It started with a seed.
Carinata. You’d be forgiven for not having heard of it. It’s a variety of mustard seed. And it is the key ingredient behind a Canadian innovation that is cutting the global environmental impact of the aviation sector. From its base in Gatineau, Quebec, Agrisoma takes the oil of the Carinata mustard seed and turns it into a powerful biofuel, which then gets mixed with regular jet fuel to cut its overall GHG emissions by as much as 77%.
That seed has produced results. It has already saved the equivalent of over 160 million fossil fuel-burning kilometres of air travel. And in 2018, Agrisoma made history by partnering with Qantas International to fuel the first ever transpacific biofuel-based flight.
Financing a world first.
Getting to this point took a bright idea, a whole lot of development and demonstration, and scaling up production in order to serve big customers like Qantas. Each of those steps required financing – to the tune of more than 60 million dollars in capital investments in the case of Agrisoma. Agrisoma secured that financing from a range of private investors in addition to the Business Development Bank of Canada, a public financing institution.
Fueling more Canadian-driven world firsts.
Accelerating clean innovation in Canada means de-risking and unleashing private investment for clean innovators. Governments can help. By being a lender of first resort, governments can help clean innovators earn the confidence of the much bigger private investors.
Find out how by checking out our latest work on accelerating #cleaninnovation in Canada.
ALSO: See the first-ever Carinata-fuelled transpacific flight in action.
