent a small slice of the total market, a position that seems to foster a healthy mix of solidarity and fierce competition. To expand their market share, they have to work together; to distinguish themselves within the small pack, they have to be creative. This leads to wonderful spinoffs – like the glass jewelry made from Stratus’ bottle shards or the blankets woven from Southbrook’s sheep clip – and community collaborations like Mill Street’s partnership with Earth Day Canada, or eastern Ontario craft brewer Beau’s hiring of homeless youth to drive its delivery vans.

But ultimately, it’s taste buds that drive the market. As Mill Street’s Abrams says, “Our research shows that flavour is the single biggest factor for consumers. The fact that it’s organic is nice but for the vast majority it’s not the number one reason to buy.

The post Organic beer is greener beer appeared first on Corporate Knights.

The federally funded agency, established in 2001, has been at the heart of the country’s clean technology sector for the past decade. During that time – and over 22 funding rounds – it has awarded about $600 million in grants to nearly 250 cleantech projects, tackling everything from crop protection and clean transportation to experimental wind technology and nuclear fusion.

But that’s just scratching the surface. For every $1 SDTC commits, the recipient company has to raise another $2.20 from project consortium partners. This has resulted in another $1.6 billion of mostly private capital flowing to Canadian cleantech companies.

Total impact: $2.2 billion. That funding has helped carry cleantech ventures through the dreaded “valley of death,” an industry term referring to the challenge of bringing a new innovation to market at a time when a company is struggling with negative cash flow.

In recent years, the SDTC team has worked to make the agency more accessible. With every funding round it now travels across Canada, visiting a dozen cities over a three-week period and typically engaging 800 to 1,000 potential applicants. From that pool of innovation, up to 120 serious project pitches are submitted, at which point SDTC winnows them down to a short list of between 35 and 40.

It doesn’t stop there. Those three dozen or so lucky companies are invited to submit detailed project proposals, and once received, SDTC staff spend the next two months doing their due diligence. Roughly half of those projects are then selected for review by the agency’s investment committee, which has the task of picking up to 15 projects that will be offered funding. Over the past 10 years, SDTC has reviewed more than 2,400 pitches.

Complementing this process is a new virtual incubator program, started by the agency last year. “Over the years, we noticed that we were turning away companies that had a promising technology but were missing other vital components such as industry partners or business planning,” explains SDTC spokesman Patrice Breton. “Through the incubator we are working with companies earlier, introducing them to industry and financing partners. The incubator acts as a feeder to the application process.”

Up until early this year it was thought SDTC was on its last legs as a funder of new projects, as its pool of public money had nearly run dry. But in March the federal government re-funded the agency with $325 million and a new eight-year mandate.

That mandate included a much bigger push for commercialization of the technologies SDTC was funding. To that end, the government made the surprise announcement in June that Jim Balsillie, co-founder and a former chief executive of BlackBerry (Research In Motion), would be joining SDTC as its new chairman.

As a former technology reporter for two of Canada’s biggest newspapers, I have known Balsillie for more than a decade, both his hockey-loving philanthropic side and his driven, self-assured and headstrong approach to doing business side.

I watched him build Waterloo, Ontario-based BlackBerry from a company with a dozen employees into a global enterprise of 18,000 workers with a world-leading smart phone product used addictively by leaders of business and government, including President Barack Obama.

BlackBerry has since fallen from its high perch, and with that decline came Balsillie’s resignation from the company early last year. When it was revealed he was taking on the role of chairman at SDTC, it made some sense. He served as private sector representative on the United Nations’ High-Level Panel on Global Sustainability, and is founder of the Centre for International Governance Innovation, a Waterloo-based institute that considers “energy and environment” as one of its four key research mandates.

He’s concerned about humanity’s footprint on the planet, but he’s also interested in the technologies that will help shrink it. In 2010, while I was writing my book on clean energy innovation, Mad Like Tesla, Balsillie made time in his busy schedule to read an early draft and offer feedback.

Mind you, he still has a lot to learn about clean technology and SDTC. “I’ve been drinking from the fire hose,” he says of the past few months since his appointment. “I thought I knew what they were doing but realized they are doing much more.”

Corporate Knights had a chance to chat with Balsillie about his new position and what he has to offer:

CK: What attracted you to this position?

BALSILLIE: I value the mandate of SDTC. They’re crucial as a platform for supporting commercialization of Canadian sustainable technology. They have a very valuable and ambitious role to play. If it’s done right, they have an enormous potential for positive impact. Narrowing it more personally, it allows me to further my knowledge and networks after I served on the UN high-level panel for sustainability, so I’m keen on learning and leveraging what I’ve done.

CK: And does this drive your interest in clean technology itself?

BALSILLIE: I’ve always had a passion for transformative technology since a very young age. And I’ve always believed from the very early days of tech that it has the power to disrupt the status quo. That’s the stuff that intrigues me the most. As for the application to cleantech, that’s a rapidly emerging aspect of technology generally.

CK: There are pretty heavy issues we have to address right now as a species. What’s the biggest problem as you see it?

