Rewiring Risk and Return in Climate Tech with Kevin Krausert, Avatar Innovations

We published 22 episodes of The Climate Cycle over the last year, here are six that we think are worth a second listen. This recap covers data centre energy demand, the state of carbon markets, Canada’s critical minerals value chain and more. We’re taking a short break after this episode, and I hope you enjoy this look back! In this episode (01:15) Sam Hasty, Active Impact Investments: what's driving the electricity demand shock, and what people get wrong about load growth. (Ep. 34) (08:36) Stephen Lake, Jetson: why more homeowners aren't switching to heat pumps, and whether millions of them could help the grid instead of straining it. (Ep. 41) (15:44) Sarah Goodman, NorthX: the trust gap in early-stage climate tech, and why Canadian companies should be global by design. (Ep. 31) (20:28) Sumreen Rattan, Moment Energy: tapping into data centre demand, and what unlocks or stalls energy storage in Canada. (Ep. 39) (26:40) Na'im Merchant, Carbon Removal Canada: government as a buyer, and whether carbon removal is in trouble or just maturing. (Ep. 38) (33:10) Mohammad Doostmohammadi, pH7 Technologies: why processing, not mining, is the bottleneck in critical minerals. (Ep. 33) Full conversations with each guest are linked below. Subscribe to the Climate Tech Canada newsletter at climatetechcanada.ca/subscribe Full Episodes: Sam Hasty - How Data Centres Are Reshaping The Grid Stephen Lake - Closing The Heat Pump Adoption Gap with Jetson Sarah Goodman - NorthX's Playbook For Scaling Climate Tech Sumreen Rattan - Turning Retired EV Batteries Into Domestic Energy Storage with Moment Energy Na'im Merchant - The Economic Case for Carbon Removal with Carbon Removal Canada Mohammad Doostmohammadi - Can We Scale Critical Minerals Without Scaling Pollution? with pH7 Technologies

This episode is part of a larger project exploring Indigenous partnerships for climate tech startups with Climate Door. More to come soon. Chad Rickaby is the CEO and co-founder of ClimateDoor. Through it’s Unify Partners practice, Chad has spent years helping put together meaningful partnerships between climate tech companies and Indigenous entrepreneurs and Nations. Many climate tech founders know there's an opportunity to work with Indigenous communities - as project partners, technology co-developers, or as adopters and buyers. But few know where to begin - and are afraid to get it wrong. As a result, companies pursue other markets and partners, or burn trust before projects start. In this episode, Chad shares his perspective on what it takes for companies to build meaningful partnerships, the failure modes that keep showing up, and why co-developing technology deserves more attention than it gets. MORE Show notes: Subscribe to our weekly newsletter: https://climatetechcanada.ca/subscribe Like the episode? Leave a review - it helps us reach more people Feedback and guest suggestions hello [ at ] climatetechcanada.ca

CRWN.ai helps utilities prevent wildfires sparked by failing grid infrastructure. These fires are rare, but they're catastrophic. In 2018, a single failure on PG&E's grid sparked California's deadliest wildfire, killed 85 people, and pushed the utility into bankruptcy. The fire made wildfire liability a board-level risk for utilities everywhere. And it keeps getting harder: transmission lines are aging, wildfire seasons are getting more intense, and rising electricity demand means even more infrastructure needs to get built. Most utilities still catch failing lines the same way they did fifty years ago: a lineman driving the corridor once every one to eight years, looking for problems. Brittany Courvoisier-Nicol, co-founder and Head of Product, and James Playford, Chief Operating Officer are working to close this gap at CRWN.ai. CRWN.ai builds sensors that clip onto power poles and listen, using acoustic and radio-frequency data to catch a failing insulator months or years before it sparks. Instead of one data point every several years, utilities get continuous, real-time awareness of what's actually at risk, and where to send crews first. TALKING POINTS Why CRWN.ai pivoted out of a defence-tech sister company and back into grid resilience

Canada is home to world class researchers and institutions. But that potential doesn’t always translate into commercial impact. Not because the technology fails, but because the lab-to-market handoff breaks down. For researchers building climate solutions — battery chemistry, carbon removal, advanced materials — it means negotiating licensing terms with your university, securing early capital, and picking up a whole set of business skills academics rarely get exposed to. Dr. Kyle Briggs has seen this challenge from the inside. He founded Northern Nanopore Instruments, a nanotechnology company that was acquired in 2023 after bootstrapping from idea to acquisition without using dilutive investment. That experience led to SAIL — the Simple Agreement for Innovation Licensing — a standardized alternative to the ad hoc equity-and-royalty deals Canadian universities cut with startups. Kyle is now the co-founder of the SAIL Fund, a venture philanthropic fund that supports companies turning publicly funded research into socioeconomic impact. He also writes about Canadian innovation policy at CanInnovate. We unpack each step of the R&D pipeline and where things break; the often conflicting incentives at play from universities, VCs, and public funding bodies, and what it would take — structurally and politically — to turn Canada's climate R&D strengths into working companies. In this episode: Where a researcher's idea gets stuck on the way to becoming a company Why U.S.-style tech-transfer licenses backfire in a market without deep risk capital How SAIL's convertible-debt structure realigns incentives for founders, universities, and investors The case for venture philanthropy — and what the UK's already figured out Why targeting a 98% failure rate can be sound policy, not a red flag Why tracking inputs instead of outcomes is holding Canadian innovation policy back What has to change first — and who has to move — to stop losing IP abroad MORE Show notes & links: https://climatetechcanada.ca/p/podcast-lab-to-market-kyle-briggs Subscribe to our weekly newsletter⁠⁠⁠ for Canadian climate tech funding, news, and trends: https://climatetechcanada.ca/subscribe Enjoying the show? Leave a review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts! Feedback or guest ideas: hello @ climatetechcanada.ca

The story in corporate sustainability right now is all about retreat: voluntary pledges walked back, advocacy groups shutting down, banks dropping emissions targets. But underneath that noise, mandatory disclosure rules in the EU and around the world are creating obligations no company can undo with a press release. That means ESG data needs to be as rigorous and auditable as financial reporting, and large companies are taking it seriously - even if they aren’t talking about it as loudly. We sat down with Charles Assaf, CEO of Novisto, a Montreal-based company that's raised $55M+ to turn scattered sustainability data into a single, audit-ready system of record. As disclosure regulation tightens globally, that infrastructure is becoming as essential to compliance teams as financial reporting systems are to finance teams. In our conversation we cover: What's actually happening in the field - beyond the ESG backlash headlines The shift from voluntary pledges to regulation-driven demand What the EU's CSRD actually requires and how Canadian companies get pulled in from the outside Why asset owners and pension funds haven't changed course, even as public pledges disappear What "audit-ready" data really means, and how ESG reporting is maturing the way financial reporting once did Building a global enterprise company from Montreal, and why AI raises the stakes on owning trusted data MORE Subscribe to our weekly newsletter⁠⁠⁠ for Canadian climate tech funding, news, and trends: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://climatetechcanada.ca/subscribe⁠⁠⁠⁠ Enjoying the show? Leave a review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts! Feedback or guest ideas: hello @ climatetechcanada.ca