Across Canada, climate innovators are developing new ways to cut emissions, adapt to a changing climate, and make our communities and ecosystems more resilient. They’re turning industrial waste and CO₂ into carbon-negative materials that can be used again. Using AI to model flood risk down to individual properties. Deploying Seedpods, drones and satellites to help restore ecosystems after wildfire, mining, and other disruptions.
At a time of economic uncertainty and ongoing climate disruption, Canada has a unique opportunity to put innovations like these to work. But are our systems designed to help promising solutions reach scale?
“There isn’t a silver bullet; there’s only experimenting, learning, and adapting.”
Earlier this year, research on community-rooted climate innovation in Canada came to the conclusion that Canada has an energized and growing climate movement that is delivering impact far greater than the funding it receives. And these innovators have a clear message: this is a moment for experimentation. We need new tools, new approaches, and the space to test what works.
The challenge for innovators is that experimentation carries risk, and risk is difficult to fund. The approaches most capable of shifting systems may also be the ones without a proven track record or predictable return. In the research report, climate justice leader Amara Possian put it this way:
“The only way forward is to experiment and learn in a rigorous way, and then to systematize things that are working. And that work is not funded because it’s risky — it might not work. There isn’t a silver bullet, there’s only experimenting, learning and adapting.”
For innovators focusing on the climate technologies Canada needs, this challenge can be colossal. The “valley of death” between an early-stage idea and full commercial viability is where many promising innovations stall. Alongside the challenges accessing capital for this stage of innovation, these innovators are navigating major structural hurdles, from regulations to supply chains, procurement processes and more. They are also addressing challenges deeply interwoven with Canadians’ lives and livelihoods.
This is precisely where a more robust approach to innovation can shape Canada’s climate future.
Rethinking what our innovation system is built to achieve
Canada’s innovation system was largely designed to support industrial competitiveness and technological commercialization. We have prioritized invention, while consistently struggling to translate good ideas into lasting change at scale. This is not a reflection of the quality of our outputs. It’s an indicator of a fragmented innovation system.
Since 2023, Earth Tech has offered one example of what a more robust approach to innovation in Canada can look like. A partnership between SI Canada and Foresight Canada, the program helps game-changing climate ventures situate themselves within the broader ecosystem — starting with the communities most affected. Instead of quick startup metrics, it emphasizes learning and long-term planning that turns urgent climate action into opportunities for deeper transformation.
Those impacts are significant: Earth Tech: 2050 ventures each have the potential to reduce or remove up to half a gigatonne of CO₂e by 2050 — more than half of Canada’s annual emissions — in the places where decarbonization is hardest, and where incremental improvements will not be enough. Earth Tech: Adapt ventures are helping communities, industries, and ecosystems facing the greatest climate risks build the capacity to withstand and respond to impacts that are already here, while strengthening resilience for the years ahead.
This month, we welcomed 18 ventures in the 2026 cohort who are working across some of Canada’s most pressing climate fronts. Their work reflects a broader proposition about what Canadian innovation can look like when we start with the challenges communities are facing and build the conditions around innovators to help promising ideas take hold.
Explore the 2026 Earth Tech ventures building climate resilience and decarbonization solutions across Canada:
