Startup Canada will visit Calgary and Brampton for the final stops in their Startup Canada Tour, a five-city national in-person event series connecting early stage entrepreneurs with local support organizations and industry experts to drive their businesses forward.

Startup Canada Tour kicked off in Whitehorse on April 25, then travelled to connect with entrepreneurs in Halifax and Vancouver. In addition to the regional events bringing together a diverse group of early stage entrepreneurs with ecosystem support organizations, industry experts, and tools to aid in their growth and development, each stop also featured a ‘Pop-up’ Pitch Competition – an opportunity for local founders to compete for a $3,000 cash prize and a position in the Startup Global Pitch Competition Grand Finale in Brampton.

Championing Canadian founders and innovators

“During our first three Startup Canada Tour stops, we could hear directly from entrepreneurs about both the successes they’ve had and challenges they’ve faced in running their businesses over the last three years,” said Kayla Isabelle, CEO of Startup Canada. “At our Calgary and Brampton stops, we will be able to bring some of these stories to the forefront, highlighting areas where increased advocacy is needed from both the private and public sector to increase support for Canadian founders.” 

The final legs of the Tour will take place in Calgary on Thursday, September 28, at the BMO Centre at Stampede Park, and in Brampton on Thursday, October 26, at The Rose Brampton. The Brampton stop will be hosted in-person and virtually, allowing entrepreneurs nationwide to attend all workshops, panels, keynote presentations, and the Startup Global Pitch Competition. 

Showcasing entrepreneurs on a national stage

During the 2023 Startup Global Pitch Competition Grand Finale in Brampton, ten entrepreneurs from across the country will present their businesses live on stage, compete for a cash prize pool of $70,000, and export support for launching their business internationally. Wild Card ‘Pop-up’ Pitches will also be held at the Calgary, and Brampton stops, offering a $3,000 cash prize and an automatic spot in the Grand Finale in October. Applications to pitch in Calgary or Brampton are now open at https://bit.ly/2023-global-pitch.

“It was great to connect with the local ecosystems that support startups. UPS was busy sharing our experience on and off the stage with the future of business in Canada and around the world,” says Paul Gaspar, director for small business at UPS Canada. “Entrepreneurship is very much alive and thriving across Canada, we’re thrilled to be a part of the tour not only to provide our expertise, but to learn from business leaders across the country.”

Startup Canada Tour is presented in partnership with UPS, with Air Canada as the exclusive airline partner, and with program support from BDC. The Tour is also presented with the help of our ecosystem partners, including Brampton Innovation District, Canada’s 2SLGBTQI+ Chamber of Commerce (CGLCC), Alberta Women Entrepreneurs, the Forum, Futurpreneur, Moneris, OWNR, Revolution HER, University of Waterloo, Women Entrepreneurship Knowledge Hub (WEKH), the Women’s Enterprise Organizations of Canada (WEOC), and media partner Media Planet. 

“It is an absolute honour for Air Canada to support Startup Canada’s remarkable mission,” says Idir Benkadoum, manager, B2B customer lifecycle at Air Canada. “By serving as their official airline, we have the privilege of enabling the entire team to travel across the country, empowering and celebrating the brilliance of Canadian startups and entrepreneurs.”

The post Startup Canada Bringing National Entrepreneurship Event Series to Calgary and Brampton appeared first on HiveInnovates.

From climate change to health care, the challenges we face require innovative new coalitions.

Imagine being able to repair damaged organs by printing replacement human tissues. In November, scientists at Toronto’s McEwen Stem Cell Institute announced a partnership to do just that. Working with Aspect Biosystems, a Vancouver biotech company, they’re developing a way to “bioprint” functional tissues that could eventually be implanted into patients to treat liver disease.

