CTC Issue #1

Week of November 22, 2021

Hi there,

Welcome to the first issue of Climate Tech Canada! I’m Justin, and every two weeks I’ll be sharing a round-up of what’s happening in Canadian climate tech. I’m starting this as a side project to learn more about climate tech and share with others. This has been a huge source of optimism for me (particularly in the face of one climate-related disaster after another), and I hope you enjoy reading this round-up as much as I did putting it together.

I’m blown away with how much is going on in Canada right now. In this edition:

Funding & acquisitions (over $80M raised in the last two weeks 🤯)
In the news: solar and wind
Electric vehicle pilots
Current favourites

Funding & acquisitions

enPowered (Waterloo, ON) announced $12.75M in seed financing. enPowered aims to remove the complexity from cleantech projects, offering energy-savings Programs to help customers to save on their utility bills and a new Payments product to offer an alternative to up-front project capital from customers.

Mysa (St. John’s, Newfoundland) raised $20.3M in Series B funding. Mysa offers smart thermostat technology to help consumers manage their energy use across baseboard heating, in-floor, AC and heat pumps.

Fellow smart thermostat company Ecobee (Toronto, ON) has been acquired by Generac, a long-time player in the market with a wide range of existing energy products and a global presence for Ecobee to tap into.

BrainBox AI (Montreal, QC) raised $24M in Series A financing. BrainBox AI uses artificial intelligence to optimize existing HVAC systems and reduce energy use in commercial buildings.

Note: Project Drawdown ranked building automation like BrainBox AI as #45 in its list of solutions, with an estimated 4.62 gigatons of reduced CO2 and $880B net savings worldwide.

Moment Energy (Port Coquitlam, BC) raised $3.5M in seed funding. Moment Energy creates off-grid energy storage solutions by re-purposing retired EV batteries, offering an alternative to diesel generators. A great example of circular solutions.

Klir (Toronto, ON) raised $20.1M in Series A financing. Klir’s platform helps water utilities drive greater efficiency through analytics and automation.

Fuel cell producer Ballard (Vancouver, BC) acquired Arcola Energy (UK), which specializes in hydrogen fuel cell powertrain and vehicle systems integration for heavy duty vehicles.

In the news: solar & wind power

“I would say in the last five years, we've built the foundation for future success” - Chief Ross Perley

A wind success story from the Neqotkuk First Nation in western New Brunswick.

Several announcements out of Alberta:

A new wind farm from SF-based Pattern Energy Group
Shell announces a new solar project to help decarbonize their Edmonton operations
The largest solar farm in Canada by Calgary’s Greengate Power

Here & There

Electric fire trucks are coming to Vancouver in 2023
UofT and others launch the EaRTH District, while the RVZ is expanding to a second cohort
Say hi to Olli - City of Whitby pilots Canada’s longest autonomous transit shuttle

Electric Vehicles

One of the opportunities that electric vehicles unlock is greater flexibility for energy storage and backup power for the grid, known as Vehicle-to-Grid or Vehicle-to-Home technology. Two pilots in Canada are aiming to test this further:

Hydro One and Peak Power (Toronto, ON) have launched a pilot program to study the benefits of using EVs as backup electricity sources during power outages. Peak’s technology is already being used with Nissan Leaf EVs in Japan, Europe and Australia
A similar pilot by SWITCH Energy is aimed at understanding the potential role of EVs in load management, both when drawing energy and as a store of energy to draw upon.

One to watch: Potential Motors out of Fredericton plans to come out of stealth mode in 2022 with an MVP of their control systems for off-road and all-terrain EVs.

Fun stuff

Carbon Neutral Club. This is one of my favourite discoveries of the year. For a monthly fee, you can offset your carbon footprint while gaining access to savings from sustainable brands like Kotn and Bee Keeper’s Naturals. It’s like rewards points for the planet :chef-kiss:

Active Hope by Joanna Macy & Chris Johnstone. It’s real easy to focus on how bad things are. This book offers some tangible ways to get unstuck and to start responding to the climate crisis in front of us.