A climate solitions startup shows vertical farming products

Meet the Startups | 2022 Angels for Climate Solutions Startup Cohort

These 20 promising BC startups are building innovative solutions necessary to progress a climate resilient economy.

They’ve stood out from a competitive applicant pool due to their unique blend of vision, technology and impact, and will now compete for the $100,000 investment from an angel investor cohort.

Over the next six weeks, these 20 climate solution startups will work as a cohort to expand their understanding of essential business frameworks, including sharpening their pitches and navigating deal structures. Ultimately, they will test their grit in front of angel investors through a series of preliminary pitch sessions. By the end of the preliminaries, 5 startups out of the 20 will advance to the 10-week training intensive and compete to win a $100,000 investment for their climate solution.

Refer to the program page for more details about Angels for Climate Solutions.

A Multifaceted and Diverse Approach

It’s exciting to see the diversity of this climate solutions startup cohort: it’s in both the makeup of the founders and in the solutions they are progressing, with more than half of the founders coming from underrepresented groups, including women.

Their proposed climate solutions include smart water, healthier (and more efficient) buildings, clean transportation, novel substances to use in design work, and improved data management and efficiency.

Keep reading to get to know these bar-setting startups.

Startups to Watch in 2022: Meet the Climate Solutions Startups Cohort

Aqua Intelligent Technology

Aqua Intelligent Technology provides smart drinking water monitoring and management solutions for remote and urban communities regardless of location or infrastructure status. The startup gives O&M operators 24/7 connectivity to intelligent tools needed to remotely identify, predict, alert, action and report on water facilities and water resources, such as lakes and rivers, without reliance on third-party consultants. Its science-backed insights equip remote communities with full control and confidence that their drinking water is safe.

BinBreeze

BinBreeze is an all-natural, non-toxic composting powder that eliminates smelly odours and kills fruit flies associated with indoor composting. This sustainable product reuses wood waste that would otherwise be burned, effectively reducing CO2 emissions. BinBreeze promotes the practice of composting at an individual level while producing better soil for composting facilities and local growers.

Blue Dot Motorworks

Blue Dot Motorworks Inc. (BDM) is on a mission to dramatically accelerate the adoption of electrified driving through its family of vehicle-agnostic retrofit hybrid systems (RHS). When installed on existing vehicles, BDM’s technology helps to propel them with electric power while keeping conventional drivetrains available for occasional use. The technology can be manufactured in high volume at low cost; with a consistent installation process, third-party installers may also be leveraged, enabling rapid global expansion.

Breeze Traffic

Breeze Traffic measures and reduces carbon emissions in cities by applying the latest advances in computer vision and AI to actively manage traffic lights in real-time. Breeze Traffic algorithms apply reinforcement learning with the aim of decreasing emissions from traffic at intersections.

Circular Rubber Technologies

Circular Rubber Technologies (CRT) converts the rubber in end-of-life industrial tires into a rubber reclaim that substitutes virgin material. The company’s CRT tech provides tire manufacturers with a high-quality alternative to virgin rubber at significantly lower CO2 emissions and stable cost levels. CRT’s proprietary process is clean and produces a rubber reclaim with physical properties suitable for use in tires. The team combines decades of experience in rubber recycling, capital project management and venture-backed scaleups.

Halitra

Halitra’s cloud-based diagnostic algorithms detect and diagnose common faults endemic in small commercial buildings, which comprise some 94% of commercial building stock – many of which are under-resourced in achieving these diagnostics. Halitra sends kits to organizations that have purview of small commercial building stock so energy- and emission-saving opportunities can be identified at a municipal scale – cost-effectively and time-efficiently.

ioAirFlow Inc.

ioAirFlow is an automated analysis solution that analyzes the health and efficiency performance of commercial buildings, and provides recommendations on improvements to a building’s ventilation, air quality, and energy efficiency. For buildings that don’t have embedded monitoring or sensor tech, ioAirFlow is a simple solution that can save thousands of dollars against existing manual or capital-intensive processes.

Northern Metrics

Northern Metrics’ mission is to change the way heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems operate in buildings by tackling flaws inherent to the current HVAC control paradigm. Northern Metrics’ Building Operations Supervisor, or BOS, represents a new approach to HVAC controls, combining a comprehensive HVAC modelling tool, optimization, and machine learning in a software package that works in a supervisory capacity with existing HVAC control systems to minimize energy costs and GHG emissions, while maintaining or improving occupant comfort.

Origen Air Systems Ltd.

