Acre75 is a one-of-a-kind Canadian family-owned company. And it’s redefining what it means to shop local while enjoying the convenience of online shopping.

Acre75 is a one-of-a-kind Canadian family-owned company. And it’s redefining what it means to shop local while enjoying the convenience of online shopping. Located in Perth County, Ontario, Acre75’s online shop and subscription box service are stocked entirely with quality products made by makers in small communities with less than 30,000 population. Scrolling through the company’s product catalogue is like taking a small-town road trip across Canada. Acre75 is celebrating its fifth anniversary, so here are five reasons you’ll want to consider Acre75 for your next shopping experience.   

Convenience that makes you feel good supporting local 

More than 70 percent of Canadians have purchased goods or services online. While we like the convenience of shopping online, many of us also like the idea of supporting local businesses. Unlike most online shopping sites, Acre75 gives us both. And it has opened up a national audience for many local makers.

Quality products you’ll use

Acre75 sources high-quality products, ranging from home goods to all-natural bath and body products to gourmet food items and more. Locally made products are more valuable because of the amount of time and care that has gone into the making of these products, most of which are made by hand in small batches. These are the kinds of goods you’ll want to use and tell your friends about.

Businesses in small towns are the anchor of their communities. When you buy their products they can invest in their community, by supporting other local businesses, sponsoring local sports teams, arts clubs, and other civic groups.

You can be a difference maker

Businesses in small towns are the anchor of their communities. When you buy their products they can invest in their community, by supporting other local businesses, sponsoring local sports teams, arts clubs, and other civic groups. Income is recirculated, so when you support a small-town business, you’re also supporting an entire community. 

Feel good about supporting rural mental health

Acre75 founder, Virginia Ehrlich, is passionate about supporting mental health. Normalizing this conversation is especially important in small communities where there is limited access to mental health services and an increased sense of stigma around seeking mental health support. For that reason, one dollar from each Acre75 sale is donated to rural mental health awareness and initiatives. Over $4000 has been donated since January of 2020.

A subscription service you can’t wait to get

The majority of Acre75’s business is its popular and award-winning premium subscription box service, called Acre75 Gathered. A surprise of specially curated products from its stable of makers is sent to subscribers quarterly. Each box supports over six small-town Canadian businesses. There’s something special about knowing who made your product and where (even if you’ve never heard of that town before!) Included in each box is an information card describing the products and a fun fact about the communities they were made in. The boxes are delivered each season in June, September, December and March. Acre75 Gathered is a one-of-a-kind experience. You won’t find a subscription service that features only small-town Canadian makers anywhere else. 

“Acre75 is proof that no matter where you come from, even if it’s in the middle of nowhere, you can be successful. I’m looking forward to continuing to grow my little local corner of the internet over the next five years and beyond,” says Ehrlich.

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To a modern shopper, a paper label raises many questions. Danavation’s Digital Smart Labels are smart enough to provide answers.

What a strange time it is to be a retailer. Just a decade ago, with online shopping on a steep ascent, everywhere you looked it seemed there was another breathless article foretelling the death of brick-and-mortar retail. Soon, they proclaimed, we would buy everything on the web and never step foot in another actual store. Today, coming off two years of intermittent lockdowns, it’s clearer than ever that no one actually wants that. We crave the human connection, the social interaction, the simple sneakers to floorboards experience of in-person shopping.

At the same time, consumers have grown accustomed to the convenience, the personalization, the agility, and the flexibility of digital storefronts, so their expectations of the shopping experience have shifted and grown more discerning. And, in an era of aggressive online price-matching and personal financial uncertainty, they aren’t willing to compromise on the sticker either, putting pressure on the already thin margins of many stores. All this while the cost of labour is skyrocketing and retailers are still struggling to make up revenue lost during the pandemic.

In short, customers demand that the doors stay open and the prices stay low while the shopping journey undergoes a thorough digital transformation. Simple, right?

In fact, it can be.

Where we’re going, the old maps won’t take us 

Surely it would be too much to ask that a single unobtrusive technology could lay the foundation for a complete revamp of the retail experience, meeting all the expectations of the modern digital shopper without obstructing the charm (or hurting the bottom line) of even the coziest shop. Right? Well, let’s talk about Digital Smart Labels, the technology that strikes at the heart of retail’s hidden engagement problem.

