INNOVATION BOOST
$12.7M funding from Al Bio
Economies are like supertankers. Once a course is set, it’s awfully difficult to change direction in a hurry.
In Alberta, the oil and gas sector will drive the provincial economy for decades to come, no matter what the anti-fossil fuel zealots insist. Don’t take it from me. Consider what the Paris-based International Energy Agency has to say. It expects annual global oil demand to grow by an average of 1.2 million barrels a day through 2021.
By then, it warns that the big drop in industry investment we’re seeing now may come back to haunt energy consumers, and trigger another price spike.
Does that sound like an obituary for the oil industry to you? I didn’t think so. The current plunge in crude prices — this too will end. You can count on it.
Nonetheless, if Albertans have learned anything from this ugly recession, it’s that the province must diversify its economy.
One day, with some luck, entrepreneurial skill, scientific smarts, patience and a lot of money, new industries will finally take root and grow.
That’s why Wednesday’s scheduled announcement by Alberta Innovates Bio Solutions (Al Bio) is so important. The government agency will announce $12.7 million in new funding for 61 innovative bio-industrial projects, which use agricultural and forestry byproducts or other forms of biomass to make everything from biofuels to advanced bio-materials. In a province with a GDP of roughly $330 billion, $12.7 million may sound like chump change. But it’s not.
Some of the biggest players in Silicon Valley started out with far less in the kitty. Now, a single giant like Microsoft dwarfs Canada’s entire tech sector.
If allocated wisely, these funds could seed some of Alberta’s future corporate stars by building on the province’s existing strengths in agriculture, forestry and even construction and engineering.
“The economy in the next 30 years is going to be very different from the last 30 years, and innovation is the way to keep Alberta at the cutting edge,” says Economic Development and Trade Minister Deron Bilous.
He’ll join Al Bio CEO Steve Price and Alberta Innovates’ transitional CEO Pam Valentine for Wednesday’s morning announcement at an Alberta Innovates Technology Futures (AITF) pilot plant in the Edmonton Research Park.
“This is really how new products and new ideas are formed. They go through this kind of process, and as the government of Alberta, we have a part to play in this. So I’m quite excited to support our innovation sector,” says Bilous.
Besides creating a pipeline of potentially innovative new products for the energy, forestry, construction and manufacturing sectors, Al Bio’s goal is also to help “green” Alberta’s economy and reshape the province’s battered environmental image.
“The bigger objective is to enhance the bio economy in Alberta and help the province diversify while moving away from a petro-based economy,” says Price.
“Alberta will for the foreseeable future be tied to energy. But we can diversify and we can get into the production of greener materials that use recyclable materials and enhance the image of Alberta, while creating new business opportunities and new jobs.”
Several projects being funded involve the use of cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs) for the construction, manufacturing or medical sectors.
The AITF plant in the Edmonton Research Park is one of just a few facilities in the world that produce high-quality CNCs, an advanced biomaterial derived from cellulose.
“Cellulose nanocrystals are kind of a wonder product,” says Price. “They have significant strength properties and piezoelectric properties (the ability to generate electricity when mechanical stress is applied) so they can generate electricity.”
One of the 61 projects Al Bio is funding is aimed at developing “smart windows” for buildings that can generate electricity through sunlight.
“Just think about sunlight streaming through the office tower window and that energy being captured to feed back into the electrical and heating systems later in the day,” says Price.
“So while the bio-based economy is pretty insignificant at this point in time, it’s important. Alberta’s international image is associated with (the oilsands), and there’s a perception out there that Alberta isn’t investing in the future. It’s stuck in the past, or stuck in the tarsands. We’re not. We’re investing in the future.”
Mike Kennedy, CEO of an Edmonton-based startup called BioFoam Inc., says the $850,000 in funding his firm will receive will move it a big step closer to the commercial market.
Once its product is certified, BioFoam hopes to start selling its environmentally friendly spray foam insulation, which is based on a renewable non-food grade canola oil feedstock.
“The advantages of the BioFoam product are that it has essentially half the carbon footprint of traditional spray foams, without the need for a green price premium to make it cost-effective for adoption,” says Kennedy, who has worked as an environmental consultant for the past 10 years.
If all goes well over the next couple of years, BioFoam hopes to have a production plant in operation in Alberta by 2018. Beyond that, the sky is the limit.
“I think optimistically, we would expect that we would have numerous production facilities across Canada, with Alberta being the first, and another in Ontario. It’s all about leveraging Alberta innovation and using canola oil as the main feedstock. And there’s a lot of it in Alberta.”
There’s a perception ... that Alberta isn’t investing in the future. It’s stuck in the past, or stuck in the tarsands. We’re not. We’re investing in the future.