It’s a milestone for Medicine by Design, a University of Toronto organization that aims to accelerate progress in regenerative medicine by cross-pollinating ideas among academia, health care institutions, and industry. Using an approach based on a design studio, it brings multidisciplinary teams together to collaborate freely. Medicine by Design has been instrumental in charting the first-ever map of the liver at the cellular level and is now playing a leading role in the Human Cell Atlas, an international effort to map every cell in the human body. 

There’s a growing realization that technical advancements can only go so far when it comes to tackling complex issues like providing health care to an aging population, dealing with climate change, and addressing inequality. The biggest hurdles lie in getting new innovations into widespread use — this is something that only collaboration among government, academia and industry can solve. 

This is how the Centre for Commercialization of Regenerative Medicine is working to bridge the commercialization gap for cell and gene therapies. Its team focuses on key bottlenecks to accelerate the translation of scientific discovery into marketable products for patients. 

And that’s the approach we’re taking at my own organization, where we launched Mission from MaRS to support ten scaling businesses that we believe can be Canada’s climate champions. These include StormFisher, which turns organic waste into biogas and fertilizers, and Flash Forest, which is on track to use drones to plant one billion trees by 2028. Mission from MaRS has curated teams of experts to troubleshoot the issues these businesses cannot solve alone: outdated regulations, overly risk-averse investors or cumbersome government procurement processes. With more than 50 industry experts from such organizations as OMERS, Maple Leaf Foods, RBC, KPMG, and Shopify, the coalitions are working to clear stumbling blocks from the cleantech companies’ routes to market so they can start mitigating climate change at scale.     

Will it work? The early signs are promising. In December, Mission from MaRS signed an accelerated procurement process with the City of Toronto, which will support Canadian innovation and help Canada’s largest city reach its net-zero targets. 

Canada also has a solid track record of creating winning partnerships to build on. MaRS IAF, which started as an experiment in combining government seed funding with a management team of venture capitalists, has become one of Canada’s most active seed-stage investment funds. Since 2008, it has supported 175 ventures, leading to $1.7 billion in follow-on funding and more than 5,500 new jobs. MaRS IAF combines a government mandate with a private-sector mindset and is housed in a non-profit organization. That unique perspective has helped it nurture such standout companies as Mindbridge, ACTO, and Nicoya. Based on that success, this January it spun out Graphite Ventures, a new $100-million investment fund that will be able to write even bigger cheques to support promising ventures. 

One of the unfortunate side effects of tech’s growth in recent years has been a myopic focus on individual founders with big egos — successful and brilliant in their own right, but imperfect when it comes to creating a repeatable playbook. As the innovation economy matures, it’s clear that ecosystems are a far better foundation and catalyst from which to create repeatable success. Building coalitions and forging partnerships may lack the glamour of playing by your own rules, but it is more effective at creating lasting change. Truly impactful innovation is a team sport. 

This article was supported by MaRS Discovery District.

The post New Alliances Emerge to Tackle Tough Problems appeared first on HiveInnovates.

The first generation of quantum devices, among them lasers and semiconductor-based transistors, brought on a technological revolution in the early 2000s and transformed society forever.

The first generation of quantum devices, among them lasers and semiconductor-based transistors, brought on a technological revolution in the early 2000s and transformed society forever. Today, a new generation of quantum technology is emerging that will help make the world an even safer, faster, and more productive place.

New quantum sensors will be among the first quantum technologies to market. Their precision and sensitivity will help peer into the tiniest features of the world more deeply than anything before. These sensing technologies will hold the promise of helping to solve disease, will build resilience against cyber attacks, and help secure the Internet of Things.

Under the National Research Council of Canada’s (NRC) Internet of Things: Quantum Sensors Challenge program, top quantum scientists at the NRC and the University of Waterloo (uWaterloo) are collaborating to develop such disruptive sensors and make them a reality. This means getting them out of the lab and into the field for testing, and eventually adapting them for daily use.

The joint research teams are harnessing the extreme sensitivity of quantum systems to make these super-delicate, fragile sensors robust and compact — and build them into chips to be used in all our smart devices.