The labels in the store, whether they’re price tags or sales announcements or in-store navigation aids, are the informational hooks of the retail voyage, and comparing Canadian innovator Danavation’s micro e-paper Digital Smart Labels to traditional labelling is like comparing a full-featured modern internet-enabled GPS navigation system to a torn and coffee-stained folding roadmap bought at a gas station in 1992. Either might get you there, if there aren’t any unexpected surprises, but one is going to have you in a very different mood when (and if) you arrive.

The way information is packaged and delivered matters. Danavation’s Digital Smart Labels ensure that prices are always accurate with instantaneous point-of-sale synchronizing. They create an environment where the right information can always be presented in the right place at the right moment. They provide a context-appropriate gateway to remote resources like product reviews, inventory updates, and loyalty programs. But it’s not just the content they display. To quote Marshall McLuhan for a moment, the Digital Smart Labels are the message. They tell the customer by their very presence that this is an environment where information is vibrant and reliable. This is a store they can engage with on their terms.

“Today’s customers are getting younger, smarter, and faster,” says Danavation’s founder and CEO John Ricci. “They rely a lot on technology, and they’re very sharp and price-sensitive. As a retailer, you have to find a way to impress and engage them.”

An engaged customer is an empowered consumer

The little things make a big difference. And, though most labels are small, they play an outsized role as conduits of information. Out of date flyers, incorrect prices, mislabelled shelves, missing product information. Any one of these things can break the flow of shopping and send the customer to their phone, or to another store. Digital Smart Labels remove all these stumbling blocks in one fell swoop, while simultaneously cutting costs by easing the workload of employees, shrinking the carbon footprint of the store, and increasing the agility of operations. And interactions that were once a point of frustration and uncertainty become an opportunity for engagement, right there at the shelf.

“Engage customers at the shelf and they will buy more,” notes Ricci. And that’s not a trick. It’s what people want. They have spent enough time in their homes, shopping online. They’re getting back out into the world and going into stores now very much on purpose. People are there to shop, to engage, to buy. They just want it to be easy.

Technologies like Digital Smart Labels make the little things easy, so that your business can focus on the big things. Because that’s where you shine.

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AI is already changing the world dramatically. It’s up to us to ensure that those changes benefit everyone on the planet — and that they benefit the planet itself.

As the information age flourishes into an era of ubiquitous AI, the potential for transformative technological change is boundless. We’re looking at a shift as profound as the Industrial Revolution, with human capabilities augmented by increasingly more intelligent machines. We live in a world that is being reinvented, and so a great responsibility rests on the shoulders of the inventors.

Artificial intelligence — the ability of machines to learn, reason, and react in ways that are similar to humans — is not new. The earliest AI systems were created decades ago, and they’ve been iterated and innovated upon ever since. Today, however, a confluence of factors (faster computing, widespread interconnectivity, and the availability of enormous datasets for training) is creating an environment where AI can truly thrive.

A huge opportunity — but for whom?

AI is shaping up to be the defining technology of our time and the transformation has already begun. There are a lot of big questions. Perhaps the biggest of all is: who benefits?

“As AI systems get more sophisticated and start to play a larger role in people’s lives, we must ensure the technology we create benefits everyone on the planet, as well as the planet itself,” says John Weigelt, National Technology Officer at Microsoft Canada. “There’s a huge opportunity to leverage AI for social good, to empower others in new and more impactful ways to help create a more sustainable, inclusive, and accessible world. A fundamental aspect of our AI for Good initiative is pairing the adoption of trusted best-in-class AI technology with dedicated groups from around the world to help solve some of the most challenging societal issues.”

As established leaders in the AI space, Microsoft has a solemn understanding of the responsibility shouldered by trailblazers. Across its five AI for Good initiatives — AI for Earth, AI for Accessibility, AI for Humanitarian Action, AI for Cultural Heritage, and AI for Health — it has invested $165 million over the course of five years, with the hopes that this investment will reverberate and expand into new initiatives and new investments.

There’s a huge opportunity to leverage AI for social good, to empower others in new and more impactful ways to help create a more sustainable, inclusive, and accessible world.

Business is just the beginning

So often we think of artificial intelligence as a tool of business, something to be used in pursuit of cost efficiency or marketing efficacy. But these same technologies are also compiling and preserving historical artifacts. They’re equally as effective at optimizing the distribution of aid in volatile areas of the world. And they’re indispensable in the creation of accurate and informative climate change models. The applications are endless and each one is a unique microcosm of the power and adaptability of AI.

