According to Forbes annual ranking (2015), Canada is the 7th best country for business in the world. A recent study from the Centre for Innovation Studies in Calgary (prepared for the International Global Entrepreneurship Monitor in London) reports that Canada is second only to the U.S. in levels of entrepreneurial activity, beating most G7 countries and the developed world.
Canada is providing a positive environment for entrepreneurial activity, especially in the cleantech sector. The federal government has recently committed to provide $2 billion over a period of four years to promote and support Canadian cleantech companies and start-ups. Today, the cleantech sector employs 50,000 people in Canada in over 800 companies. There are more cleantech companies listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange and TSXV combined, than any other exchange in the world.
Cleantech is definitely the new industrial frontier. From 2006 to 2011, the green building segment grew 1,700% while the overall construction sector contracted 17%. From 2002 to 2011, the use of renewable energy grew 456% while use of energy from non-renewable fuels fell 3.2%. Furthermore, in 2015, cleantech companies listed on the TSX and TSXV Exchanges reached their highest ever year-end market value and were able to raise $2.4 billion in public equity capital.
Strong industry results along with strong continued demand for cleantech initiatives will push the cleantech sector to all-time highs. This year, the World Bank confirmed it would spend 28% of its investments directly on climate change projects outlining that all of its future spending would take into account global warming. At least $16 billion per year from the World Bank will be directed to climate change projects.
The opportunities are great, and so are the challenges. Did you know that over 34% of all landfilled matter is hydrocarbon waste? When the founders of Ecolomondo were first introduced to the hydrocarbon waste problem, they immediately understood that the sustainability of our planet could soon be in jeopardy. Society needed a sustainable alternative to the current methods of hydrocarbon waste disposal. Achieving this goal was and is still not an easy task. To that end, they founded Ecolomondo, a cleantech company that over the last 25 years has developed a proprietary technology called the Thermal Decomposition Process (TDP) that decomposes and converts hydrocarbon waste into marketable end-products, avoiding the need to landfill or burn.
Ecolomondo is proud of its technological achievements and will continue to be a contributing member in research and development going forward. The continued success of the cleantech sector will be crucial to improving our global environmental footprint and ensuring future sustainability.
Read the article on Linkedin here.