Cleantech: How Businesses Can Access and Benefit

Short for clean technology, cleantech refers to companies and technology aiming to improve environmental sustainability. ECO Canada defines cleantech as “any technology, product, or service that uses fewer materials or energy, generates less waste, and causes less negative environmental impacts than the industry standard.”

As such, Cleantech has three goals:

• Provide superior performance or lower costs than the current norm or standards
• Minimize negative environmental impacts
• Make more efficient and responsible use of natural resources

Cleantech is often used interchangeably with “green technology,” however the latter refers more so to end-user products such as programable thermostats and high-efficiency furnaces. It is more accurate to think of cleantech as the emerging financial industry as opposed to the specific technology in which the industry invests.

Homegrown Solutions

Canada is currently ranked second in the Cleantech Group’s Global Cleantech Innovation Index, which ranks the countries with the greatest potential to commercialize cleantech. Here are a few of the industry-leading, Canadian-based companies offering cleantech solutions for businesses and manufacturers.

Axine Water Technologies

Vancouver-based Axine produces self-contained purification systems that remove pollutants from industrial effluent, producing water that meets environmental standards. Used extensively in the pharmaceutical industry, the purification systems are the size of small shipping containers and can be installed at manufacturing facilities to clean wastewater on site.

CarbonCure Technologies

Based in Nova Scotia, CarbonCure’s technology helps sequester carbon dioxide in concrete. Its innovative technology is retrofitted into concrete plants and allows producers to inject captured CO2 into fresh concrete during mixing, which becomes permanently embedded, increasing the concrete’s strength.

Effenco

A Montreal company, Effenco builds hybrid power systems that are installed on new or existing heavy-duty vocational trucks to reduce emissions by 30 per cent. Whenever the vehicle is stationary, the power system cuts the gas-powered engine and engages electric power instead.

Svante

A leader in commercially viable and economically scalable carbon capture technology, this company from British Columbia builds CO2 scrubbing systems. Using a highly absorbent nanomaterial, Svante’s systems attach to factory flues in heavy industries like steel and aluminum manufacturing to capture and condense CO2 emissions.

Li-Cycle

With centres in Kingston, Ontario, and Rochester, New York, Li-Cycle increases the efficiency of lithium-ion battery recycling by extracting nearly 95 per cent of the cathode and anode materials for reuse. Lithium-ion batters are in smartphones, laptops, and electric cars, and Li-Cycle processes 10,000 tons each year.

If you would like to network with other innovators interested in  Canada’s cleantech industry, please visit Innovators Alliance. Our peer-based membership connects you with other business leaders, bringing together innovators across the country to gain insight into our ever-changing climate.