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C Ollaboration Is Key

At the crux of energy innovation in Calgary is collaboration. While the energy sector generates a lot of revenue and jobs for Calgarians, it also poses great environmental challenges, putting it at the centre of a complex and often divisive debate.

Enter the Energy Futures Lab (EFL), which, according to managing director Alison Cretney, was created in response to this harmful polarization around energy issues. The lab brings together a diversity of perspectives — oil and gas professionals, renewable energy developers, Indigenous leaders, environmental groups, government and even artists. “We asked: How can we build from our strengths in order to accelerate transition to the energy system the future requires of us?” Cretney says. “And how do we do that in a way that incorporates equity and prosperity in a future that people want to be part of?”

EFL acts as a platform to transform those polarized conversations into actionable solutions. The lab’s guiding principle is that finding innovative energy solutions requires collaboration, insights and contributions from diverse stakeholders. It takes a multifaceted approach that recognizes the complexities and interconnectedness between our social systems and our energy system. “Innovation in the energy sector needs a comprehensive and holistic approach,” says Cretney. “The challenges we face cannot be solved in isolation.”

She adds that we need to foster conditions for innovation through competitiveness, social-cultural acceptance, public policy, regulatory controls and investment attraction. “By bringing together the right people on the right issues at the right time, we can unlock the biggest opportunities we’re seeing for the province and the city, in relation to a changing energy system.”

Such unprecedented collaboration is already happening.

Cretney refers to the global “sea change” in 2020-21, when both industry and investors, alongside governments, began making public commitments towards net-zero emissions by 2050, and acknowledging that climate risk is investment risk.

The launch of the Pathways Alliance, a joint effort by Canada’s largest oil sands producers to work together to address climate change, was a signal of that change. The Alliance companies decided to pool resources and share intellectual property. “This way, when somebody makes a breakthrough, everybody benefits quickly,” Masson says. “It’s a great innovative model. We benefit by working collaboratively.”

U Pskilling Individuals To S Upport Organizations

Part of successfully fostering collaboration and innovation is ensuring individuals have the skills and resources to set targets for their organizations and to be able to hit them. That’s where the newly launched Calgary Innovation Peer Forum comes in. Put together by the Strategic Capability Network (SCN) in Calgary, the monthly forum serves as a place for the city’s corporate innovators — many from the energy sector — to network and learn from subject matter experts.

“We wanted to focus on a framework of innovation — how do you get people to innovate in large organizations?” says Mike Procee, manager of enterprise innovation enablement and culture at TC Energy and SCN board member. “How can you inject a bit of startup culture into these behemoth organizations where you can be a catalyst for change within the organization?”

The forum aims to build a community and what Procee calls a “hive mind” to educate and upskill innovators so that they know how to help their organizations. Another pillar is establishing best practices for working with the startup community and connecting with entrepreneurs and experts. “For example, if a large organization wanted to ramp up work on blockchain, sometimes it doesn’t make sense for them to take engineers and repurpose them to recreate the wheel when there are likely multiple startups in Calgary that are blockchain experts,” says Procee. “So, [larger organizations] need to figure out how to connect with these smaller organizations and work with them better. What we hope to see is this really cool intersection between big corporations working with startups to inspire their own innovation.”

T He Right Pieces To The I Nnovation Puzzle

Calgary’s energy sector is uniquely positioned to grow exponentially during the energy transition. Procee points to Calgary’s oil and gas companies being financially stable, and therefore better equipped to take more risk with innovation, such as investing in new technologies. “In terms of resources, it’s prime time for Calgary,” Procee says. “Companies have strong balance sheets and we have all the right types of talent right here. We have the technology, the universities and the startups. We just need to get all the people at the table and get them working together to have Calgary be a massive innovation hub.”

Hayes agrees that Calgary leads with its highly educated workforce.

“Many scientists and engineers have been innovating for decades to improve oil and gas production,” he says. “Now some of their knowledge and entrepreneurial experience is being turned toward things like lithium extraction.”

