Canada's urban and wild spaces face familiar climate challenges, but now, innovative solutions across sectors are within reach like never before! The ventures in Foresight Canada and Social Innovation Canada’s Earth Tech: 2050 program are pioneering solutions to our planet's most pressing climate issues. Get inspired by their solutions at Earth Tech: 2050 - Demo Day – Solving Canada’s Biggest Climate Challenges.

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In 2021, the agriculture sector was the fifth largest source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in Canada, contributing 10 percent of the nation's total emissions, amounting to 69 megatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (Mt CO2e). The primary culprits were animal production, crop production, and on-farm fuel use. Synthetic fertilizers accounted for 12.75 Mt of agriculture based emissions, all signaling a large need for more sustainable agricultural practices.

Meet the innovators tackling our climate challenges in agriculture:  

1. Circulus Agtech transforms organic waste like manure into sustainable fertilizers, reducing GHG emissions by 85 percent. Their system utilizes fermentation and bioreaction to convert nutrients into a plant-available form while monitoring and separating bacteria into specific formulations for growers' needs. 
2. Carbon Lock Tech converts agriculture and forestry waste into a stable biocarbon called biochar. Their process results in the permanent storage of carbon dioxide (CO2) that is often emitted during decomposition of organic waste, and offers biochar for use as a soil amendment in agriculture.
3. Cascadia Seaweed leverages seaweed cultivation to supply biostimulants for crops, enhancing growth and resilience, with goals to reduce total fertilizer use by 10 percent by 2030. Their product, FieldKelp, is a natural kelp extract derived from cultivated Saccharina latissima and Macrocystis tenuifolia, developed for plant growth and crop yields.Cascadia also produces animal feed supplements that improve feed conversion, animal microbiome and health, as well as reducing methane emissions.
4. SolarSteam offers a solution for emissions as a result of on-farm energy use. They provide low cost renewable heat through concentrated solar technology, aiming to cut costs and emissions associated with traditional heating methods used in plant and animal agriculture (among many other industries).

For Canada to reach net zero targets, there must be a transition from fossil fuels to lower carbon technologies like solar, wind, and electric vehicles. Such a transition will require a large supply of minerals and rare earth elements. The demand for these materials could lead to an increase in emissions from the mining industry, which is already responsible for 4 to 7 percent of GHG emissions globally.

Meet the innovators tackling our climate challenges in mining:

1. Rockburst Technologies’ technology is poised to reduce energy and associated emissions that are the result of the comminution process by at least two per cent. Rockburst has developed a technology that effectively breaks rock with lower energy requirements by utilizing CO2, which also holds the promise of promoting carbon sequestration. 
2. NanoTerraTech is providing a sustainable solution to the increased demand for graphite in electric vehicle batteries. They have developed a way to produce bio-graphite from forestry biomass waste, contributing to both electromobility and carbon sequestration efforts.
3. GreenLIB specializes in decentralized lithium-ion battery recycling, significantly reducing emissions relative to traditional mining methods. With the massive demand for electric batteries, comes the need for recycling solutions when products reach their end of life. GreenLIB’s process extracts essential metals and minerals from electronic waste, promoting resource efficiency and sustainability.

Canada accounts for approximately 1.6 percent of global GHG emissions , making it the 10th largest emitter. In 2021, Canada’s GHG emissions were 670 Mt CO2e . Across all sectors, there is a need to eliminate, or capture and store, emissions, to reach net zero by 2050 for all large industrial emitters.

Meet the innovators tackling our climate challenges in large industries:

1. Exterra Carbon Solutions is providing a way for large emitters to sequester CO2 emissions while transforming mineral waste like asbestos into permanent carbon sinks. Their solution results in the added bonus of the extraction of battery grade metals.
2. Terrafixing offers Direct Air Carbon Capture (DACC) technology for cold climates, providing scalable carbon removal solutions to large emitters looking to capture CO2 on a large scale. 
3. Cycle Carbone provides CO2 capture technology, utilizing the unused thermal energy of the host site, offering a cost-effective and environmentally friendly solution to carbon capture.
4. Kinitics Automation is providing a solution within the oil and gas industry to curb methane emissions. Their electric device called Kinitics Valve Actuator (KVA), replaces the pneumatic equipment commonly used in the natural gas industry, which is both powered by and exhausts methane as an end product. KVA is completely electric and eliminates 100 percent of the methane exhaust of pneumatic equipment.