In Northern Canada, Microsoft is working with the Government of Nunavut to preserve Indigenous languages and has added the Inuktitut text translation to Microsoft Translator. This addition will allow users to translate any of the more than 70 languages to or from Inuktitut, the primary dialect of the Inuktut language.

In British Columbia, BC Cancer is using machine learning to gather data on specific cancer types for drug pairings. “This highly effective method creates a lot of data,” explains Weigelt. “Recently, the lab moved most of its genome database to Microsoft Azure to gain the computational power, security, and compliance it needed to process the valuable data that will lead to cancer treatments and breakthroughs.”

Meanwhile, the City of Calgary and Evergreen are piloting AI for the Resilient City, an AI data visualization tool to help municipalities evaluate infrastructure for climate resiliency and mitigating the impacts of climate change. “One of the largest untapped potentials of AI is sustainability,” says Weigelt. “We know AI and the power of cloud computing will be key to reversing the impacts of climate change as they enable innovators to collect, process, and analyze data at a scale and speed that was previously unimaginable. This enables innovations like the Planetary Computer, a project that provides access to trillions of data points to the world to better understand the challenges faced in planetary health.”

And in Quebec, the City of Laval is transforming its 311 non-emergency response system with an AI virtual agent that’s expediting citizen-agent interactions and answering the more basic inquiries on its own. “By eliminating the clerical task of entering the request in the system, the virtual agent is reducing wait times,” says Weigelt. “It’s also allowing city employees to respond to complex requests sooner.”

Empower and augment

When innovation happens responsibly, as it is here, we don’t need to be afraid that AI will replace us. It can, instead, make us better. “At Microsoft, we’re focused on responsibly creating AI that will augment the workforce,” says Weigelt. “We view AI as a tool that will enable people to achieve greater productivity and growth — not stifle it. Advancements in AI will create new jobs that didn’t exist before, or that we didn’t even imagine could exist.”

The world today is facing incredible challenges, too large for any one individual, organization, or even nation to tackle alone. At the same time, we’re faced with a digital revolution poised to facilitate achievement and collaboration on an incredible scale. So, as we’re imagining the world transformed by artificial intelligence, let us have the courage to imagine it better. We’re on the cusp of an entirely new way of working, living, and being, empowered by technologies that can bring us together and make us more than we ever were before. The lengths of what we can achieve through this transfiguration are limited only by the standards to which we hold those leading the way.

The post The World Is Being Transformed by AI: We Get to Decide into What 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.

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As Canada electrifies its economy, solar is ready to rapidly transform underutilized spaces into distributed energy infrastructure.

Globally, solar power provides the lowest cost of energy in history. It is a mature, commercialized technology that is available today – no future breakthroughs or government grants required. Electrification is inevitable. Now is the time to elevate our clean energy standards in Canada. Solar is ready.

For businesses, solar is an opportunity to further monetize existing development assets. Solar is also a visible way to demonstrate corporate social responsibility and connect with clientele who share their sustainable values. Most investments in technology are deflationary. Solar is bankable. With a lifetime far longer than its return on investment, today’s solar drives the net cost of energy down, providing energy rates that are lower now, and for the next 30 years.

Solar power is highly adaptable, easily integrating into developed spaces. Unlike the construction of new centralized power plants, solar is rapidly installed anywhere, at any scale. As a distributed energy resource (DER), solar avoids the expense of long-distance transmission, producing electricity where it is needed. This decentralization of energy not only stabilizes energy costs, it minimizes urban sprawl by maximizing our use of space.

Solar transforms our cities

There is an abundance of urban space that is not being used to its full potential. Rooftops and parking lots are underutilized and can be made productive. Solar transforms them into distributed power plants. By empowering us to rethink how and where we generate electricity, solar is an essential ingredient in the energy mix for a cleaner, electrified future.

Rooftop solar installations built on existing structures have already enabled early adopters to generate up to 100 percent of their electricity and beyond, with many exporting surplus energy to the grid.

Solar canopies that cover parking lots provide benefits that go beyond power generation. They provide shelter from inclement weather, shade in summer, and snow cover in winter. It is infrastructure at human scale that enhances the urban experience.