Many of these collaborative projects will create enabling technologies, such as new methods for transporting information that is encoded in photons into solid-state spins. This will help enable delicate networks of quantum sensors and other next-generation quantum applications.

The collaboration brings together the NRC’s quantum photonics talent and facilities for building state-of-the-art integrated optics with the researchers, post-doctoral fellows, and students of the uWaterloo’s Institute for Quantum Computing.  

Canadians will begin seeing these sensors in action in the very near future. In health care, they might drive new imaging capabilities for studying eye disorders or measuring brain activity. On the road or the battlefield, LiDAR systems, like those in self-driving vehicles, will use photons to measure position and velocity more precisely with less light needed. And in mining, sensors could detect new underground mineral deposits.

Together, our researchers will engineer the next-generation quantum sensors.

This article was supported by the National Research Council of Canada.

The post National Research Council of Canada and the University of Waterloo to Engineer Next-Generation Quantum Sensors appeared first on HiveInnovates.

John Luszczek

Business Opportunities Leader, Ericsson Ottawa

The Ericsson-Carleton University Strategic Partnership for Research, Talent Development, and Leadership in Wireless Networks is a strategic collaboration amplifying the strengths of industry and academia.

The best partnerships are ones where each partner amplifies the strengths of the other, bringing out the best in each other and adding up to more than the sum of their parts. That’s certainly the case with the Ericsson-Carleton University Partnership for Research and Leadership in Wireless Networks, which has been going strong for two years now, with exciting results. The innovative collaboration shows the amazing things that can happen when industry and academia work together.

The benefits of collaboration 

The Ericsson-Carleton University Partnership for Research and Leadership in Wireless Networks is a collaborative effort to drive innovation, train skilled workers, and build more reliable, secure technology for the future of 5G wireless communications. 

“Ericsson Ottawa is a strategic research and development site for Ericsson in North America. We are the largest Ericsson 5G R&D centre in North America,” says John Luszczek, Business Opportunities Leader at Ericsson Ottawa. “Carleton University has an excellent academic program, including engineering and computer sciences, and is known as a leader in research. With our collaboration, we’re delivering hands-on experiential learning to help build student skills so they’re ready to meet industry needs as well as defining industry challenges so we can solve them through academic research. This is a perfect equation of having a ‘one plus one equals three’ collaboration, where we’re really seeing benefits that singularly wouldn’t have as much impact as the addition of the two.” 

It’s an innovative step that aims to attract top-notch students. The idea is to find the best of the best both nationally and internationally, and to attract them here and bring them into close contact and collaboration with Ericsson.

Focusing on talent development and research 

The strategic collaboration consists of research projects, the Ericsson Fellowship program, the 5G Wireless Laboratory, the development of a 5G Networks course, and the Ericsson Research Chair. 

John Lambadaris is the Chancellor’s Professor and Ericsson Chair in 5G Wireless Research at Carleton University. He has been active in the field for over 25 years and has collaborated extensively with the high-tech industry. “My area of research is performance analysis of data and communication networks,” he says. “My research started in areas like network traffic modelling and performance analysis of architecture for next-generation internet. These days I’m working in cloud computing, network visualization, big data, and 5G wireless networks.”

Lambadaris has collaborated with the team at Ericsson Ottawa for a decade, and is excited about their fruitful partnership. He notes that the partnership’s primary goals are advanced research and training highly-qualified personnel. “We introduced the Fellowship program for that second reason,” he says. “It’s an innovative step that aims to attract top-notch students. The idea is to find the best of the best both nationally and internationally, and to attract them here and bring them into close contact and collaboration with Ericsson.”

“This partnership is impacting society overall because we’re really looking at driving innovation in Canada,” says Luszczek. “We’re building a skilled workforce through our academic programs and research, and at the end of this we’ll be able to take advantage of this technology we’ve developed for the future in mobile communication solutions.”

