Meet the Angels for Climate Solutions’ top 10 companies

Just like the earth, the Angels for Climate Solutions pitch competition is heating up. At a semi-final event held on February 28, 15 climatetech startups presented to crack the shortlist. Only 10 could advance to April’s pitch finale. Let’s meet them:

Asset Market

What it does: Smart city infrastructure matchmaking.

How it does it: Asset Market accelerates the delivery of telecommunications, electric vehicle charging, and IoT infrastructure to increase access to critical technologies that benefit society. Go deeper: The company was a finalist in the New Ventures BC 2022 competition

Build Smartr Robotics

What it does: Prefabricated steel-frame homes.

How it does it: Build Smartr Robotics employs computer-automated design, material engineering, 3D modelling, and robotics to prefabricate homes. By building homes out of 100 percent recycled steel, it creates a circular loop of building materials and makes homes that are not only non-combustible and resilient but also faster and cheaper compared to traditional wood buildings.

Etalim

What it does: Smarter energy generation.

How it does it: Burnaby-based Etalim has developed an ultra-reliable remote power solution, 1GEN. By using it to help eliminate methane venting at wellhead controls in the Canadian oil and gas industry, it can cost-effectively help reduce carbon dioxide-equivalent emissions by over 98 percent and cut Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions by one percent.

Go deeper: 19 BC cleantech leaders to know, including Etalim CTO Thomas Steiner

Farment Biosolution

What it does: Regenerative livestock farming

How it does it: Farment Biosolution is a Vernon-based agtech startup on a mission to provide livestock farmers with cost-effective regenerative farming solutions to manage livestock waste, improve soil health, and reduce the environmental impact of livestock farming. Its fermentation technology reduces the need for chemical fertilizers by transforming nutrients into a more available form for plants, increasing soil water retention capacity. This allows farmers to produce more with less.

Halitra

What it does: Financing low-carbon buildings.

How it does it: With Halitra, all banks can become green banks and all buildings can qualify for low-carbon finance. The company provides innovative real estate financing solutions to facilitate the retrofitting of small commercial buildings.

InHub Farms

What it does: Smart mushroom farms.

How it does it: Armstrong-based InHubs Farms’ vision is to revolutionize the North American food supply chain with a network of smart mushroom farms in every city. The company’s farms use robotics and smart control systems in the cloud to mimic how mushrooms grow in nature to improve taste, nutrition, and yield. By eliminating the need for long fulfillment trips and supply chains, InHub Farms is both improving the taste of crops and actively contributing to the health of people, forests, and ecosystems.

NanoTerraTech

What it does: Materials engineering.

How it does it: NanoTerraTech has developed a proprietary method to create environmentally friendly and sustainable advanced carbon materials from biomass waste, replacing fossil fuel-derived carbon materials in manufacturing. This method is 100 percent sustainable, using natural biomaterial to produce a zero-carbon footprint.

Novion

What it does: Green stormwater infrastructure.

How it does it: Novion has a mission of reducing urban flooding by helping cities adopt and manage green stormwater infrastructure. With a team of experts in capital planning, data analytics, and IoT, it offers the world’s first Green Stormwater infrastructure platform to help cities manage green infrastructure needs ranging from planning and design to operations and maintenance. By working closely with cities across Canada, including the City of Vancouver, Novion provides guidance to help create a more livable and resilient future for communities around the world.

Reusables.com

What it does: Resusables as a service.

How it does it: Reusables is on a mission to eliminate single-use packaging waste. The company helps food businesses replace single-use containers with reusables through tech-enabled packaging paired with proprietary tracking software. Its Reusables Management System tracks the reusable packaging across a network of stores, consumers, cleaners, and distributors, while simultaneously capturing climate impact data.

Go deeper: The company partnered with a Disney production in Vancouver to reduce the film set’s environmental impact.

Rockburst Technologies

What it does: Decarbonizing mining.

How it does it: Rockburst Technologies is a mining tech startup developing an innovative particle reduction technology. This new way of breaking ore and liberating valuable minerals reduces direct energy, indirect energy, and emissions by an estimated 50 percent. When done the traditional way, this type of mining consumes up to three percent of the world’s electricity. Rockburst is on a mission to, at minimum, halve this energy use and its associated greenhouse gas emissions.

Go deeper: The company’s COO Chuck Lee, alongside Bern Klein of UBC and Richard MacKellar of Chrysalix Venture Capital Fund, was awarded $300,000 courtesy of Innovate BC for their project ‘Transcritical CO2 Rock Pulverization.’ 

The second-time challenge is powered by the Vancouver Economic Commission, features TD as its funding partner, and is sponsored by Invest Vancouver. Program delivery partners include Foresight, Volition, and Spring Activator. Last year, Vancouver’s Circular Rubber Technologies took home the crown and $122,000 in investment. Like clockwork, it received more funding recently — $3.2 million from Alberta’s Circular Economy Challenge — a trend amongst these competitions: the finalists almost always secure additional funding. So, you’ve just met the startups you’ll see in the Funding and Deals section of our Sunday Briefing over the next year. Stay tuned.