SHARM EL-SHEIKH, EGYPT — Montreal-based IT firm CGI has become one of the COP27 climate conference’s main attractions. Every day for the past week, a constant stream of people clog up the walkway in front of the company’s pavilion to behold the glowing globe—three metres in diameter—suspended in the middle of the CGI information booth. 

Most people are there just to take a selfie—it’s the perfect backdrop for their COP27 Instagram post. But Liz Lindsay, CGI’s strategic marketing campaigns director, said the model is a useful way to grab people’s attention and start a conversation about what the company is doing to address global warming. 

“We’re here to demonstrate, as a technology organization, how technology solutions could enable sustainability,” said Lindsay, beginning her pitch. After drawing in passersby with a photo op, she often tells them about the metaverse experience the firm is showcasing—a virtual conference centre in which participants can attend panels, host meetings and network. 

“We don’t all need to travel to Egypt to have COP27,” she said. “There are different ways to collaborate that have a better environmental impact.”

Such interactive technology displays are features of the business and tech conference industry, which has ballooned over the past decade. They’ve also been a growing presence at the UN’s COP conferences in recent years. 

Officially speaking, the annual climate conference is a series of negotiations through which heads of state create a binding agreement on how to address climate change. But side events and pavilions featuring companies and industry associations, as well as billionaire investors, athletes and actors, play an increasingly prominent role at the summit, giving it the air of a trade show. 

Canadian companies like CGI are joining the ranks of innovation economy players—which this year include Google, Meta and Microsoft—using the annual climate conference as a forum to market their technologies to a global audience of prospective investors, customers and partners. 

“The world is here,” said Justin Riemer, CEO of Emissions Reduction Alberta (ERA), a government-funded organization investing in cleantech that can be applied in the province. Riemer said he’s at COP to meet investors, including venture capital and industrial firms, as well as tech companies that can help with the province’s energy transition. 

On Monday at COP27, Riemer and Alberta’s Environment Minister Sonya Savage announced $50 million from ERA to back firms whose tech can cut emissions for industries in the province. The funding, which comes through the province’s Technologies Innovation and Emissions Reduction Fund, will invest up to $10 million per project. Recipients can come from anywhere in the world, so long as they test and apply their technologies in Alberta. 

Launching the program, called the Industrial Transformation Challenge, at COP gives it—and Alberta’s climate innovation sector—global visibility it might not have otherwise received. “It’s important for us to make a presence,” said Riemer. “We’re really hoping some of the real work that’s already underway is drawing international interest and investment interest around the world.” 

Stemming global warming requires an overhaul of the global economy and the sectors that drive it, from energy, to transportation, to communication and retail. It’s why Mark Carney, Brookfield Asset Management vice-chair and UN Special Envoy on Climate Action and Finance, has called the transition to a low-carbon economy the “greatest commercial opportunity of our age.” And with Egypt’s climate conference billed as the “implementation COP,” governments and companies with net-zero emissions targets are looking for innovative ways to follow through on those promises. 

The commercial opportunity for Sam Ramadori, CEO of Montreal-based Brainbox AI, lies in curbing emissions in real estate. COP27 is Ramadori’s second UN climate conference. His company, which uses artificial intelligence technology to optimize energy use in buildings’ heating and cooling systems, was one of 10 companies invited to pitch their businesses in Glasgow last year at the COP26 Tech For Our Planet competition. Brainbox ended up winning the top prize in the contest. 

Ramadori said his experience in Glasgow helped his firm gain global exposure. “We have seen a growing number of new installations in the Middle East, Europe and the US,” he said, adding that shortly after the event, Brainbox signed a distribution agreement with Switzerland-based corporate research centre ABB. 

Along with tech companies, Canada’s innovation economy presence at COP27 includes tech hubs Alberta Innovates and MaRS Discovery District. 

At the ERA funding announcement Monday, Laura Kilcrease, CEO of Alberta Innovates, implored everyone in the audience to make a “positive collision.” “Please make a connection with someone you might not know, who you may not have connected with anywhere else. Find a way to do something in the net-zero emission world,” she said. 

“For us, it was an opportunity to see what other teams are doing and also pitch the new technology we have,” said Peyvand Melati, CEO of Markham, Ont.-based QEA Tech, which measures energy loss from the exterior of buildings. Melati is hopeful the conference has produced at least one business opportunity for QEA Tech—a partnership with a group of building science specialists from Norway, he said. 

Along with prime opportunities to drum up business at COP, Melati said the access to policy-makers is what makes COP27 unique for companies attending the event. “It creates awareness of what technologies are available when they write and create policies around the targets they have for reducing greenhouse gasses.”