This week, Navdeep Bains, minister of innovation, science, and economic development, highlighted how 18 Canadian companies are using funding from Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC) for cleantech initiatives.
During SDTC’s annual meeting, the government pointed to the impact of its previously-announced $56 million in investments to the 18 cleantechs across Canada.
“Canadians are leading the world’s transition to a low-carbon economy, and clean technology is part of the solution,” said Bains. “Our government is positioning Canadians to seize the opportunities created by cleantech to create good jobs and leave a cleaner planet for our kids.”
Some of the cleantech startups that have received SDTC funding include:
- Routific (Vancouver): Received $1.8 million to use artificial intelligence to optimize routes during the last leg of the supply chain. These algorithms are said to be 20 percent more effective than human dispatchers, reducing fuel costs.
- Advanced Intelligent Systems (Burnaby):
Received $2.2 million to build autonomous robots to perform tasks for greenhouse nurseries and agriculture. - BluWave-ai (Ottawa): Received $2.4 million to use artificial intelligence to improve energy grid predictions, optimizations, and controls for renewable energy sources like wind and solar farms.
- Ecopia Tech (Toronto): Received $6.7 million to convert high resolution images of the earth into HD vector maps using artificial intelligence.
- Kaloom (Montreal): Received $2.4 million to build software that optimizes energy use in servers.
Recently, Ecopia announced that it was mapping sub-Saharan Africa with the support from SDTC. The map will include an estimated 342 million buildings, 3.8 million linear kilometres of roads and 582 million hectares of forests. The goal is to help governments, NGOs, and businesses make better on-the-ground decisions, such as where to distribute vaccines and renewable energy infrastructure.
“This project will not only showcase Canadian technology on the world stage, but also stands to positively impact the lives of hundreds of millions by empowering better data-driven decisions to be made surrounding the environment, economy, and societies of Africa,” said Jon Lipinski, president and co-founder of Ecopia. “We are extremely excited to be part of this initiative, and are thankful to have gained the support of SDTC and the Canadian federal government.”
Earlier this week it was also revealed that Montreal-based GHGSat had received $3.3 million from SDTC to measure emissions of oil and gas facilities in British Columbia.
The full list of funded projects is available here.
Image source Navdeep Bains via Twitter