Achieving Canada’s energy transition

In Canada, renewables generate 70 percent of our electricity. They are already major sources of our energy. Despite advancements in energy efficiency, our energy demand continues to grow, doubling in only 40 years. Distributed solar is one pillar in closing the gap to complete our energy transition, powering the electrification of transportation and heating.

Installing solar into urban spaces enables an agile, bottom-up response to transforming our energy infrastructure. Solar empowers communities and businesses to act now to fight climate change, drive down their long-term energy costs, and supply local economic returns. It is a new form of infrastructure that addresses rising capital costs and operating expenses.

Solar has the power to transform.

Innovative design

At VCT Group, we develop innovative solar products that productively transform space.

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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.

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What exactly is energy storage technology?

Energy storage technology captures energy produced and stores it for later use. Energy is stored through a variety of technologies including, but not limited to, pumped hydro, batteries, compressed air, hydrogen storage and thermal storage. The ability to store energy for later use allows increased regulation of the amount of power supplied to an energy system and contributes to the overall resilience of the power grid.

Why do we need energy storage?

Energy storage is flexible and can act as a generation, transmission, or distribution asset – sometimes in a single resource. Energy storage assets can augment any number of resources in an energy system. While energy storage is a great complement to the intermittent generation of renewable assets, it can also respond to fluctuations in grid demand, helping meet peaks in demand, and reducing the need for generators to increase production. Low-cost energy can be stored to supply the additional energy needed during these high-cost peaks, which in addition to increasing the energy available, reduces costs for consumers. Energy storage is also able to serve as a backup if power generation is interrupted, augmenting an energy system’s reliability and resilience, and helping to reduce the environmental impacts of increased energy demands.

How is energy storage useful on a grid scale?

Energy storage’s flexibility and its ability to complement existing systems, offer a range of benefits at the grid level. It improves the overall efficiency of the operation of the grid, helps meet high-cost demand during peak periods, and reduces grid congestion, which can cause damage to the grid. The ability to store this excess energy until it is needed also reduces the need to build additional power generation assets if existing transmission infrastructure may be hard-pressed to meet increases or changes in demand. Energy storage can solve this problem by storing the energy (possibly even sited near the generation source) and moving the energy to where it is needed prior to periods of congestion. Energy Storage also tends to gain less public opposition than more visible powerlines or other power generation projects.

What can we expect to see in terms of innovation in storage technology in the next 5-10 years?

Because energy storage tends to still be categorized as an “emerging technology,” an argument could be made that all energy storage technologies and applications are innovative. However, in the next five to ten years, as the costs of energy storage systems continue to decrease, it’s likely there will be a greater prevalence of all energy storage technologies. It’s possible in that time frame we might also see different battery storage chemistry, or different mechanical storage solutions, such as technologies harnessing kinetic or gravitational energy. Hydrogen storage options are also generating a lot of interest currently, which could present some interesting and innovative energy storage solutions in the coming years. Another area of interest that is ripe for innovation is long-duration energy storage (LDES), energy storage technologies that hold energy for longer periods of time, upwards of 24 hours or more. The great thing about energy storage in terms of innovation is that as ready as many technologies are to be incorporated into existing grids, the solutions today are just the beginning. It’s an area that is ripe for growth and innovation for a long time to come.

What actions have been taken by industry and government stakeholders to advance energy storage technologies in Canada? What more needs to be done?

The provinces in Canada that are ahead of the game (Ontario and Alberta) have taken steps to review existing legislation and regulation, in consultation with industry stakeholders, to identify barriers to the incorporation of energy storage and have started taking steps to remove those barriers. There continue to be conversations surrounding the timelines these provinces have laid out to fully enable energy storage, but they do have a plan or road map in place that provides a line of sight to advance energy storage in their jurisdiction. Other provinces could certainly look to these leading jurisdictions to support the development of similar road maps for their own provinces. In terms of the federal government, federal funding opportunities or guidance could be compelling levers to assist in that task. In terms of energy storage development for Canada, it’s less that more needs to be done and more that the processes being undertaken need to move faster because the energy storage industry is ready to meet the growing needs of Canada’s energy grids and to help Canada meet its net-zero goals!

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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.

The electrification of Canada’s transportation system is critical to achieving our net-zero ambitions. Meeting this goal of carbon neutrality will require multiple elements, including technology, finance, and services to be delivered and scaled at unprecedented levels in the coming decade. Private and public interests will need to come together to achieve a net-zero mobility future.

