With over 290 cleantech companies—one-third of the firms in Canada’s rapidly growing cleantech sector—Jeanette Jackson believes British Columbia is on the verge of becoming a global leader in the climate innovation industry. 

“Traditionally cleantech has been funded by the government…but we’re at a point now where cleantech is not only a good business from a sustainability perspective, it makes good economic sense and drives competitiveness,” Jackson, the CEO of the Burnaby-based Foresight Cleantech Accelerator Centre, told The Logic. To achieve this, Jackson wants to help change the way B.C.’s cleantech industry works. She wants to see more collaboration, more private investment and more research and development—and she’s looking to Europe for inspiration.

In September 2019, Foresight Cleantech Accelerator Centre embarked on a six-month research project to find the gaps and solutions for the British Columbia’s sustainable economy, consulting with the industry, investors, academics and government. The result is a 90-page report, released in July, that found the province is “missing a model for collaboration for clean technology stakeholders that accelerates the major institutional, industrial and technological change that is required to achieve both climate goals and shared economic prosperity in the long-term.” 

The report proposes a simple made-in-B.C. strategy to correct this: creating a Cleantech Cluster, a dedicated and collaborative hub for cleantech investment, research and development and commercialization, by 2030. 

In its simplest form, a cluster is a group of companies in the same sector and the same geographic area that both compete and cooperate to innovate. Foresight’s proposed cluster is designed to help the province capitalize on a global industry that is set to reach $2.5 trillion by 2022, while also hitting the province’s climate targets of a 40 per cent reduction in carbon emissions by 2030. 

The proposal has received support from the federal and provincial governments. “While British Columbia is already home to some of the top cleantech companies in the world, launching a Cleantech Cluster will ensure we continue to be a global leader in the growing market for low-carbon products and services,” Bruce Ralston, B.C. minister of energy, mines and petroleum resources, said in a statement. 

There is a strong case for establishing a clean energy cluster in the western Canadian province. Seven of the twelve Canadian businesses that were named among the top 100 clean-tech companies in the world in a January 2019 Cleantech Group report are based in B.C.: Axine Water Technologies, Cooledge Lighting., Inventys Thermal Technologies, MineSense Technologies, Semios and Terramera.

Foresight lays out several goals modelled after similar and longstanding clusters in Europe, where the hubs have existed successfully for over 20 years connecting private, public and academic institutions. 

Bernhard Puttinger, CEO of the GreenTech Cluster in Austria—which includes over 200 companies—said European industries are “more rooted in cooperation.” He said the successes have been enormous. In 10 years, Puttinger said the cluster has more than tripled the industry’s sales, which now make up more than 10 per cent of Austria’s GDP, and more than doubled the number of employees.

But there are risks to the cluster approach. Michael Johansen, head of development at Clean Cluster in Denmark, said the cluster system there became too complicated a few years ago. There were too many of them, they were all competing for the same grants and had overlapping member companies. “Clusters are meant to be agile organizations,” he told The Logic. “We’re not like universities, we don’t have big buildings and thousands of professors and students… you need a strong stakeholder base and a continuity in policy.”

Foresight’s plan diverges from the European model in three ways, Jackson explains. First, the accelerator proposed to treat small and medium clean enterprises separately from large industry players, recognizing that they needed different kinds of capital and resources. Second, the plan was proactive in including private investors in the discussions about the cluster so that companies weren’t just relying on government funding. Third, they proposed the cluster was not limited to one urban hub, but connected with remote places, where sectors like mining and agriculture were redefining the cleantech sector.

“Whenever you have an industry that is innovative, you’ll have clusters,” Johansen said. “Clean energy has a lot of momentum and a lot happening and a lot of public funding…. In Europe, we have a more public mindset on innovation, but North America is doing it differently: they’re driven by the private sector. They have a clear focus on companies first.”

Foresight’s report illustrates this. Among its many collaborative ideas, Foresight’s proposal includes creating a policy exchange forum, a cleantech talent matchmaking initiative, an online portal for cleantech data, an investor matchmaking program and a First Nations Clean Technology capacity building program 

“To build a strong ecosystem, things like talent and capital and access to markets are priorities,” Jackson said. “With technology being able to connect people in remote areas in core hubs, we took advantage of that.”