Green lights: Five hopeful trends in cleantech

2024 may have been full of gloom on the climate front, but these innovative developments — from controlled-burn bots that combat wildfires to creative carbon-conversion strategies — are cause for optimism.

To put it mildly, 2024 has been rough on the planet: it was the hottest year on record; catastrophic flooding wreaked havoc on four continents simultaneously; and shifting geopolitical relations challenged collaborative net-zero efforts.

But despite all that gloom, there are glimmers of hope. Renewables are getting cheaper every year — and it’s very possible that there will be 100 percent renewable electricity across Canada by 2035. Worldwide investment in clean energy exceeded U.S.$3 trillion last year. In Europe, the EU Parliament became the first international body to criminalize ecosystem destruction.

The cleantech sector also continues to explode — it’s projected to grow to U.S.$134.9 billion by 2030 — with thousands of startups targeting specific climate issues in surprising and successful ways. Here, five innovative solutions to some very thorny problems.

Hot tips: Fighting fire with tech

In 2023, Canada’s wildfires torched more than 15 million hectares of land, caused billions of dollars of property damage and displaced thousands of people. But their most catastrophic effect was on the climate: Those fires produced more carbon than almost every other country in the world (only the U.S., China and India had higher emissions). They’re also part of an increasingly familiar feedback loop: A warmer planet means bigger, more unpredictable fires; those fires release more carbon; that carbon heats up the planet, which sparks yet more fires.

Our best hope may be to stop fires before they start. One solution draws on an age-old approach: sustainable forest management, which involves proactive, strategic intervention in ecosystems — something Indigenous peoples have been doing for millennia. California-based BurnBot addresses poor forest management (a major contributor to forest fires) with its custom-built, remote-controlled vehicles that perform safe, precise prescribed burns. Another approach involves thinking on a higher level (literally) — using information collected from satellites and drones to flag wildfires well before they blaze out of control. SenseNet, based in B.C., uses AI to analyze that data along with information gleaned from ground sensors and eyewitness reports to provide real-time detection. The company’s tools pick up on fires even before there’s smoke, thanks to sensors that can detect various gases that are emitted at a barely smouldering stage.

Thwarting three megafires a year could reduce GHG emissions on par with the amount saved by electrifying Canada’s entire transportation sector, says founder and CEO Hamed Noori. “[The latter] isn’t going to happen within 20 years, but preventing a megafire now” would have immediate effects. SenseNet systems can already be found across hotspots in B.C., Alberta and California, and the firm is currently in discussions with utility and mining companies — as well as the government of Ontario, which is considering installing the systems in provincial parks.

Elemental transformation: Getting the most out of carbon

Capturing excess carbon dioxide is a crucial part of getting to net zero, but you need to do something with those trapped emissions. There are currently two options: store the carbon (which is complicated and can be costly) or turn it into something else. Although repurposing carbon is also a complex process, it is becoming increasingly attractive — and achievable. The key is leveraging electrochemical processes to use the C from CO2 in new molecules, such as calcium carbonate (a mineral compound found in concrete and antacids) or ethylene (a hydrocarbon gas that is the base chemical in pharmaceuticals, textiles, solvents and countless other consumer products).

You can now find captured carbon used to make everything from building materials to toothpaste and vodka. Much of this innovation has been driven by the XPrize, which has awarded more than $500 million to international teams developing new uses for converted carbon. In 2020, Toronto’s CERT Systems was named an XPrize finalist thanks to its unique method for turning CO2 into ethylene. Converting captured carbon can be energy-intensive, and it can inadvertently produce yet more CO2. “Currently the world produces around 200 megatonnes of ethylene,” says Christine Gabardo, CERT’s co-founder and CTO, “and for every tonne produced, one to two tonnes of CO2 is emitted.” As she points out, CERT’s proprietary low-energy electrochemical process has the potential to significantly mitigate emissions. Beyond ethylene, the company plans to apply its tech to create other chemicals, such as ethanol and syngas, which can be used in sustainable airline fuel.

Constructive change: Making more sustainable buildings — more sustainably

The construction industry and the buildings it creates are notoriously carbon intensive, accounting for a staggering 37 percent of global GHG emissions. Even striving for something close to the climate targets established in the Paris Agreement means the industry must achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. The good news is that there are many options to help get there. Passive House standards shrink a building’s carbon footprint by relying on maximum insulation, airtight building envelopes and triple-glazed windows that more efficiently absorb or reflect the sun’s heat. Other tools — like Toronto-based Morgan Solar’s AI-powered, automated window shades — help tackle energy consumption. Mass timber, meanwhile, has become the sustainable material of choice for new buildings — swapping in wood for concrete and steel can cut embodied emissions by as much as 25 percent, while significantly reducing construction timelines.

Shelter from the storms: Planning more resilient cities

This past year, like so many other far too many places in the world, Toronto experienced devastating flooding that highlighted the imminent danger of climate change as well as the inadequacy of existing adaptive strategies. The relatively predictable weather patterns of the past are no longer a reliable basis for future planning. But what if those weather patterns were just one data point in a set that also included metrics about how quickly floods overtake specific roadways, commuting and work patterns and analyses of traffic congestion during an evacuation?

That’s the sort of information that informs the AI-powered 3D digital models created by Edmonton-based RUNWITHIT Synthetics. The company has built digital twins of more than 200 cities around the world, all designed to help communities envision how to handle a host of potential scenarios, including natural disasters, shifting energy technologies, new immigration policies and public health crises. Its models are updated with fresh data to reflect whatever is happening around the world (like, say, a global pandemic), which provides municipalities and organizations with “a brilliant sandbox for gaming their way out,” as CEO Myrna Bittner puts it. She has seen a range of reactions to that sandbox: some cities promptly make necessary investments, some receive confirmation of what they’ve known all along, others take a long time to process the information. Because planners haven’t had this kind of access to this kind of data before, she says, “we’ve been crap at planning for the future,” she says. But with the advent of models that provide “experimental glimpses” into what lies ahead, the question becomes: What actions will users take once they gaze into this crystal ball?

Leading lights: How to successfully secure FOAK funding

It’s a cleantech conundrum: you need a ton of capital to commercialize a solution — but to land that capital, you must prove that your solution is scalable. For First of a Kind (FOAK) technologies, this chicken-and-the-egg situation can be especially tricky. Although a massive amount of capital is required, it’s ironically not massive enough for many traditional investors: often a FOAK project might be seeking $30 million, while cleantech ventures in established industries like wind and solar deal in sums of $500 million or $1 billion. Of course, it’s also understandably difficult to find backing for high-risk technologies that have only been proven at lab or pilot scale if you’re looking to scale by a factor of 10 or 20.

“You need a layer that can absorb more of the risk than traditional private lenders,” says Leah Perry, senior manager of cleantech at MaRS, who recommends that FOAK ventures approach fundraising with the same creativity and flexibility they use to build out their tech. Traditional forms of project financing may not be as productive as options within the public sector, or non-profits like Prime Coalition that raise so-called catalytic capital through philanthropic sources. The most successful FOAK ventures, Perry adds, are those that can show a relatively quick ROI. “If your innovation is just solving a climate problem, it’s a very hard sell,” Perry says. “But most clean technologies are not just solving a climate problem, they’re also saving costs through energy or resources.”

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Photo illustration: Stephen Gregory; Photos: Unsplash