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Helping Small and Medium Businesses Go Low Carbon 2018

VIEW Proposals
Proposal creation

CoLab members create proposals

Jun 12, 2018 12:00 EDT - Jul 11, 2018 06:00 EDT
1st review
CoLab members create proposals

Jul 11, 2018 06:00 EDT - Jul 11, 2018 06:00 EDT
Proposal creation

CoLab members create proposals

Jul 11, 2018 06:00 EDT - Aug 3, 2018 06:00 EDT
Finalist selection
Expert judges select finalists

Aug 3, 2018 06:00 EDT - Aug 27, 2018 02:00 EDT
Voting period
Public Voting Period

Aug 27, 2018 02:00 EDT - Sep 10, 2018 12:00 EDT
Completed
Winners are awarded

Sep 10, 2018 12:00 EDT
What initiatives, products, services or tools can help Ontario’s small and medium-sized businesses thrive while reducing their emissions?

Small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), employing 1-499 people, are the core of the economy in the Province of Ontario, Canada, and will be critical to the low-carbon economy of the future. However, SMEs face many barriers to taking action to reduce their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, such as the cost of inputs – particularly electricity, unpredictable revenue streams, tight margins, time pressures, and capacity gaps.

 

Tailored solutions and strategies are needed to better assist Ontario’s SMEs in the transition to a low-carbon economy. This contest seeks to solicit a broad range of possible solutions to help SMEs reduce their direct and indirect GHG emissions while helping them thrive (e.g., by growing, increasing profitability, improving employee retention, etc.). 

*Note: Due to recent political events, Province of Ontario’s cap & trade program was ended— the proceeds of which went to funding these kinds of emissions reduction programs. As a result, the Centre for Social Innovation will likely no longer be able to provide financial support to the winners, but putting a spotlight on these solutions and supporting them in other ways has become all the more important. The winning solutions will be promoted and celebrated widely, and receive free one-year memberships at Climate Ventures, the Centre for Social Innovation’s climate solutions incubator in Toronto.

What:
Where:
Who:
How:
30 Proposals
Equip Ontario cities and their businesses to understand their emissions by sector, size and emission source to achieve reductions & savings.
Pitstop predicts vehicle emissions failures by analyzing connected car data with proprietary machine learning algorithms.
Creating an intelligent building retrofit platform to optimize efficiency and decrease energy consumption for any commercial buildings.
Before they were SMEs they were ambitious start-ups. We will develop the resources to help start-ups grow into a low carbon SME
EcoBusiness Network’s Impact Initiative will provide carbon reduction support for small- and medium-sized businesses in Durham Region.
Establish, sustain and operate a non-profit “Think Tank” of “matured professionals collective intelligence” for purposes of GHG reduction.
Energy efficient - sensor activated - electrical heating, cooling, air quality control and more - via Universal Ceiling Fan.
A design approach to help Vertical Wind Turbines reach peak speeds and generate more energy in the same winds as conventional counterparts.
DAVE combines the best of the automobile with the best of rail in a package that is inexpensive and quick to install.
A sustainable toilet system that employs special formulated bacterial culture to treat human waste and transform it into natural fertilizer.
Small and Medium Business Enterprise (SME) can lower their carbon footprint by using building products that incorporate recycled waste
A single biodigester in a commercial kitchen can reduce 1000 Tonnes of CO2e over its lifetime while saving businesses money.
Concentrated Solar Energy, can be efficient and very effective in Canada, in combination with Absorption Chillers and Geothermal Energy.
With a common fund, the SMEs can master key challenges such as reducing greenhouse gas emission
An activist’s tool to nudge companies to take positive actions to reduce CO2 emissions.
Embedding divergent perspectives into the design processes of high-growth innovators to create scalable pathways for positive disruption.
The Distributed Resources Web App will show simply and accurately how much SMEs can save with Distributed Energy Resources (DERs).
One-on-one support combined with group dynamics removes barriers for small businesses to execute sustainability actions.
Our service is a last mile delivery service that operates via a network of hubs and a network of zero-emission transportation modes.
Creation of a training program and resource kit to help SME employees carpool, bike, walk or take transit more frequently.
Clean Energy for SMEs with heating, cooling and compressed air using incoming water flow and reduced GHG emissions, while saving costs.
Through green energy acquisition, SME's become members of a points program that rewards the best practices actions to reduce GHG emission.
Starting with renewables is cost prohibitive. Practical and lucrative conservation measures generate savings to support such investment.
Food wastes (FWs) generated from H&R in cities cause several problems. I propose model for production and marketing of animal feed from FWs
Decrease electric power used in electric motor, optimize energy consumption and decrease GHG emission with increase technology generator.
SME's use fleets of their own vehicles to deliver or pick-up products. To reduce emissions the uber model will be used for logistics.
Modify existing vehicles to accept various fuel types for cleaner combustion. Also add electric motors to any vehicle with battery options$
Shade structures support Solar Panels and provide EV charging for investors.
Very light, very cheap, thin lenses of acrylic material already created by me reaching 2000 degree for cheap electricity generation
Small business can put a public charger asking customers to plugin while they are shopping or eating at that store.