Calgary’s Energy Transition Centre Foundation (ETC) was the recipient of $10 million in funding on Sept. 4, extending the efforts to position the city as Canada’s leader in energy and innovation.

The Opportunity Calgary Investment Fund (OCIF) provided $1.5 million of the investment into the foundation, while partners from PrairiesCan, Alberta Innovates, CIBC, Avatar Innovations, and Pathways Alliance were set to fund the remainder of the four-year investment.

The funding will expand the ETC’s facility and entrepreneurial resources, including their 17,000 sq. ft. flexible work space at the Ampersand Building designed for low-emission startups, and additional structured educational courses, industry workshops, and hands-on training focused on upskilling graduate students, PhD holders, and industry professionals.

Brad Parry, CEO of Calgary Economic Development and OCIF, said that the investment that the fund was making would accelerate the market environment for energy transition firms.

“We talk about all the time, our job isn’t necessarily pick winners and losers. Our job is to create the environment where the market can decide who’s going to win and lose,” he said.

“We saw our first investment with Avatar understanding how the model worked, we saw incredible success. So, this following investment was just natural for us to keep that momentum going when we move into the low carbon economy.”

He said that the OCIF funding would continue to attract more private industry investment and innovators.

“We want to see new company creation, new IP development, new job creation, and then help them find global markets to really succeed,” said Parry.

The funding is expected to train upwards of 60 individuals, support 30 existing companies, and incubate 10 new firms towards commercialization.

Parry said that funding amount for ETC was determined by what realistic outcomes could be achieved by the foundation, and what metrics could be met through the investment.

Funding comes from initial council investment into OCIF

The funding provided by OCIF was not a result of the recent top-up, provided by Calgary city council earlier this year, but rather said Parry was a part of a long-term conversation with ETC to support their goals.

Mayor Jyoti Gondek, who has served as a board member of OCIF, said that when council approved the funding for OCIF she couldn’t have imagined the impact that the fund would have had on the city—including the investment made into ETC.

“Clearly, the Energy Transition Center and the foundation have been doing amazing work. They have put us on the map globally for what we can do right here in our city when it comes to innovation in a more sustainable energy economy,” she said.

“My colleagues from the World Energy Cities Partnership (WECP) are here for an AGM this week. So, it is incredible to have mayors representing so many different cities here for this announcement. We already heard that cities like Perth and Houston are actively engaged with the Energy Transition Center. So, there’s a lot of great work coming out of Calgary.”

Vice-Mayor Philip Broeksm of Gromingen in the Netherlands, was one of the civic officials who took in the ETC funding announcement alongside many other WECP attendees.

He said he noticed the similarities immediately between what they were doing in Gromingen for energy transition to what was happening in Calgary.

So much so, that their own transition centre was also called ETC.

“It’s good to see that both the private sector and the government is supporting this Energy Transition Center in a huge way, with big money. It’s brilliant to see that. Energy transition is not something that happens outside. There’s some technicians, etc., but it has a meaningful transition for society and for the economics and which is recognized here,” he said.

“I appreciate that and I’m so happy for Calgary, for the citizens of Calgary.”

Broeksm said that in his own city, which was once recognized as the largest natural gas field in the world, the economics of predictions don’t always come true.

“We used to be world famous in the 1950s for the biggest natural gas field in the world. At the time that it was discovered, it should have been enough for a thousand years… which doesn’t turn out to be that way. Natural gas mining induces earthquakes in our city. So we wanted to stop that, and we want to move to sustainable renewable energies,” he said.

“This energy transition is the big thing that’s going on with our city. We have a top 100 university, Nobel Prize-winning research, and also applied research to make it really work in this energy transition centre, cooperating with the companies, with the housing organizations, with the government, the city government, and all parties involved in Groningen to make this energy decision happen.”

He said that in Calgary, there were discussions as part of the WECP to address the problems that cities were facing in common.

“We have kind of similar problems, but sometimes your problems, I’m happy I do not have them, I have my own problems. But to learn from each other and to learn from the challenges that we overcome or the challenges we still face,” said Broeksm.

That work has already involved, he said, collaborations from the University of Calgary and there was a hope that further collaborations would come from ETC.

“We need all the knowledge and all the experiences throughout the world, including Calgary to help us, and we can help with them and refer to what we’ve seen with best practices. This is a worldwide partnership which helps us, helps our citizens, to move forward in the right direction,” he said.