The Climate Cycle

In this episode, we dive into the complex world of climate risk and how it's reshaping global financial markets. Our guest is Dr. Ron Dembo, founder and CEO of RiskThinking.AI. RiskThinking.AI leverages their digital twin of the Earth to offer the only probability-based, integrating different climate scenarios, expert insights, and millions of data points to measure and model climate financial risk. See it in action at ask.riskthinking.ai. In our conversation, we cover Why climate risk requires new approaches How understanding climate risk can accelerate the switch to a low-carbon economy The impact of climate risk on credit ratings and long-term stability RiskThinking's collaboration with Canada's financial regulator Why more Canadian businesses should back home-grown innovators About Dr. Ron Dembo Dr. Dembo has made significant contributions to mathematical algorithms and finance, and is a leading authority on financial risk management. Dr. Dembo worked on methods for solving large-scale nonlinear equations as a professor at Yale and a visiting scholar at MIT, and was honoured as a Lifetime Fellow of the Fields Institute of Mathematics in 2007. Dr. Dembo previously founded Algorithmics (acquired by Fitch Ratings), an enterprise risk management platform for the world’s top banks, and Zerofootprint, one of the first companies focused on measuring and reducing carbon footprints. Episode Notes Dr. Ron Dembo RiskThinking.AI Ask RiskThinking chatbot Nexus by Yuval Noah Harari OSFI If you liked this episode, please leave a review! You can also send feedback and ideas for future episodes to [email protected]. Want more? Sign up for our newsletter to get news and insights on Canada's growing climate tech industry at climatetechcanada.ca

Aaron Guan is the founder of Neptune Nanotechnologies, a bio-nano material startup that is converting crab and other crustacean shells from the seafood industry into nano-material additives. These additives can dramatically increase the strength, water resistance and fire retardancy of paper packaging and other materials so that they can compete in areas where plastics have historically won out - all while being fully biodegradable. In our conversation, we unpack how nanocrystals function and why they have such incredible potential; Aaron’s vision for a future with fully biodegradable products; and the impact that traditional plastics and additives have on human health and the climate. We also talk about scaling a hardtech business from lab to commercial scale, overcoming green premiums in a highly commoditized market, and lessons learned from Aaron’s first biomaterials company. Episode Links Aaron Guan Neptune Nanotechnologies Neptune's YouTube Channel The Lean Startup If you liked this episode, please leave a review! You can also send feedback and ideas for future episodes to [email protected]. Want more? Sign up for our newsletter to get news and insights on Canada's growing climate tech industry at ⁠climatetechcanada.ca

Benoit Lacroix is the co-founder and CEO at ReliON, a Reliability-as-a-Service startup offering an end-to-end experience for charging operators from problem detection to resolution. In our conversation, we talk about why these charging issues exist in the first place, how they’re integrating a range of data points to better pinpoint charger issues and deploy the right resources for the job, and the impact reliability has on widespread adoption of EVs. We also talk about what policy supports need to be in place to support electrification, the unique hurdles faced by fleet operators, and lessons Benoit’s bringing to this problem from close to 20 years experience working on electrifying transportation. Talking Points: [3:40] Why reliability is still a problem in EV charging [7:55] Benoit’s journey from muscle cars to electric heavy duty vehicles [9:48] Building ReliON out of a Venture Studio [12:39] The different end users across the EV ecosystem [16:10] The many different problems chargers can run into [25:24] How do we define reliability? [28:16] The policy landscape and tailwinds [32:00] Listening to front line drivers [35:12] Lessons on company building from Effenco Episode Links ReliON Diagram Ventures Canada’s Electric Vehicle Availability Standard A More Beautiful Question by Warren Berger If you liked this episode, please leave a review! You can also send feedback and ideas for future episodes to [email protected] Want more? Sign up for our newsletter at ⁠climatetechcanada.ca

In this episode of The Climate Cycle, we explore the world of public transit and its positive impact on our climate and communities. Our guest is Justin Hunt, co-founder and CEO at Blaise Transit. Blaise is a sustainable mobility technology provider whose objective is to improve the cost-efficiency, ridership, and coverage of transit services. Blaise’s flagship product is a universal software platform based in artificial intelligence that allows local transit agencies to implement on-demand transit, paratransit or any other reservation-based transit service, using clicks, not code. Justin has dedicated the past six years to nurturing Blaise Transit from its inception to a global force in the transit industry. Under his leadership, Blaise Transit has grown to a team of over 20 professionals and established partnerships with over 60 communities throughout North America. In our conversation, Justin shares how his personal experiences using transit growing up led to founding Blaise Transit, how on-demand solutions are improving access (and in some cases safety) for communities, and the role of public transit in tackling climate change. Episode Links Blaise Transit Justin Hunt or [email protected] Next 36 Transit App Start With Why by Simon Sinek If you liked this episode, please leave a review! You can also send feedback and ideas for future episodes to [email protected] Want more? Sign up for our newsletter at climatetechcanada.ca