From Mining to Seaweed, BC Startups Prepare to Accelerate Climate Innovation in Canada

The inaugural cohort of a nine-month program designed to accelerate critical climate technologies has been unveiled.

According to Foresight Canada, which wants Canada to be the first net-zero country, “climate change” could become “climate catastrophe” if we don’t “take drastic action.”

“We need to both rapidly deploy existing technologies, and support emerging climate tech that has the potential to massively reduce or remove emissions by 2050,” writes Foresight senior director Barnabe Geis in an introduction to the cohort.

Earth Tech: 2050, delivered in partnership with Social Innovation Canada, will host 11 eco-startups from across the country, including in BC.

Startups representing the BC tech scene include Cascadia Seaweed, which seeks to extend the shelf-life of fresh seaweed while developing and scaling processes that can help Canada produce more value-added innovative seaweed products for international markets.

The Vancouver Island upstart received a grant from the Canadian Food Innovation Network last year to pursue its mission and is now North America’s leading seaweed cultivation and processing company, according to Geis, supplying bio-stimulants for crops to increase growth and resilience while reducing fertilizer use.

Another local in the national cohort is NanoTerraTech, which is creating bio-graphite from forestry biomass waste. This byproduct is useful for the growing electric vehicle battery market.

And there is also Kinitics Automation. With roots in the automotive and power-generation industries, the Vancouver company was founded in 2016 to eliminate emissions “at the source.”

Across one million devices operating at North America’s natural gas well sites, methane-venting pneumatic devices emit fifty million tonnes of CO2e every year. Kinitics has developed an electric valve actuator as a direct replacement for methane-venting pneumatic devices.

Another Vancouver rep on the list is Rockburst Technologies. The mining-tech startup is developing a new method of crushing and grinding ore. Rockburst’s “Transcritical CO2 Pulverization” technique has the potential to slash 2% of the world’s electricity consumption and associated emissions.

Earth Tech: 2050 offers each venture “a custom program to achieve their missions.”