The post The Power of Innovative Partnerships: When One Plus One Equals Three appeared first on HiveInnovates.

Jamie Bakos

President & CEO, Titan

Dr. Robin Smith

Academic Chair, SLICE, School of Natural Resources & Built Environment and School of Mining, Energy, & Manufacturing

Saskatchewan Polytechnic’s innovative new Sustainability-Led Integrated Centres of Excellence (SLICE) is empowering a better Saskatchewan.

Saskatchewan Polytechnic (Sask Polytech) engages in applied research, drawing on faculty expertise to support innovation by employers and providing students the opportunity to develop critical thinking skills. The institution’s new Sustainability-Led Integrated Centre of Excellence (SLICE) is an industry-centric, solution-oriented development and deployment centre that’s bringing sustainable development to Saskatchewan and Canada through local technology solutions with global application potential.

Turning waste into something useful 

“SLICE is a new Sask Polytech applied research centre advancing sustainable resource management with a full life-cycle lens approach,” says Dr. Robin Smith, Academic Chair of Applied Research Operations at SLICE. “Our focus is on key sectors of Saskatchewan’s economy including energy resources, manufacturing, agriculture, and forestry. SLICE is really about delivering solutions to applied research partners in support of a circular, bio-based economy.” 

The circular economy prioritizes reusing, recycling, and upcycling of materials and resources to minimize waste and promote sustainability, and two of SLICE’s recent projects highlight innovations in the field.

The ecological soil reclamation project was undertaken after Sask Polytech was approached by Andrew Carpenter, a freelance Environmental Consultant and President of Reclaimit, a company focused on forest and land restoration.

“I was doing a soil reclamation project up in Northern Saskatchewan and it failed,” says Carpenter. “I realized that I’m not a researcher — I’m a practitioner. I needed some horsepower from the research end.”

Carpenter went looking for support and came upon Sask Polytech. Together, they’ve been exploring how to restore soil using biochar, a charcoal produced by the thermal decomposition of biomass. 

“Biochar is made from repurposed waste, so we’re taking a waste product that would end up in a landfill and repurposing it into solid carbon, which is now considered sequestered carbon, so we’re using sequestered carbon to help repair the soil,” says Carpenter. “It’s really cool.”

One of the benefits of partnering with SLICE is that it’s a single-entry point to multiple areas of expertise at Sask Polytech. Sustainability issues are complex and we recognize that through our collaborative approach.

Supporting a bio-based circular economy

Another exciting project being undertaken by SLICE is the Waste Not, Want Not project, which aims to develop a biocarbon masterbatch, a solid additive used to impart colour and other properties to plastics, that could replace traditional petroleum-based carbon black. This project is with Titan Clean Energy Projects.

“We’re working with Sask Polytech and looking at how we can use materials that might be considered waste from another segment of the economy to improve processes and cycle back into the system,” says Jamie Bakos, President and CEO of Titan. “In this case, we’re looking at developing a product that could assist in making compostable bioplastics. We have the potential to export this material worldwide.”

SLICE’s collaborative, integrated, transdisciplinary approach is focused on understanding the relationships required to address complex issues related to sustainability. “Our partners have access to exceptional facilities, faculty expertise, and an amazing pool of student talent,” says Smith. “One of the benefits of partnering with SLICE is that it’s a single-entry point to multiple areas of expertise at Sask Polytech. Sustainability issues are complex and we recognize that through our collaborative approach.”

The first step to learning what Sask Polytech and its applied research team of expert faculty can do for your business is reach out. “All it takes is a phone call or an email to get started,” says Dr. Susan Blum, associate Vice-President, Applied Research and Innovation. “We’ll work with you — whether you’re just starting out or in a large organization — to determine what you need to accomplish and how we can help you get there.”

The post Addressing Complex Sustainability Issues Head on with SLICE appeared first on HiveInnovates.

