The British Columbia (BC) Centre for Innovation and Clean Energy (CICE) has invested $7.6 million in non-dilutive funding across nine companies, out of more than 200 applicants, as part of its 2024 call for innovation.
CICE says it has invested $31 million across 47 clean energy and climate technology projects to date.
CICE’s commitments vary from $400,000 and $1.3 million per project. The winners are working on solutions to tackle energy storage, carbon management, alternative fuels, and low-carbon hydrogen. CICE sent out the call for innovation in January, where it said it was seeking out BC-based companies for clean energy projects that address the challenges of “hard to decarbonize” industries such as forestry, mining, agriculture, and more.
Hydron Energy received the largest amount of funding, $1.3 million, for its nearly $4-million project to commercialize and scale up its waste-to-fuel solution by deploying it at the wastewater treatment plant in Prince George, BC. The company claims its Intensified Regenerative Upgrading Platform Technology (INTRUPTor) system converts raw gasses into “clean refined fuel.” Hydron was also one of the winners of CICE’s first-ever call for innovation in 2022.
In the carbon management category, Arca received $1.25 million from CICE as it looks to turn mine tailings, a term for leftover and useless mining byproducts, into carbon sinks. The nearly $4-million project will fund Arca’s technology that uses microwave radiation to “enhance” the carbon capture capacity of minerals. Arca is also one of three Canadian finalists competing in the Elon Musk-funded XPRIZE Carbon Removal competition.
PH7 Technologies claims that two-thirds of mined materials in copper mines are classified as waste rocks, which are currently not processable but contain a significant amount of copper. The company is receiving $1 million from CICE to build an industrial prototype of its proprietary copper extraction process for the low-grade ores. It happens to produce hydrogen as a byproduct, which can be collected and used as fuel. PH7 is one of 13 Canadian tech companies on the 2024 Global Cleantech 100 list.
All of the funding recipients can be found on CICE’s website.
Founded in 2021 by the Government of British Columbia, oil and gas multinational Shell, and the federal government, the CICE is an independent non-profit that aims to help fund the commercial development and scaling of BC-based clean energy solutions. CICE says it has invested $31 million across 47 clean energy and climate technology projects to date.
CICE has launched a new call for innovation with the same requirements, which is accepting applications until Aug. 1. Last month, CICE opened a call for technologies focused on wildfire management, which is accepting applications until Aug. 7.
Feature image courtesy Arca via its website.
