"I’m a Canadian who lives in the innovative, entrepreneurial province of Alberta, and I work in the oil and gas sector. Therefore, I hope you’ll consider granting some of this money to clean energy initiatives in Canada because we’re already working on solutions that have a real chance of making a tangible impact on our global environment.
We’re doing some amazing work up here. Did you know that in 2019 Calgary, Alberta ranked in the top 15 in the world for clean technology ecosystems by San Francisco-based Startup Genome? Two thirds of these clean tech companies identify the oil and gas and mining sectors as their primary customer. With about 80 percent of the world’s energy coming from fossil fuels, let’s face it, we still need them to run our modern economy. Even though there has been tremendous investment in renewables, and they’ve gained traction as a source of energy as a result, we still need fossil fuels for the foreseeable future.
Nothing has highlighted this more than the COVID-19 crisis. It reinforces the importance of the oil and gas sector’s ability to provide reliable, affordable energy to make the products we need to keep people alive, to transport those products, and to power them as required. If we eliminate all fossil fuel products imminently without an equivalent replacement, the impact will be more devastating than the virus.
Here are a few examples of Alberta-based clean tech companies and their impressive accomplishments:
- Carbon Upcycling Technologies’ technology absorbs CO2 and turns it into inorganic solids that can be used in a variety of applications.
- Calgary-based micro-CO2 capture and utilization company CleanO2 turns CO2 into usable products such as soap.
- Eight of Canada’s 18 carbon capture, utilization and sequestration (CCUS) startups have roots in Alberta, including Carbon Engineering, Quantiam Technologies, HTC Systems, CTCNT and Industrial Climate Solutions.
- Upstream methane solution provider Questor Technology is able to generate electricity from waste heat and is moving to become a clean tech-focused emissions data company. In 2019 they placed on The Globe and Mail’s Canada’s 500 Top Growing Companies.
- Geothermal technology developers Eavor Technologies, Borealis Geopower, DEEP Corporation, and Terrapin Geothermics each achieved significant commercial milestones in 2018-2019 leveraging knowledge gained via Alberta’s oil and gas sector."
Read more about this open letter to Jeff Bezos by Deidra Garyk on EnergyNow.