Could food “waste” be used in natural beauty products? What are the opportunities for horticulture in deep space exploration? What secrets does the genome hold for the future of farming? As industry becomes increasingly concerned with sustainable development, Loyalist College is working to answer these questions through applied research in the bioeconomy.

Over the last five years, Loyalist College has transformed itself into a destination for applied research, rooted in strong relationships with community and industry partners. Located in Belleville, Ont., between major producer markets in Toronto, Ottawa, and Kingston, the College has aligned its programming with the evolution of the local agriculture and manufacturing sectors as they pursue renewable resourcing — from vertical farming and sustainable building supplies to circular food economics and new cosmetic formulations.

“At Loyalist College, we are deeply connected to our industry and community partners and know that we have an important role to play in driving regional economic growth and development,” said Dr. Ann Marie Vaughan, President and CEO of Loyalist College. “The innovative partnerships and synergies we are developing across natural products and the bioeconomy will benefit regional employers while also providing Loyalist students with unparalleled work-integrated learning opportunities. It has been truly remarkable to see the many ways in which our students and employees are lending their talents to our growing network of partners and demonstrating how being small gives us the power to do big things.” 

Tapping into the regional innovation network

Loyalist College’s Applied Research and Innovation Office has launched a series of partnerships to bring new sustainable products and processes to market — driving a new generation of social and economic development in the process.

Case in point: Canadian natural beauty company Afiya Beauty hoped to address one of its customer’s top requests — an all-natural product that helps fade skin discolouration. Traditionally, skin care companies rely on harsh de-pigmenting agents to treat dark spots. Afiya worked with Loyalist College and GreenCentre Canada, dynamic partners in applied research and industry, for formulation expertise. Afiya is now testing and formulating new products to create a de-pigmenting cream that meets customer demands and matches its all-natural ethos.

At Loyalist College, we are deeply connected to our industry and community partners and know that we have an important role to play in driving regional economic growth and development.

Leveraging each other’s expertise

With its mission to support sustainable chemistry and advanced material startups, GreenCentre Canada is the perfect ally for the College. Together, their focus is offering support for small- and medium-sized enterprises and multinationals who wish to transform their products, processes, and services. 

“The idea is to enhance the service offerings that Loyalist College and GreenCentre have to support companies that are developing new sustainable technologies, specifically in the bioproducts sector,” says Fatme Dahcheh, GreenCentre Canada’s Director of Business Development.

Alongside GreenCentre Canada, Loyalist College’s Centre for Natural Products and Medical Cannabis have used GreenCentre Canada’s CONNECT program to help seven companies grow and develop their technologies and products.

“Loyalist College has been fantastic to work with,” says Dahcheh. “Both organizations want to support innovative companies who are developing sustainable technologies, so we’re able to really leverage each other’s expertise and funding opportunities.”

Launching big ideas locally and beyond

Nowhere is this opportunity to connect local strengths with global challenges more evident than in Loyalist’s innovative new partnership with Ontario Genomics and Canadore College, which will mobilize DNA information to create advances in natural product development and research.

“Loyalist College is a very avant-garde college,” says Bettina Hamelin, President and CEO of Ontario Genomics. “We’ve been working with Loyalist and Canadore to unify genomics-based applied research, education, and training across the province. Loyalist is really working at the forefront of these emerging and game-changing technologies.”

As with all the College’s applied research partnerships, the goal is to help drive industry evolution while providing students with exceptional work-integrated learning experiences. 

Students in programs including Culinary Skills and Management, Cannabis Applied Science, Horticulture, and more can help solve real-world problems that small businesses are grappling with.

At the intersection of industry demand and research potential, these “local to global” partnerships represent the key to how Loyalist College is unlocking the future of Canada’s bioeconomy. 

The post Loyalist Leads the Way in Fostering Innovative Bioeconomy Partnerships appeared first on HiveInnovates.