Cretney points to A Roadmap for Canada’s Battery Value Chain, a collaborative report by Transition Accelerator, the Battery Metals Association of Canada, Energy Futures Lab and Accelerate, which identified an important aspect of the battery value chain that’s missing right now. “That’s the midstream, refining raw elements like lithium into battery-ready components. This is something that Alberta could be really well positioned for, alongside lithium extraction. That means we have an opportunity to integrate into a full electric-vehicle value chain across the country. It’s that type of thinking, collaboration and coordination that’s required to take advantage of the opportunities before us,” she says.

Hayes also cites the city’s entrepreneurial mindset as being critically important. “I’ve seen how innovation and new business approaches happen here, while equally smart people in less innovative cultures simply don’t have the mindsets to successfully innovate and make the innovations productive — that is, set up the business structures and investment to commercialize the innovations,” he says.

T He Land Of New Energy O Pportunities

As the energy sector continues to evolve, Calgary must take a leading role in energy transition to capitalize on emerging possibilities. “The amount of opportunities that are ahead of us with the energy transition is just phenomenal — as is the amount of capital that’s available,” says Procee (noting how Calgary set a quarterly record for venture funding at the start of 2022).

Commercialization and investment are often the most challenging parts of the innovation process. But again, Calgary’s energy sector holds an advantage. “Because our market is publicly traded, well regulated and transparent — especially compared to a lot of the other places where energy is produced — innovators are willing to come here,” says Masson. As local innovators develop technologies that work for our energy industry, other places will want them, too, which will lead to an ability to attract investment to Calgary and Alberta.

Alberta also has several government programs, incentives and resources that encourage innovation and investment in the province, from early research stages all the way through the different steps of commercialization. “The reality is market expectations are changing and investor preferences are changing,” says Cretney. “It becomes a smart business decision to align with where things are headed. We’re seeing that reflected, even with the Alberta government looking at critical minerals, hydrogen and real diversification when they talk about energy. It’s much broader than historical oil and gas as our lifeblood. We can’t be static in a rapidly changing world.”

BY CHRISTINA FRANGOU

il and gas tends to get all the buzz, but Calgary also has resources aplenty in the health-care sector that are changing the way illnesses are diagnosed, treated and prevented. The city is home to two universities with a life sciences presence, and their researchers have access to a centralized health database for the entire province — a rarity even by Canadian standards. The local health field gets an additional boost from Calgary’s burgeoning tech industry and incubators like Alberta Innovates that bridge gaps between industry and academia. Currently, the city is home to more than 120 life sciences companies that are saving lives and improving the quality of lives, be it as one-person startups or multi-million-dollar companies. Here are seven innovations that are changing the health field.

K Inetyx By Orpyx

M Edical Technologies

Since its founding in 2010, Orpyx has been a perennial star on Canada’s health innovation scene. The startup made its name with a remotemonitoring technology, designed for shoes, that can help prevent diabetic foot ulcers. Now, Orpyx is moving into an expanded market with its new product line, Kinetyx. This product, also a shoe-based technology, measures how a body moves in the real world, similar to the way that a wrist watch can measure movement, but Kinetyx provides details on what’s happening in the space between the bottom of a foot and the ground.

“There are more than 24 billion pairs of shoes produced annually,” says Breanne Everett, Orpyx’s CEO and co-inventor (and a member of Avenue’s Top 40 under 40 Class of 2012). “If you can drive the innovation behind footwear, you can have massive impacts on the way that people move.”

P Urposemed

Virtual care is a booming industry world-wide, but PurposeMed taps into underserved areas — HIV prevention, and ADHD diagnosis and treatment. People across Canada face long waits for ADHD care and barriers to HIV prevention services. In Alberta, only two per cent of prescribers are licensed to prescribe pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), the medication that’s 99 per cent effective in preventing HIV transmission. With PurposeMed’s Freddie service, patients can have a virtual assessment with a clinician who can