Hey there,
Canada's forest sector has spent decades cutting, milling, and shipping. Mostly to one customer, mostly on thin margins. Trump’s tariffs pushed that model past a tipping point.
This week we unpack the feds’ $500M call to retool the sector, and why it’s an opportunity to deploy climate solutions at industrial scale.
Elsewhere in climate tech:
JetScale AI lands $5.4M to optimize compute
NordSpace’s strategic investment in Wyvern’s satellite monitoring
Carney goes on an energy deal-making spree
Plus a few of our favourite ideas and long reads from across our climate community.
NEWS
$500M to reinvent Canadian forestry as a climate asset
Credit: Etienne Girardet
What happened: Canada rolled out $500 million to retool the forestry sector, as the Carney government tries to offset the impact of US tariffs and duties on the industry.
What’s the context: US softwood lumber duties have hampered Canadian producers for decades, suppressing investment in more efficient practices or value-added products.
Already thin margins collided with low lumber prices and new tariffs from the Trump admin, upending an industry built around a business-as-usual approach: harvest logs, export, repeat.
Why it matters: Canada's forests cover 369 million hectares, one of the largest carbon sinks on earth. But mismanaged, they're a liability: emissions from wildfire and wood waste, and a business model built around extracting value and susceptible to boom-and-bust cycles.
That's also an opportunity - to pull the industry forward with climate-smart solutions across the value chain:
Mass timber & engineered wood - Construction platforms and manufacturing to deploy lower-carbon building materials that are displacing concrete in mid-rise construction (e.g. Promise Robotics, Intelligent City)
Biofuels and biochemicals - Turning wood waste into low-carbon fuels, sustainable aviation fuel, and non-petrochemical feedstocks (e.g. Sustaero, Airex, SixRing)
Wildfire resilience - Detection, monitoring and suppression, with compounding urgency (e.g. SenseNet, FireSwarm, Wildfire Robotics)
Waste-to-value - Forestry operations can tap into new revenue streams like biogenic carbon removal (e.g. CO280, Gaia Refinery)
Not so simple: Funding does not equal transformation, and there’s significant inertia in existing industries. Without explicit carveouts for these emerging opportunity areas, the $500M could end up putting a new coat of paint on the old commodity model rather than genuine transformation.
What’s next: Calls for proposal are now open across four streams.
CLIMATE CAPITAL
🤖 JetScale AI (Montreal, QC) raised $5.4 million in seed funding for its cloud optimization platform, using agentic AI to reduce computing costs and energy waste for enterprises.
🛰 Wyvern (Edmonton, AB) secured an investment from Canadian aerospace company NordSpace for its remote earth monitoring technology. NordSpace invested to expand on its launch services.
🔋 FeX Energy (Montreal, QC) received funding from the Palladium Challenge Fund to pilot its Arc-S iron-based thermal storage system, designed to replace diesel heating in remote communities.
IN THE FIELD
⚡ Simon Fraser University is putting our “clean compute” thesis into practice, partnering with Cerio, Corix, and Moment Energy to reduce the energy footprint of its Cedar Supercomputing Centre through GPU optimization, district heating, and battery backup systems.
🔋 Electrovaya received a $10.5 million purchase from a Fortune 500 customer for its Infinity battery systems to power material handling electric vehicles.
⛏ British Columbia launched a mining and critical minerals testbed to help companies develop and validate technologies for permitting, operations, and supply chain improvements, with the first project pairing EMP Metals and Saltworks Technologies to produce battery-grade lithium chemicals.
🔋 NEO Battery Materials partnered with South Korean robotics company Zio Robot to develop high-energy lithium-ion batteries to increase payload and runtime for Zio’s robots.
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VOICES
Ideas & Insights
A few of our favourite reads from across our climate tech community
How AI primitives and agents are changing climate SaaS strategy: Renewal Funds’ Geordan Hankinson unpacks how AI is disrupting the old enterprise software model and how startups can still carve out a moat.
The world is going solar - where’s Canada? Peter Nicholson on what’s holding back solar deployment in Canada and why latitude no longer determines viability.
Why 2026 demands fit-for-purpose capital: Aaron Rudberg from S2G Ventures on why founders need to look beyond equity and tap into new financing channels to grow.
Autopsy of the agrifood-climate tech collapse: A data-driven analysis shows capital discipline and unit economics - not necessarily technology - were behind food & ag struggles [h/t to Relocalize’s Wayne McIntyre for flagging this one].
NEWS
Signals & Currents
Art of the deal: Saskatchewan-based Cameco announced a 11,000 tonne, $2.6B uranium supply deal with India during PM Carney’s visit to India. It’s one of many new agreements between Canada and India, including collaboration on critical minerals and renewable energy.
Canada and Germany signed an agreement to expand cooperation on EV manufacturing, battery supply chains, and critical minerals.
Why it matters: Carney is on a deal-making spree, putting together a series of agreements with aligned countries on energy, critical minerals, and trade to diversify away from the US’ erratic stance.
EV tax: Nova Scotia introduced a $500 biannual fee for electric vehicles to fund road maintenance costs that are typically funded by fuel charges. Alberta introduced a similar fee last year.
The fee is likely to suppress demand, and is at odds with Canada’s EV ambitions - EV producing provinces like Ontario should be putting pressure on their peers to switch tactics.
Defence benefits: Hyundai proposed building hydrogen fuel-cell networks for rail or heavy-duty trucks in Canada as part of South Korea’s bid to build a new submarine fleet.
Out of step: Canada’s LNG ambitions aren’t aligned with the EU’s energy strategy according to the bloc’s top diplomat. The EU is prioritizing renewables and nuclear over fossil fuels, a transition kicked off by Russia’s war in Ukraine.
A new challenger: Nova Scotia’s electricity monopoly is over after Renewall Energy became the first alternative provider in the province. Renewall is backed by a 148MW wind project that’s expected online by 2027.
COMMUNITY
🚀 Ocean Idea Challenge: Turn your innovative idea into a viable solution for sustainable ocean industries. Apply by April 12th.
🗓 BC Critical Minerals Forum: Bringing together key decision-makers from mining, finance, government and First Nations to discuss the opportunities and challenges for realizing BC’s full potential for critical minerals. April 14-15, Vancouver.
💻 Airex Energy is hiring a Procurement and Logistics Specialist to help transform biomass residues into high value-added carbonized products.
➡ More: Job Board | Funding Opportunities | Events
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