In Canada’s saturated BNPL ecosystem, Zip stands out by putting customers at the centre and helping retailers increase conversions.

Consumer financing tools like Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) have traditionally been a way to help customers fit purchases into their budget and for retailers to boost their sales. “What’s new is the digital aspect which lets people get the approval and do the purchase instantly through their phone,” says Steve Croth, Managing Director in Canada for Zip, a payments and consumer financing firm founded in Australia eight years ago that recently expanded into Canada. 

Providing a superior experience 

Using Zip’s BNPL technology purchasers can break a payment into four equal interest-free instalments spaced two weeks apart. “It kind of hits the sweet spot of that millennial shopper who doesn’t have a credit card or doesn’t want to use one because of the high fees, but is comfortable using a phone or shopping online,” says Croth.

With a consistently high Net Promotor Score (NPS), Zip is managing to not only satisfy but also delight its customers, something Croth attributes to three core pillars of its market approach — an obsession with customer experience, a customer-first mindset, and constant measurement. 

“Keeping customers delighted really starts with the experience, so ours includes an easy-to-use product that provides a frictionless transaction backed up by great customer support, with no late fees or penalties,” says Croth. 

Zip’s customer-first mindset views customers as brand ambassadors, rather than simply people transacting using the technology. “As brand ambassadors we know they’re going to go spread the word about us good or bad, so our customer-first mindset focuses on customer satisfaction, resolving their issues quickly, and being empathetic,” says Croth.  

Finally, the company constantly measures and monitors its customer feedback. “We dissect all the reviews and comments and use that data to improve our service model,” says Croth.

Helping retailers convert budding shoppers into repeat customers

These three core pillars are also integrated with Zip’s merchant experience. “It’s about being a steward of their brand by representing their brand values and upholding the highest standard in customer experience because their customers are our customers,” says Croth. 

The strong customer experience focus extends to helping retailers struggling with low customer conversion rates. “I find many e-commerce merchants tend to focus at the top of the funnel, but you need to focus at the bottom. It’s kind of like a leaky bucket. You need to plug the leaks first and our technology, tools and processes can give retailers certain efficiencies to do that and get people to successfully transact,” says Croth. 

With improved efficiencies, it’s easier for retailers to convert the casual shopper, the shopper on a tight budget or the shopper without a credit card. “We help retailers sell more stuff to more people by getting customers for them online, in-store, and in their sales funnel,” says Croth. The increased transaction volume in turn helps to improve the retailer’s efficiencies in key performance indicators like customer acquisition costs, return on marketing costs, and average order value. 

With about ten million users of its app in 14 markets, Zip services 82,000 retailers globally. “I think by having one of the best products in the market from an experience and technology perspective really lets us deliver on our promise to retailers to drive top line, increase order values, and improve conversion rates,” says Croth.

The post Superior Customer Experience Sets Zip Apart in the BNPL Space appeared first on HiveInnovates.

Anne Toner Fung

CEO, Innovation Guelph

A long-time leader in cleantech and sustainability, Guelph is transitioning to the circular economy. Here’s how Innovation Guelph is supporting that transition.

Cleantech innovation and sustainability are nothing new to the City of Guelph. “Guelph has always been a bit of a natural centre for cleantech activity,” says Anne Toner Fung, CEO, Innovation Guelph, a regional business incubator that helps to accelerate start-ups and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Guelph was one of the first North American Cities to develop a community energy plan (CEP) and there has long been a cluster of companies in the Guelph Wellington area that fall into the cleantech sector. They range from wastewater management firms to water quality companies to solar panel manufacturers.

More recently Guelph has seen increased activity around the circular economy – an economic model that aims to transform the linear “take, make, waste” paradigm to the circular one of “reduce, reuse, recycle” and further to include “reimagine and redesign.”