Origen Air’s clean-air-as-a-service provides clients an unbeatable level of indoor air purification, air quality data reporting and stunning biophilic design. The startup’s scalable fleet deployments provide clean air for any size commercial space at a monthly fee without capital expenditures. Origen Air creates healthy buildings that protect their most valuable assets: staff, customers, and the air they breathe.

Poly V. Technology Inc.

Poly V. Technology is a cleantech company focused on the development of novel materials and technologies mainly for climate change and energy crisis mitigation. The company’s first product is fPDCPD, a light, strong and green novel polymer steel that can replace traditional high-weight metals. fPDCPD is an ideal replacement for traditional materials used to produce the body panels and other components in vehicles, and carries the potential to change the battery electric vehicle market by cutting the weight of automobiles and extending their ranges significantly.

Properate

Properate is a local social-purpose firm on a mission to facilitate high-performance, low-rise residential (Part 9) construction and renovation. With a quick visit to Properate.io, Canadians can make quick estimates of their home performance to find the best energy upgrades. The company’s tools help homeowners, contractors and realtors estimate a home’s energy performance; and helps homebuilders, energy advisors, utilities and cities create detailed energy models of buildings.

Scootility

Scootility is building a utility scooter — a safer, more rugged electric scooter with ample cargo capacity for the personal user. The scooter also supports delivery companies that require compact electric micro-mobility vehicles that are manoeuvrable, easy to park, and optimized for delivery. And, it’s ideal for scooter-sharing companies that need to attract more users, serve a wider range of trips, improve unit economics, and satisfy tougher regulators.

ShareWares

By harnessing current city infrastructure and creating a complex yet user-friendly technology, ShareWares believes it is entirely possible to end the world’s single-use garbage crisis within the next decade. Sharewares offers a suite of complementary and a la carte products and services, including an advanced washing service for reusable containers, tracking technology and a supporting customer convenience app, and product development consulting to assist businesses in their transition to reusable products and packaging.

SkyAcres Agrotechnologies Inc.

SkyAcres has developed a low-cost vertical farming system to combat food insecurity and solve inefficiencies in the farming industry by minimizing water usage, increasing yield, and untethering farms from their respective climates. SkyAcres’ affordable system is geared towards making aeroponic vertical farming more cost-effective. The company’s current research aims to employ carbon capture technologies to capture and utilize carbon from city air to aid in growth and yield.

Solaires Enterprise Inc

Solaires’ technology and products enable solar cell manufacturers to produce a new generation of solar panels with a shorter value chain, 40-60% lower manufacturing costs, 40% lower GHGs, and with the potential to increase output power up to 3X. The company’s product is a perovskite-based ink that generates three times more power than what’s currently available on the market, can be coated on both rigid and flexible substrates, and is stable in an ambient environment and compatible with large-scale coating processes.

Solar Earth

Solar Earth‘s paving-integrated photovoltaics (PIPV) product turns sun-exposed infrastructure into a multiuse surface, generates renewable electricity, and capitalizes on free solar energy without intensive land use while retaining its original purpose. The company’s take on PIPV is a hardened solar module capable of handling heavy mechanical loads, such as low-velocity passenger and commercial vehicles and pedestrians, and is impervious to extreme weather events. Solar Earth is on a mission to transform existing infrastructure into an active, profit-generating space.

Square Solar

Square Solar is an innovative solar company that builds proprietary detachable solar panels to harvest solar energy. The company strives to make solar energy feasible for everyone, believing that solar energy can shape the world’s future.

Swiss Vault

At its current rate of growth, data will consume 10% of the world’s energy by 2025. Data storage servers are high-tech systems that consume the majority of this energy for computation and other data operations. Swiss Vault has redesigned data storage hardware to reduce energy consumption by 10X, improve space utilization, and helped to reduce the complexity of operating these systems so everyone can manage their own data assets with lower costs and less impact on the environment.

Tradle

Tradle’s Clothing-as-a-Service platform helps new parents with fast-growing babies and toddlers have all the clothes their child needs (and outgrows) returned and replaced whenever there’s a growth spurt – all for a simple and affordable monthly subscription. This circular clothing service also saves clients 70% of the cost of constantly buying new clothes.

Velometro Mobility Inc

Veemo™ is a micro-mobility solution with three wheels to move people efficiently within urban areas. Veemo’s proprietary vehicle is zero-emission and semi-enclosed to protect users from the elements, and also features turn signals, windshield wipers, a 73km range on a single charge, swappable batteries, computerized electric assist drivetrain and a plethora of other features.