BALSILLIE: What interests me personally is our relationship with energy, domestically and globally. Energy consumption is just growing with GDP around the world. How do we grapple with the energy question, and the energy-natural capital scarcity nexus? Seeing the oil sands, you see a tremendous amount of innovativeness, a tremendous amount of energy resources ready to use, and you also realize that we live in a world where we have to ask, what is the carrying capacity of a planet and how do you manage this nexus? What’s the carrying capacity of carbon in the atmosphere and how does that complex system work? And what are the feedback loops? Nobody knows for sure. So I think the capacity of innovation to move us forward is a powerful part of the answer. Is it a complete answer? Probably not. There are aspects of policy that have to go with that.

CK: As a funding mechanism for advancing clean technology, what makes SDTC effective?

BALSILLIE: The focus of the organization is to be really engaged, flexible, adaptable and collaborative. Their critical role is to ensure cleantech is a commercial success in Canada. If you’re not fitting to the market you’re going to be sorry. So I think their focus is right. There’s no rigid dogma about them.

CK: Is their approach, and the core capacity they have built, something that could benefit other countries?

BALSILLIE: Absolutely. The team runs very well, so as far as extending this kind of approach globally for other countries to mimic, this is a pretty good model from what I can tell.

CK: You mentioned earlier that it’s pretty easy to get enthusiastic about the role of clean technology once you start reading through all the business plans that flow through SDTC. Does that create a sense of optimism for you?

BALSILLIE: Human beings need hope. It’s a precondition of thriving. We need hope and we need aspiration, whether it’s Elpis in Greek mythology or the second coming in Christian mythology. Hope is a precondition for cultural advancement. It propels us forward. So yes, it’s easy to get excited by these companies and easy to get optimistic, and I think that’s a very constructive aspect of the answer.

CK: What do you feel you can bring to SDTC to help it achieve its goals?

BALSILLIE: The number one issue for the sector, for companies, for the government, is commercialization and expanding globally. This has to be about jobs and sales. The part that I think I can help with is this whole aspect of supporting Canadian companies to scale up. Having done that (with BlackBerry) and gone around the world and seen the opportunities, that’s one particular reason they approached me. Really, tech is tech. Understanding the basic design aspects of a business and commercialization opportunities and engagement strategies, that’s where I can help.

CK: As a bit of a cleantech nerd myself, I’m somewhat envious that you get to see all of the business plans and project proposals that flow through SDTC.

BALSILLIE: [Laughs] I want to learn. I want to learn about these companies. I want to learn about these business plans. I mean, I like to help, but I want to learn. I’m not surprised you’re envious.

The post The Balsillie boost appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Yet there are so many barriers that prevent new, potentially world-changing innovations from becoming successful commercial products. As Rick Whittaker, vice-president of investments at Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC), a federal agency that funds new cleantech innovations, once told me, “It’s a surprise some people ever start.”

So when I sat down last September with Jeff Golfman, president of Winnipeg-based Prairie Paper Ventures, I was predisposed to helping. Golfman has spent the past 15 years developing quality paper made from wheat straw (see page 55). His goal is to create an affordable product with very low environmental impact that is 100 per cent tree-free. It would complement existing recycled paper products on the market and help take pressure off the world’s old-growth forests.

So far, Prairie Paper has reached 80 per cent straw content in copy paper that began selling last year at Staples Canada and later through Staples USA. Now, the company wants to come to market with large-format paper that can be used for publishing books, reports and – that’s right – magazines.

If Golfman (whose business partner is actor Woody Harrelson) can build enough demand in North America, he can justify moving ahead with the straw pulp and paper mill he wants to build in Manitoba.

A big hurdle entrepreneurs face has to do with the unwillingness of prospective buyers to take a chance on a new technology or product that lacks a track record, no matter how impressive that product appears. The reason is understandable, as it’s difficult to say for sure if its use will void warranties, put existing equipment at risk, raise a red flag with insurers, or flop with customers. Sometimes, embracing something new requires a retooling of manufacturing systems or reworking of business processes.

That can be costly and risky, so for many the question asked is: If I don’t really have to do it, then why bother? Lacking customers willing to take even modest risks, a company has a difficult time establishing a track record. Without a track record, the risk is perceived to be greater. It’s a classic catch-22.

When Corporate Knights decided to partner up with Prairie Paper to produce this special edition, it was our intent to help build a track record for its large-format product, called Step Forward Professional Grade. We wanted to show others that there is no real risk to using this paper on conventional web roll or sheet-fed presses and other high-speed, mechanical equipment used in the commercial printing industry.

One worry about using straw as an ingredient in paper production is that it has shorter fibres compared to wood fibre. Generally speaking, the longer the fibres the greater the tensile strength of the paper. While not as much a concern for copy paper, it becomes a more important consideration when large rolls are run through high-speed presses. This puts a lot of stress on the paper, and if a roll tears midway during the printing process it can cause damage to expensive pieces of equipment.

It’s why commercial printers are cautious when it comes to using paper made from non-wood fibres. Indeed, Corporate Knights spent considerable time trying to find a printer that was comfortable enough with this project, and it wasn’t until we were introduced to David Podmayersky, sustainability director at New Jersey-based EarthColor, that we knew we’d found the right printing partner.

