The Government of Canada today announced an investment of $55.1 million to be distributed among 20 cleantech companies from across Canada.
The funding comes from Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC) and is meant to support small and medium-sized companies that are developing solutions to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions, lessen the environmental impacts of conventional mining methods and support sustainable agricultural practices.
Recipients of the funding include startups in the cleantech and agtech sectors.
The more than $55 million is part of the federal government’s climate protection plan, with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced in December. As part of this, $750 million was allotted to re-capitalize SDTC over the next five years, with part of the goal being to help Canadian entrepreneurs commercialize clean technologies. The government noted the investment was the single largest it had ever made in SDTC.
SDTC is an independent federal foundation that funds companies focused on environmental technologies. It was created in 2001 as a not-for-profit foundation. According to the Government of Canada, SDTC-supported companies have generated $2.7 billion in annual revenues, created over 14,600 jobs and brought 126 new technologies to market, as of March 2020.
The foundation provides funding from seed stage to scale-up, and also works closely with the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) and Export Development Canada (EDC), which the government stated has resulted in $535 million in follow-on financing since 2018.
The $55.1 million in funding was broken down into five categories: waste management, power generation, energy utilization, energy exploration and production, and agriculture.
Recipients include Montréal-based AgTech startup ChrysaLabs, which announced a $1.3 million CAD seed round earlier this month. SDTC has promised $1.6 million to help ChrysaLabs with the commercialization of its soil fertility analysis solution.
Giatec Scientific, which is looking to revolutionize the concrete industry with its real-time strength monitoring solution was allotted $1.1 million from SDTC. Toronto-based Hydostor, which has developed a technology to enable the transition to a cleaner, more reliable electricity grid, is set to receive $1.6 million.