It started about three years ago at the intersection of the food sector and sustainability with a Smart Cities project to create a circular regional food economy in Guelph-Wellington. This project has now expanded to include broader environmental issues. “It’s no longer just around food waste and access to food, but sustainability and cleantech in general and it’s now tied to the post-COVID green economic recovery,” says Toner Fung.

Innovation Guelph offers funding, mentorship and education programs

Innovation Guelph has been supporting the cleantech ecosystem in and around Guelph for the past decade through funding, mentorship, and education programs. These programs range from supporting women-led businesses, to start-up mentorship, to project-based programs for more established SMEs.

As the city and county further embrace the circular economy, Innovation Guelph is expanding its programs to do likewise. Building on its experience and expertise as one of the program delivery partners for the Smart Cities “Our Food Future” initiative, Innovation Guelph is also contributing to its next stage: COIL (Circular Opportunities Innovation Launchpad). COIL is an innovation platform and activation network dedicated to advancing circularity in businesses and communities. Through COIL programs, companies have the opportunity to create, prove, and scale transformative solutions. “The vision for this is a user-centred open innovation eco-system which fosters the development of new businesses and collaborations that support regional circular economy,” says Christopher Coghlan, Program Manager, Circular Economy iHub & COIL Accelerators, at Innovation Guelph. One of COIL’s key programs, the Activate Circular Accelerator, for example, focuses on funding and accelerating innovative circular economy businesses working in the nexus of the food and environment sectors.   

Gaining momentum and attracting international attention

Both within Innovation Guelph and around the City of Guelph, the circular economy is gaining traction with broader initiatives taking place. “We’ve managed to garner the attention of some international players,” says Toner Fung. “One of the entities that provided curriculum for the Activate Circular Accelerator program was the University of Exeter in England, which is affiliated with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, a global group of thought leaders on the circular economy, so I’d say the momentum is fairly significant and we’re just a piece of it,” says Toner Fung.

In support of COIL, Innovation Guelph has engaged with circular economy accelerators and investment firms around the world, such as Closed Loop Partners in New York City, Tondo in Milan, and Circular Valley in Germany. “The work being done here is certainly attracting interest in organizations that are working in this space worldwide,” adds Coghlan.

The post Already a Hub for Cleantech, Guelph Now Leading Transition to Circular Economy appeared first on HiveInnovates.

Supporting clean technology is essential to the Government of Canada’s goals for promoting clean economic growth. The diverse nature of clean technologies across all sectors of the economy makes it difficult to define the sector as a whole and to coordinate all federal supports, but the Government of Canada is addressing these challenges.

Clean Growth Hub

The Clean Growth Hub is a whole-of-government focal point for clean technology, which helps clean tech stakeholders navigate Government of Canada programs and services, while ensuring a coordinated federal approach to clean growth.

The Hub understands that finding relevant funding and support for clean tech projects can be challenging due to the variety of programs, including funding, loans, wage subsidies, collaboration opportunities, tax credits and more. The Hub’s advisors from 16 federal departments and agencies help connect clean tech innovators, developers and adopters with government programs to advance their initiatives. Small and medium-sized enterprises make up the majority of the Hub’s clients, although large firms have also benefited from the Hub’s advisory services.

To help drive Canada’s transition to a more inclusive and resilient clean growth economy, the Hub has also launched an inclusion strategy and action plan, as well as a toolkit to help stakeholders apply for federal funding. The Hub is working to integrate reconciliation, equity, diversity and inclusion priorities to better understand and meet the needs of Indigenous peoples, women, and other groups under-represented in the clean tech sector. Applying for federal clean tech funding: a toolkit is a valuable resource that includes information about federal grants and contributions, as well as tips and links to help clean tech innovators and adopters apply for federal funding.

Clean Technology Data Strategy

The Clean Technology Data Strategy measures the economic, environmental, and social contributions of Canada’s clean technology sector. The strategy informs policy and program design, supports sector growth, and enables private sector decision-making. The clean tech data produced is also essential for understanding how aspects of the government’s environment and climate change agenda contribute to clean growth.

