Vicky Sharpe: Building the Canadian Cleantech Ecosystem

Building the Canadian Cleantech Ecosystem

What Is Cleantech? Here’s a question many people are grappling with because it’s almost undefinable. Like many emerging technologies that are growing at exponential rates, it’s hard to define something that’s changing by the minute and evolving so rapidly. When people think of Cleantech, we tend to consider wind and solar and other renewable energy technologies. Although renewables are important, they are a fraction of the innovations that are needed to support our current and growing global energy demands. So, rather than thinking of Cleantech as the evolution of renewable energy, think of it more as an entirely new vertical.

Broadly, we can sum up Cleantech as embracing innovative sustainable solutions with sound business practices. It’s an entity unto its own. It is a market worth $1 trillion today and up to $3 trillion by 2020.

Consider the fact that Cleantech is in its infancy. Indeed, much of what we will see emerging in the Cleantech industry will add value to the oil and gas industry in ways that have not even been invented yet. It’s an exponentially emerging field, and it’s an exciting one.

The Cleantech industry is comprised of inspiring inventors and eager investors, who are willing to take a chance on some very new and unique technologies. It consists of industry leaders eager to forge new paths into higher levels of efficiency and environmental responsibility.

Cleantech takes creativity, innovation, forward thinking, sound business growth strategies, and looks into the future in order to make something better right now.

Major sections under the Cleantech influence that are consciously changing the landscape of how we work in the energy sector are in these areas: fuel efficiencies, green mining and green chemicals production, pipeline monitoring integrity, advanced transportation methodologies, clean water advances, environmental reclamation, energy-efficiency technologies, clean energy production, distribution and storage, as well as powerful adaptation models for remote locations and many more.

Cleantech Success Guru

Forging new ground and building the infrastructure for an emerging Cleantech revolution is Canada’s own Vicky Sharpe. Vicky has dedicated over 30 years of her working life to the energy industry and defines success as innovation that powerfully delivers economic benefits and clearly makes “the difference” with environmental benefits. In 2001, Vicky Sharpe was appointed as the founding president and CEO of Sustainable Development Technologies Canada (SDTC), where she remains at the helm today. Vicky and the SDTC team are working to help industries and communities, using strategic business approaches and delivering on clean technology. Vicky says, “It is a very rewarding way to live and work.”

Sustainable Development Technology Canada

On behalf of the Government of Canada, Sustainable Development Technology Canada helps move Canadian clean technologies forward, readying them for growth and export markets. With a portfolio of companies under management valued at more than $2 billion, SDTC is demonstrating that Cleantech is a driver of jobs, productivity, and economic prosperity.

SDTC is powerfully positioned as a platform for supporting the commercialization of Canadian sustainable technology. These projects would otherwise be lying in the so-called “Valley of Death,” which is the gap on the innovation chain between laboratory testing and commercial deployment.

Vicky says, “Our programs have one goal and that is to build Canada’s Cleantech infrastructure. Our portfolio includes companies that began as startups and are now exporting and winning global innovation awards or trading shares on stock exchanges. In fact, one of our companies, EcoSynthetix, posted the single biggest Cleantech IPO in Canada in 2010, the year it went public.”

SDTC does something that no one else is doing. They are a government entity dedicated to strengthening Cleantech in Canada. The due diligence process is rigorous and intense, and this earns SDTC portfolio companies a certain stamp of approval that helps them obtain further financing from the private sector and other government bodies. The sum of these efforts is a thriving Canadian Cleantech industry.

The key to SDTC success are two programs that drive companies to market: Follow-on Financing and Technology Adoption. Follow-on Financing works because it is tapped into an extensive network of private sector investors. SDTC seeks to mobilize capital to enable commercialization, so that all the benefits can actually occur through which they are generating value, rather than just granting funds. Technology Adoption sees SDTC building relationships with and creating linkages to multi-national customers for our portfolio companies that accelerate their market entries. Over the last seven years, 53 out of 250 companies involved with SDTC have been able to attract $2.6 billion in investment.

Multi-Trillion Dollar Global Opportunities

Vicky says, “I believe that development, demonstration, and deployment are key areas for emphasis so that innovative ideas actually delivery economic and environmental benefits. The current Cleantech question we are focusing on is: How to strengthen the industry and attack the multi-trillion dollar global opportunity and seize Canada’s share.”

Vicky emphasizes, “There is definitely room to grow. By the end of 2013, 85 percent of Canadian Cleantech companies will be exporting their technologies, helping blaze the trail to international markets. By 2020, Canada’s annual Cleantech revenues will rise from $10 billion to $62 billion, with jobs in the sector multiplying from 52,000 today to 126,000. To achieve this goal, we will be fully committed to SDTC’s philosophy of ‘Partnering for Real Results.’ We are currently building partnerships with industry to increase funding and industry uptake of our funded solutions. Those kinds of partnerships are key to furthering Canada’s sustainable infrastructure.”

We live in a natural resource-based economy which serves as the engine of our global economy. In concert with the oil industry, SDTC is working to introduce innovative solutions in fascinating ways. Oil and gas industry players will be able to avail of innovation that reduces the amount of water required for extraction, utilizing energy-efficient extraction methodologies, and recuperating or reusing wastewater, increasing the rate of tailings ponds rehabilitation.

Vicky’s Perspective On Oil And Gas

“We only have so much oil and gas and what we have right now is difficult to reach and to process. Cleantech makes it possible to reach and process that oil and gas at a lower cost and a lower environmental impact than before.”

SDTC’s portfolio includes almost 250 projects, all of which are at different stages along the innovation chain. Vicky says, “Certainly, we have some projects that are making a broader impact thanks to market uptake; we have other very exciting innovations that will soon hit their groove. We are doing extremely well. Of 22 SDTC-funded companies whose products have made it into the market, we have to date created 8,000 jobs and $700 million in revenues.

Noteworthy Successes From Innovative Companies

1. Saltworks’ desalinization technology is being applied to the oil and gas sector. Next, it will be applied to municipal water treatment. This is a revolutionary technology that will quickly find a place in the global market as water becomes an increasingly precious resource.

2. N-Solv Corporation is working on a technology called Bitumen Extraction Solvent Technology (BEST). This is a low-temperature, in-situ production technology for bitumen reserves using a pure, condensing solvent. Thanks to this solvent, the N-Solv technology is targeted to produce 85 percent fewer greenhouse gas emissions than current in-situ processes and will reduce the consumption of process water to zero.

3. Titanium Corporation’s oil sands technology treats tailings ponds by recovering bitumen and high-value minerals and solvents for resale and reuse, and reducing water use from oil sands mining operations.

Vicky Explains The Impact On The Environment

“Most of our portfolio is related to energy, so they enable energy efficiency or energy savings, ultimately reducing GHGs. Other projects aim to clean our air, soil, and water. Close to 90 percent of our projects generate multiple benefits. We estimate that the annual discounted GHG reduction by 2015 is projected to be between 7 and 17 megatons. (This is a conservative effort with a discount value of 80–90 percent.) In terms of critical air contaminants (air pollutants), it is difficult to show a net reduction, as it depends on population density and airshed concentration in the areas where they are emitted. Overall, however, we can link the reduction of CAC emission to health benefits. The results of a complex analysis in this regard indicate that the avoided health costs amount to over $1.5 billion by 2025.”

Canada’s oil and gas industry is one of its biggest economic contributors, and, subsequently, energy producers are looking to minimize their impact on the environment. There is a huge demand and, consequently, there must be a huge supply. SDTC-supported technologies are already making their way into the day-to-day operations of energy producers to fill that critical supplier role.