Here in Canada, global technology pioneer ABB is leading the way in the drive for clean mobility electrification and digitalization.

We have a moral obligation to turn this current situation into a better one for the planet and the future

Moving toward a net-zero future

Canada is on an ambitious path toward net-zero emissions. At the recent 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26), Canada committed to accelerating the phasing out of inefficient fossil fuel subsidies and to reaching net-zero emissions by 2050.

But are we equipped to tackle this goal?

We know that clean electrification would get us much of the way to net zero. Digitalization empowers everyday citizens to shift from traditional demand and consumption to prosumerism, or the increased involvement of customers in the production process — that is, both producing and consuming electricity, and even selling it back to the grid. And digital smart grid technology can be used to enable flexible demand.

Making electricity truly clean

The first challenge in making the transition to net-zero is making our electricity truly clean. By 2040, 90 percent of electricity must come from renewable sources. We’ve already made enormous progress, with 29 percent of electricity from renewable generation globally.

The second challenge is enabling our power grids to be able to manage that renewable energy. Today’s power grid wasn’t built for variable sources, so it can’t capture and use all of the renewable energy being produced. We’re wasting renewable energy, then using fossil fuels as backup when solar and wind are low. We can’t afford that.

Other challenges include addressing and accommodating the complexity of the modern grid and rising electricity demand, which will more than double by 2050. This will require doubling our infrastructure, or managing existing infrastructure more intelligently with smart grid technology.

The good news is that digitalization helps solve many of these issues in the grid. Smart grids connect supply and demand sites to make demand more flexible. They use artificial intelligence (AI) to shift user demand automatically in buildings and electric vehicles to times when energy from renewable sources is available, and also add capacity, by feeding energy back into the grid, when solar and wind are low.

E-mobility’s role in the transition

As we increase clean electrification through empowered demand and a shift to clean energy, one specific area that offers a lot of promise is e-mobility.

E-mobility — the use of electrified vehicles for transportation purposes — will be a key part of the transition to net-zero emissions. “The number one and two challenges in greenhouse gas emission for Canada are buildings and transportation,” says Eric Deschenes, Country Managing Director and Head of the Electrification Business for ABB Canada. “If we collectively have the political courage to tackle these two challenges, it would represent more than 50 percent of the whole undertaking. Political will is the first domino. It’s action on the governmental level that allows the second and third dominoes in the economy and in the community to fall. Technology is no longer the show-stopper here.”

An interconnected ecosystem

The political will is clearly materializing, but we need widespread collaboration. Moving toward clean electrification and e-mobility will require cooperation and action from an ecosystem consisting of government, the private sector, public citizens, industry, and everyday Canadians.

Companies like ABB are an integral part of that ecosystem. In the quest to lift up the entire energy ecosystem to a new, consistent, and sustainable level, events such as the ABB FIA Formula E auto racing championship, returning to Canada this year, are here to speed the transformation.

“ABB Formula E is more than just a race,” says Deschenes. “It’s a testbed and platform to develop e-mobility-relevant electrification and digitalization technologies all in the name of accelerating the transition of electrified transport.”

While these races are energizing the conversation around the electrification of mobility, they’re also directly driving the development of the infrastructure that supports that transition. To further strengthen ABB’s commitment to advancing e-mobility in Canada and to coincide with the return of the championship to a country so closely tied to ABB’s own e-mobility development, ABB Canada will be donating electric chargers to the City of Vancouver and will work closely with the city to determine which chargers will be provided based on Vancouver’s current needs.

“ABB FIA Formula E does more than just engage the local community and drive faster adoption,” says Deschenes. “Right after the Canadian E-Prix in Vancouver, next July, ABB Canada will leave behind more than $50,000 in charging infrastructure. This is in addition to everything Vancouver and British Columbia are doing.”

ABB leading the way

As Canada moves toward its net-zero emissions goal, ABB’s leadership is invaluable.

“I recognize that my generation runs the risk of receiving a planet in better condition than the one we’re leaving to the next generation,” says Deschenes. “We have a moral obligation to turn this current situation into a better one for the planet and the future.”

The time to act is now. We need to unite. What are you going to do?

The post The Race Is On: Accelerating a Sustainable Future for Canada appeared first on HiveInnovates.

As we transition into a green energy era, it’s time for Canada to redefine its role as a global energy leader. Abundant lithium resources position the country to be as ascendant in battery technology as we have historically been in fossil fuels.