“I know we can make it happen,” was the comforting comment I frequently heard during my discussions with Podmayersky.

Other partners joined the effort. SDTC, an early funder of Prairie Paper, saw the value of this project immediately and was first to lend its support. So, too, did Staples Canada, which considered this a natural extension of its current sustainability initiatives.

The Globe and Mail, which has distributed Corporate Knights as an insert for more than a decade, was also keen to learn about this new folio. As Canada’s national newspaper, it is committed to making sustainable paper choices and as a partner it is helping to spread the word.

And providing us valuable guidance from the start has been Canopy, an environmental not-for-profit that has spent nearly a decade pushing corporations to adopt sustainable paper purchasing practices.

The result of our yearlong project is what most of you are holding in your hand. I say “most” because a good number will be reading the online or digital mobile version of this issue. You can’t get any greener than that. Still, paper use continues to grow worldwide so solutions are needed to address the problem of deforestation.

This special edition was printed on paper made from 60 per cent wheat straw waste. Thanks to EarthColor, the energy that went into printing this issue is carbon neutral and there are low or no volatile organic compounds in the inks we used.

It’s an experiment that needed to be done, and we believe this issue is a North American first of many more to come. We’re proud here at Corporate Knights to have played our part in making it happen

The post The first straw appeared first on Corporate Knights.

World-famous for pioneering these systems in the 1970s, the company Netafim recently won the prestigious 2013 Stockholm Industry Water Award, proving that where need is great, entrepreneurs flourish.

Inspired by the global success of homegrown technology – Netafim began in a humble kibbutz – and the Start-up Nation culture, Israel’s entrepreneurs continue to make waves in the international water scene. As part of the lead-up to WATEC Israel 2013 in October, the country’s biannual water technology conference, the Israel Export and International Cooperation Institute invited a group of journalists to meet some of these budding businesses.

One up-and-comer is SmarTap, founded five years ago by its young chief executive, Asaf Shaltiel, with the mission of creating the next generation of electronic faucets. The company’s e-cartridge technology allows building and home owners to program flow rate and temperature for shower taps and sink faucets, saving both water and energy. “You can set a profile to save money,” says Shaltiel, who adds that large multi-unit buildings such as hotels can see a one- to three-year return on investment. He has high hopes for the technology, setting his sights on entry into European, Asian and North American markets.

Water-Gen’s CEO, Arye Kohavi, has similar goals. During his days as a commander in Israel’s Special Forces, he saw that transporting heavy truckloads of water over long distances to thirsty troops was inefficient, costly and conspicuous. Not only was a better solution necessary, it was a matter of security.

You can think of Water-Gen’s solution as a high-performance dehumidifier. With a power source, these units can convert moisture from plain air into as much as 365 litres of potable water per day. They require few consumables (a replacement filter here and there) and have a minimal footprint. Most importantly, they’re difficult to sabotage – the fear of drinking poisoned water is not uncommon – because they produce water at the point of use.

Kohavi sees the potential for civilian applications, too, especially in dry and developing countries. He lists a number of current customers – Mexico, India, the U.S. Department of Defense – but adds a caveat: Water-Gen’s Arab customers won’t allow him to include their names in that list.

Israel and its neighbours might experience political and religious tension, but that doesn’t mean they don’t sometimes work together. To ease some of the strain of drought conditions, for instance, water-scarce Israel exports somewhere close to 150 million and 100 million cubic metres of water per year to Jordan and Palestine, respectively. “Beyond that, it’s cheaper to teach our neighbours to be independent,” says Abraham Tenne, chair of Israel’s Water Desalination Administration.

While Israel is indeed a hotbed for viable, efficient and affordable solutions that promote water independence, hostile Middle Eastern political dynamics complicate doing business with neighbours in need. According to some sources, if Israel and a neighbouring country don’t have an official trade agreement, businesses have to take the indirect route. Usually, that means selling technology to nearby customers through a Europe-based sister company or subsidiary.

“A lot of compelling technology coming out of Israel is being private-labelled or rebranded,” says Rick Stover, executive vice-president of Desalitech. Founded in Israel, the desalination technology company chose a different solution – to headquarter its business in Boston. Why? “Politics might be one reason, but it’s not the main one,” says Stover. “By establishing the company in the United States, we’re significantly expanding our market opportunities. There are great resources for executing our projects here.”

He makes a good point. When it comes to Israel’s water technology exports, the Israel Export and International Cooperation Institute says the lion’s share, about 35 per cent, is going to North America. Europe comes second at 30 per cent, while eastern Asia and Latin America each account for 15 per cent. The remaining 5 per cent includes, but is not limited to, the Middle East.

Stover says the Israel and Middle East markets for his solutions are fairly substantial, and Desalitech still has several projects shipping out of its Tel Aviv office. But for the most part, the company is choosing to serve the U.S. and Canadian industrial water markets with local contractors to save time and shipping costs.

In the end, however, it seems politics might not actually be an issue. “It’s hard to find a product that doesn’t include some element of Israeli innovation,” Stover says. Where there is need, there are entrepreneurs – but there are also customers.

The post An oasis in the desert appeared first on Corporate Knights.