The third of three posts looking at the Foresight 50 by region. Read about BC’s cleantech allstars or what Alberta’s innovators are focused on. This post focuses on ventures from Ontario, Quebec, and the Maritimes who were selected for the Foresight 50. 

On November 23, Foresight announced the inaugural Foresight 50, a collection of the most investable cleantech companies in Canada as determined by a panel of industry experts.

It was an inspiring event. At Foresight, our goal is to see Canada transform its economy to become a global leader in clean technology development, bringing forward the solutions the world needs to curb climate change and meet the needs of 9 Billion people sustainably. Canada has the talent, the expertise, and the will to develop and deploy these solutions - and the innovators profiled at the event prove it.

The Foresight 50 are a diverse group of technology-enabled enterprises from across Canada who offer a variety of solutions to urgent global challenges across a wide range of sectors.

Many of these innovators are focused on solutions related to water tech.

• Graphite Innovation and Technologies (Nova Scotia) is developing sustainable marine coatings to help reduce fuel consumption and GHG emissions for the maritime transportation sector.
• Oneka Technologies (Quebec) turns waves to freshwater by harnessing the ocean’s wave-energy to create a mechanical desalination process.
• Technologies Ecofixe’s (Quebec) two sustainable modular solutions, ECOFIXE and BIOFIXE, are municipal and industrial wastewater treatment alternatives.

Other ventures are working on energy solutions.

• BrainBox AI (Quebec) is working to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from buildings by combining artificial intelligence and cloud computing to create a fully autonomous commercial HVAC solution.
• e-Zinc (Ontario) has created a fully recyclable zinc-based energy storage system.
• Manifest Climate (Ontario) connects AI with climate expertise to deliver solutions and empower organizations to empower customers to make informed, sustainable decisions. 
• Peak Power (Ontario) deploys energy management solutions like electricity optimization, on-site batteries, and mobile batteries into commercial and industrial facilities to increase efficiency.
• SWTCH Energy (Ontario) is focused on solving the challenges of deploying EV charging in multi-tenant buildings along with solving the challenge of increased energy demand from EV charging infrastructure.

Emission measurement and carbon removal are other areas where Canada’s cleantech innovators are deploying cutting-edge solutions. 

• Using only electricity and water, CERT Systems (Ontario) converts captured CO2 into basic chemicals.
• GHGSat (Quebec) uses satellites to monitor greenhouse gas emissions from industrial facilities worldwide, providing a more complex and complete picture of our emissions. 
• Planetary Hydrogen (Nova Scotia) is focused on curbing Industrial and transportation emissions by removing CO2 directly from air and sequestering it while at the same time producing a clean fuel - hydrogen.

Others on the Foresight 50 are creating solutions in a variety of sectors, including environmentally conscious retail options and natural resource extraction.

• Evoco (Ontario) is developing plant-based, natural products using green chemistry to replace petrochemicals and harmful materials. Retail catch all
• Flash Forest’s (Ontario) rapid drone reforestation technology exceeds the speed of human tree planting, while also bypassing safety risks by automating the entirety of physical planting.
• Novamera (Ontario) has developed a sustainable mining method to target small-scale narrow vein mineral deposits found worldwide more safely and economically using unique downhole sensors, machine learning algorithms and drilling technology.

Meet the Foresight 50 and check out detailed profiles of all ventures in the Pitchbook.