The strategy’s website provides an overview of contributions from environmental and clean tech sectors to Canada’s GDP, exports, and jobs by province. It also summarizes employment diversity data on the workforce profile in categories such as gender, age, wage, immigration status, education, occupation, and Indigenous participation. To facilitate greater dissemination of the data produced by this initiative, the website is updated with interactive dashboards, detailed analysis, and dates for upcoming and previous data releases.

The post Government of Canada Measures to Enable the Clean Tech Sector appeared first on HiveInnovates.

Ten years ago, during the dawn of the modern all-electric vehicle with the launch of the Nissan Leaf and Tesla Model S in quick succession, executives from both companies tacitly admitted that despite key EV advantages in smoothness, zero emissions, cost of fueling and even being able to remote start in one’s warm garage, there were also two extra challenges for battery electric vehicles (BEVs) in cold climates: driving range, and overall charging speeds.

These days, longer range batteries, quicker overall charging speeds and more plug-in vehicle options have helped to make winter driving much easier and a realistic option for many drivers, current EV owners and others. But many areas in Canada are still well behind in DC quick charging options, which help especially with those two winter issues.

Most automakers have now declared themselves committed to a zero emissions future for their vehicles, some more enthusiastically than others, prompted by countries such as Canada that have mandated such measures. This is slated to occur by 2035 in Canada, but as early as 2025 (or earlier) in Norway, the runaway global market leader in electric vehicle sales. With 64.2 percent of the entire new vehicle market in Norway consisting of BEVs in 2021 (roughly 92 percent of new vehicle sales if you include plug-in hybrids and hybrid sales to the end of November 2021), Norway is an oil-rich nation that should be a model for Canada that even countries with serious winter weather can embrace modern EV technology.

A study of the early Norwegian EV market found that installing public quick chargers helped increase the adoption of BEVs by roughly 200 percent over five years, by addressing the range issue in both urban and inter-city travel, with the addition of quick charging points every 50 km along major highways. And momentum seems to be building in this direction in Canada as well, after the provinces of Quebec and BC were also early to establish quick charging public networks in those provinces early on, helping to drive BEV adoption in those provinces, along with rebates and more recently ZEV mandates as well.

Electric vehicle drivers in Ontario were super excited to learn in early December that its popular network of ONroute highway stops would finally receive long-promised quick charging capabilities in 2022, as part of the Ivy Charging Network. Ivy is a joint venture between Hydro One and Ontario Power Generation (OPG), which will install and operate quick chargers of up to 150 kW speeds as early as the end of January, with 17 planned to be operational by the summer road trip season, and 20 by the end of 2022. These will cover some of the busiest stretches of highway on the continent, along the 401 and 400 north-south routes.

Such DC quick chargers will very much help with the inter-city travel that has traditionally been more of a challenge for EVs, especially in the winter, as will longer-range batteries and better thermal management systems in modern EVs. Where highway quick charging won’t help nearly as much is with urban drivers who don’t have access to a garage or a regular parking spot with overnight charging abilities.

It’s these drivers that would most benefit from more urban charging capabilities – as would all who work or live in cities, through lower pollution and climate-changing emissions. This could involve simple new 110-volt outlets in street lamps, more street-side Level 2 (240-volt) chargers, or more downtown DC quick charging (480 volts, or Level 3), such as Tesla offers with its Superchargers. 

The success of Tesla is undoubtedly in large part due to its Supercharger network, which is both urban and inter-urban, but unfortunately not nearly as built out in Canada as in the US. If Canada is to successfully reach its goal of all zero emissions consumer vehicles in Canada by 2035, with all the health and climate benefits, more charging commitments in all areas of the country are needed.

The post Canada Needs More DC Quick Charging, Especially in Winter appeared first on HiveInnovates.