The British Columbia (BC) Centre for Innovation and Clean Energy (CICE) has awarded eight BC-based low carbon solutions with funding through its inaugural Open Call for Innovation. The amount of funding provided in total and for each company was not disclosed.
The recipients were Moment Energy, Corvus Energy, Hydron Energy, Parkland Refining BC, Hydra Energy, Ekona Power, HTEC, and Ballard Power Systems.
The CICE’s first Open Call was launched in January, 90 days following its incorporation. The Open Call for Innovation provides grants to BC-based tech providers with low carbon solutions. The five focus areas for this cohort were battery and energy storage, bio/synthetic fuels, renewable natural gas, low-carbon hydrogen, and carbon capture utilization and storage.
Founded by the Government of British Columbia, Shell, and supported by the Canadian Federal Government, the CICE is an independent non-profit that aims to help accelerate the commercialization of low-carbon solutions through financing programs. It received $105 million in total from Shell, as well as the provincial and federal governments.
Last year, the CICE unveiled its executive team consisting of Ged McLean, who was appointed executive director; and Yemi Adefulu, who was named deputy executive director.
“We launched this first Open Call for Innovation with the intention of better understanding the opportunity ecosystem and were amazed to be significantly oversubscribed by high-quality projects,” said Adefulu. “We are excited to announce a suite of successful projects while also nurturing those that we could not pursue in this round, but which show great promise for the future.”
Once they’ve completed the commercialization and scale-up stages, the CICE said its selected projects are expected to result in significant greenhouse gas emission reductions while helping to grow the BC economy through new employment and export opportunities.
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Moment Energy, for example, is developing a battery management system meant to enhance the affordability of second life energy storage systems. Corvus Energy is working on redefining battery components for high-speed marine applications to reduce emissions in the sector.
Ekona Power is producing clean hydrogen through its pulsed methane pyrolysis technology, which helps decarbonize natural gas infrastructure. The Burnaby cleantech company closed a $79 million Series A round earlier this year, which was led by oilfield company Baker Hughes.
Another company to recently raise funding from this cohort includes HTEC. In May, HTEC was among a group of four companies in BC to secure grants from the Pacific Economic Development Agency of Canada (PacificCan), receiving $5 million from the pot.
HTEC also previously received $875,000 in 2019 through the federal government’s Western Economic Diversification Canada’s BSP initiative.
Featured image from Hydrogen Technology & Energy Corporation’s website.
