Avatar Ignite Participant Spotlight: Ahsan Syed

About Ahsan Syed:

Ahsan is a Calgary-based climate change professional with more than nine years of experience advising clients across the public and private sectors on clean technology implementation, energy decarbonization, climate policy/offsets, climate risk, and net zero corporate strategy. His work experience spans Canada, the U.S., and the U.K., including some of the world's largest energy and management consulting companies. Ahsan currently provides fractional commercial strategy support to the management teams of fast-growing cleantech start-ups and scaleups in the hydrogen, renewable fuels, and sustainable concrete sectors. 

What the Avatar Ignite experience was like, including some of the highlights: 

The Ignite Avatar program was certainly a challenging but highly intellectually stimulating experience. Working with a group of people across geographies, with different academic and professional backgrounds and varying levels of subject-matter expertise, while mapping out potential opportunities in the highly complex world of hydrogen was not an easy endeavour. However, the support we received from mentors, the program organizers, and the peer group of other teams kept us on track and motivated through the program. The biggest highlights were the Friday sessions, which brought together world-renowned experts and executives from Canada's most prominent startups and energy companies to share their stories and experiences navigating innovation.   

About the HyWay team’s proposed business solution: 

Our pitch was focused on mapping the network of abandoned or soon-to-be abandoned pipelines in North America and building a patchwork of retrofitted hydrogen pipelines connecting large hydrogen producers with off-takers. Hydrogen transport and storage represent one of the most significant barriers to wide-scale adoption. While pipelines already represent the lowest-cost method of hydrogen transport, the CAPEX associated with retrofitted hydrogen pipelines is 10-30% that of greenfield development. Combined with the fact that more than 100,000+ km of pipelines will be abandoned in the next five years in Alberta alone, we thought there was a clear opportunity for utilizing late-life asset pipelines for hydrogen distribution. 

Next steps and career goals:  

The innovation ecosystem in Calgary is rich and ever evolving; between the Avatar program, Platform Calgary, Plug and Play, Start-up TNT, Innovate Calgary, Creative Destruction Lab (Rockies), and Foresight, there is no shortage of opportunities for cleantech startups. My goal is to continue to embed myself in this thriving ecosystem as a mentor and subcontractor directly with cleantech startups, as an advisor to larger corporations looking to identify, assess, and trial new technologies, and as a thought leader to help develop new ideas and policies to fast-track the deployment of innovation.  

Is there anything else you'd like to add? I would like to thank the Avatar team and CRIN for enabling this opportunity for young professionals in Alberta.