More and more, the world is running on batteries. As technology continues to advance, as innovations like electric vehicles become more mainstream, and as electricity generation increasingly transitions to renewable energy, our dependence on batteries to power modern life is going to grow considerably.

Canada has built a place for itself in the world as an energy superpower, rich in both resources and expertise. In the years and decades to come, maintaining that position on the global stage is going to depend on our ability to be as groundbreaking in battery technology as we have been in oil, gas, and nuclear energy. Fortunately, Alberta’s natural wealth and enterprising spirit has us positioned to do just that.

Every roadmap to a cleaner and more electric future relies on our ability to store green energy for future use elsewhere. “Without an efficient way to make electricity mobile, a battery, it’s impossible to run society off electricity,” says Chris Doornbos, CEO of E3 Metals. “We have seen the world begin to shift to an electric future. Whatever the future source of energy is, you can’t get to an electrical society without a battery.”

These batteries won’t make themselves

Batteries, of course, are made from raw materials. And although there are many great battery designs out there, it’s the lithium battery market that drives the most ubiquitous and portable technologies from cell phones to electric vehicles and implanted medical devices. “Because of the energy density of the element lithium, it’s the most efficient metal on the periodic table for enabling the movement of electrons,” says Doornbos. “If you ask any chemist what would be the theoretical best tool to do the job of a battery, they would point to lithium.”

So where do we get our lithium from? Well, the good news is that it’s everywhere. The hard part is finding large enough sources where it can be extracted in an economically viable way. This is where Alberta’s Leduc Aquifer, the same place where the province’s oil legacy began in 1947, comes in. “Lithium is everywhere,” says Doornbos. “There is even lithium in seawater. But, then, there’s also gold in seawater. You have to be able to make an economic project work, and that requires a concentrated source of lithium and the ability to extract it. What we know about this aquifer in Alberta is that it can deliver large volumes of lithium-rich brine, which means we can make it happen.”

An entirely new industry

Lithium has not historically been produced in Alberta. In fact, E3 Metals had to advocate for regulations to be put in place, because the industry was non-existent and no regulatory body was empowered to oversee it. But now that the potential magnitude of this industry is becoming clear, people are beginning to pay attention.

“The total amount of lithium in Western Canada is truly remarkable,” says Doornbos. “Alberta as a whole is probably one of the largest sources of lithium globally. In the future, E3 Metals alone could produce over 150,000 tons of lithium a year. To give you an idea of where that fits in the global scheme, the biggest lithium producers today make about 80,000 tons. When this gets going, we could see lithium become a major contributor to Alberta’s GDP.”

Requiring a very familiar skillset

It’s a perfect storm of resource density and expertise positioned at just the right moment in history. At a time when the shift away from oil and gas makes Alberta’s future look uncertain, this is an opportunity to reinvent and reinvigorate the province with a clean energy technology that requires all the same workforce skills. As E3 Metals ramps up the development of their lithium extraction operation at the Leduc Aquifer, they are creating a lot of jobs for exactly the kind of workers Alberta already has.

“Most of the staff that we have on hand have worked in the oil industry,” says Doornbos. “Because we produce lithium from an aquifer, we produce it like oil. We drill a well and put in a pump, just like the oil and gas industry. Everything we do to operate and build this has been done in Alberta before.”

Low environmental impact

Of course, there’s one big question facing an industry that aims to be instrumental in building a sustainable future, especially one that is directly positioning itself as part of the transition from fossil fuels, “How clean is it?” Thanks to E3’s Direct Lithium Extraction (DLE) ion exchange process, developed in partnership with the University of Alberta, the answer is, “Very.”

“We have a very small footprint,” says Doornbos. “Basically, there are columns of beads that the lithium in the brine sticks to as it flows through. So the brine comes out of the ground and into our facility, we extract the lithium, and we put the brine right back into the aquifer in a closed-loop system, otherwise unchanged. That’s our impact.”

It’s a straightforward process with a lot of upside, and the social license is already in place. Now that the regulatory framework has also been established, the first lithium extraction enterprises in Alberta will soon be going from proof-of-concept to full operation. E3 Metals expects to be producing battery-ready lithium products in Alberta by 2025-2026.

“There will be other lithium producers in Alberta soon too,” says Doornbos. “I’m convinced of it. This is going to be a very big deal for the province.”

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