UCalgary breakfast debate tackles Canadian cleantech

On April 9, over 100 people from Calgary’s business community, faculty, staff and students gathered at the Westin in downtown Calgary to tackle an increasingly urgent problem: how to scale up Canadian cleantech firms. The Haskayne School of Business hosted the BMO Professorship in Sustainable and Transition Finance event where guests engaged in animated discussions over breakfast before the panel discussion featuring John Redfern, President & CEO at Eavor Technologies Inc. and Judy Fairburn, Co-Founder, General Partner at The51 began. 

Moderated by Yrjo Koskinen, BMO Professor of Sustainable and Transition Finance Haskayne, the panelists discussed Alberta’s entrepreneurial ecosystem for cleantech firms and why Canada struggles to scale up these innovative firms: struggles the panelists have experienced firsthand. 

As an investor, advisor and serial entrepreneur, Redfern drew on his experience founding Eavor Technologies here in Alberta, and why the company looked to Europe when it was time to put ideas into action. 

Calgary is a great place to find angel investors and government support for research and development, but Redfern says, “It gets a little more complicated when you start getting into more institutional money.” When it came time to move out of the lab, venture capital (VC) was nowhere to be found and Redfern, “ended up going all the way to Singapore to get our VC money.”

Fairburn added to that assessment from an investor perspective, saying cleantech here has earned the nickname ‘hardtech’ due to the time and resources needed to scale up a cleantech initiative. “It can be years and years to build physical facilities, and there’s lots of complexities,” adding there is a lot of risk involved. 

Another regional barrier is found in how Calgarians categorize themselves. According to Redfern, you’ll find people who say they’re oil and gas, and you’ll find people who say they’re entrepreneurs, but so far, we haven’t seen enough overlap between those categories. “We’ve really got to mix the two, which is where you’ll see the success.”

What can Canada do better?

Koskinen steered the conversation from the pitfalls and financial roadblocks encountered by Canadian cleantech firms to how we bridge the ‘valley of death’ between a startup and a sustainable venture by asking what we must do better here in Alberta to make sure our companies remain Canadian. 

Redfern cut to the chase: “Alberta is not going to get rich by installing solar paneling made in China. You get rich by being the country that builds those solar panels.” He went on to explain, “It’s important that we focus on things we know we can do better than anyone else in the world. [...] In the case of geothermal, North America is the expert when it comes to drilling wells, so that’s something we can own.”

In addition to focusing on areas of proven expertise, companies should be looking for new opportunities to use that expertise. When it comes to energy, the demands of artificial intelligence are huge, with data centres looking for greater sources of clean power. Fairburn says, “When people see growth opportunity, they will invest.”

As the early morning conversation came to a close, both the advantages and barriers of scaling up cleantech firms in Alberta were clear. We know what we’re good at. We excel in areas of research, development and innovation. Securing the long-term investment needed to bring those ideas to life is a different matter. The problem is, as Redfern puts it, “people want to invest in an industry, not an idea.” 

The good news is, when it comes to energy, we know that industry better than anyone. Other countries have already figured out investing in Canadian cleantech entrepreneurs is a good idea. It’s time Canadian investors do the same. 

Listen to the full conversation here.