National Post (National Edition)
B.C. Centre for Innovation and Clean Energy to launch in fall with up to $105M in funding
Ottawa has formally pledged as much as $35M
• The B.C. Centre for Innovation and Clean Energy is launching this fall with $70 million in combined funding from the provincial government and Shell
Canada. The federal government, meanwhile, will provide up to $35 million to support projects the centre leads.
The provincial government first announced its intention to create the centre, which will focus on commercializing B.C.'s clean technology, in September 2020 as part of its economic-recovery plan. It committed $35 million to the venture and formalized the funding in its 2021 budget. The federal government promised to contribute $35 million in its budget, which included $17.6 billion for “green-recovery” spending. The federal funding will come from Natural Resources Canada's Energy Innovation Program.
Details of the funding were announced Friday by B.C. Premier John Horgan, provincial jobs and innovation minister Ravi Kahlon, federal employment minister Carla Qualtrough, an assortment of provincial and federal cabinet ministers, and Shell Canada president Susannah Pierce, whose company is now matching the federal and provincial commitments with a $35-million contribution toward the centre's creation.
Shell Canada, which did not respond to a request for comment prior to the announcement, is working toward net-zero emissions by 2050. “Investing in clean technology will lower emissions and increase our competitiveness. Government, labour, industry and academia are all focused on net zero. Investments like this are how we get there,” federal natural-resources minister Seamus O'Regan said in a statement.
The new centre will be a member-based organization, spanning people from government, academia and industry.
That aligns with B.C. energy minister Bruce Ralston's original vision for the project. “My personal inclination is to model it a bit on the digital supercluster here in British Columbia,” with its tiered membership model, he said in an interview with The Logic in early May, when plans for the centre were still in their infancy and the province's NDP government was developing a business plan. Its hope was the centre would bring in innovators from the public and private sectors, and facilitate interactions and research. “That really, really can drive the whole thing forward,” Ralston said.
The centre will focus on clean fuels, renewable natural gas, low-carbon hydrogen and carbon capture, utilization and storage. “That's where it will start,” said Ralston. “It's not a closed list or anything like that.”
It will have a physical location, though the precise spot is yet to be determined. “There are many communities that would be well suited to host,” a spokesperson from the energy department said in a statement to The Logic. The department expects to announce more details on the location and the centre's operation in the coming months.
Prior to Friday's announcement, Jeanette Jackson, CEO of cleantech accelerator Foresight, had imagined the centre would combine a physical space with virtual offerings. Her organization had been pushing for the province to create a cleantech cluster after a six-month research project found gaps in the industry. The group focused on a hub-and-spoke model for its proposed cluster solution, noting that Vancouver is a natural centre, but that there is also “so much amazing work” happening in other municipalities, including Kelowna and Squamish. “We really want to make sure that all of these initiatives are connected,” Jackson said in an interview in May. Physical or virtual, she hopes the centre provides “a focal point for stakeholders interested in tackling climate change to convene and collaborate.”
The centre can help address some of the issues in the province's cleantech industry, she added, including attracting talent and capital, the ability to enter new markets and serve domestic needs, and the speed of validating technologies. “Something like this could be a great mechanism to support those needs and those gaps that we see in the province.”
The first priority, said Ralston in May, was to develop a business plan for the centre and then recruitment. Hires would likely include an executive director, a board of directors and governance opportunities for companies in the sector looking to get involved. “We're looking for broad participation by interested parties.” Some companies, which he declined to name at the time, had already expressed interest.
GOVERNMENT, LABOUR, INDUSTRY AND ACADEMIA ARE ALL FOCUSED ON NET ZERO.