66% of all businesses surveyed considered cost savings and efficiencies as main reasons why they would invest in a clean technology solution
The Cleantech Directions research report was recently released by the online news source cleantechnology.ca and canadianmanufacturing.com.
The report highlighted survey results of approximately 400 cleantech companies and their prospective clients and the survey was followed by a gathering of key Canadian cleantech stakeholders in a roundtable discussion held in Toronto in October 2016. Invited guests to the roundtable discussion included representatives of technology incubators such as MaRS, financial experts, crown corporations, climate and business advocates, and industrial end users.
Many of the roundtable panelists expressed strong optimism for the growing clean technology sector in Canada. It was expressed by one of the panelists, Jane Kearns, Senior Advisor, Cleantech with MaRS Discovery District, that Canadian cleantech companies are reaping global success by exporting their technologies to foreign markets. According to Kearns, she has witnessed a great deal of maturity for innovative Canadian cleantech start up companies.“They are now viable companies offering a lot of jobs and economic opportunities to the country. Canada could become an energy superpower. It’s just not necessarily oil and gas.”
According to Susan Wood-Bohm, Executive Director, BIO GHG Management Program, at Alberta Innovates, the cleantech industry needs urgent action in order for the industry to truly reach full potential. This urgency has now been escalated by Canada’s commitment to reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions by 40% by 2030 under its commitment to the Paris Accord on Climate Change (COP21). “The urgency is based on an incredibly short time frame to impact. I think we have to be really focused on those technologies that get us to our endpoint before we get to that 2030 cutoff, which would spell serious trouble from climate change.”
Breakthrough technologies such as CircuitMeter Inc.’s innovative low cost submetering and real time energy analytics platform represents a new frontier in energy management and new possibilities for energy efficiency. With a growing number of endorsements from leading technology and cleantech organizations as a breakthrough, CircuitMeter is representative of a Canadian technology that promises to enable major growth in advanced energy management services internationally from its home base in Canada.
When the surveyed companies were asked what type of clean technology initiatives they expect to place the most emphasis on during the next two years; waste management and energy efficiency were the top two initiatives. It was reported that 66% of all businesses surveyed considered cost savings and efficiencies as main reasons why they would invest in a clean technology solution. This response was significantly higher than the 35% who chose regulatory compliance as a reason to invest in cleantech innovations.
The report concludes that the cleantech sector is expecting to see major growth due to the increasing focus of society on environmental issues, but also because of the great potential to contribute to public and private sector efficiency and cost savings.
To read full report, please visit canadianmanufacturing.com