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Canada's booming cleantech sector is changing capitalism, analyst argues

The more than 800 companies that make up Canada’s clean technology industry, right now the fastest growing sector of the economy, represent an emerging form of environmentally aware capitalism, argues the country’s top cleantech analyst.

"The definition of a corporation was a vitally important invention that came from the 19th Century and has evolved," Celine Bak, President of Ottawa-based Analytica Advisors told The Tyee. "We’re in the process of reconsidering that [invention]."

Bak was in Vancouver Thursday evening to speak at a climate change forum packed with businesspeople, academics and environmentalists – and hosted by, among others, the David Suzuki Foundation and the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions.

She had surprising facts to share about an industry that’s trying to solve human society’s biggest ecological challenges and turn a profit in the process. Canada’s cleantech sector grew 9 percent in 2012, according to Analytica Advisors research.

The mining, oil and gas sector grew 0.3 percent over the same period. Cleantech firms in Canada now directly employ more than 41,000 people, and in 2012, the latest period for which stats are available, generated $11.3 billion in revenue.

It’s a young industry. Many of those firms are less than 10 years old and 20 percent of their employees are under the age of 30. "Clean technology is attracting young people who’ve decided to invest their careers in this industry," Bak said.

Yet the industry’s relative youth is also preventing it from being fully recognized by the Canadian government, she argued. Cleantech doesn’t have defined status with Stats Canada, or the Bank of Canada. "We haven’t named this as a sector," Bak said.

Such recognition, and the policy support it enables, is essential for growing Canada’s cleantech firms into a $32 billion industry by 2022 that employs 120,000 people, Analytica Advisors argues. Without it, cleantech may grow to only half that size.

Despite the fast growth rate of clean technology, we are not yet winning the fight against climate change, explained Tom Pedersen, executive director of the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions. 2014 is set to be the hottest year on record.

"We’ve riled up Mother Nature," he said. "She’s getting quite angry." Heat waves, droughts, and deluges are increasing. "Climate change is here, we’ve done it," Pedersen went on. "We need to adjust to it and we need to mitigate it."

Geoff Dembicki is lead sustainability reporter for The Tyee.


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