Montréal’s world reputation in the fields of tech, neuroscience, education, aerospace, artificial intelligence and sustainable mobility and intelligent transportation is as a ground-breaking centre of research and development. That same innovative spirit is now drawing international players in the clean technology industry, rapidly making it one of our leading economic sectors, home to 400 cleantech companies and counting.
At the forefront of a fight against climate change
The province of Québec aims to be carbon neutral by 2050 and was one of the first governments to introduce carbon pricing. Montréal makes its own contributions to this initiative on numerous fronts: Montréal was the first Canadian city to join the Global Destination Sustainability Index, we hosted the NATO Climate Change and Security Centre of Excellence and the second part of the UN Biodiversity Conference (COP15) in 2022, and the Mayor of Montréal, Valérie Plante, was appointed the first ICLEI Global Ambassador for Local Biodiversity in 2019.
Since eco-responsible practices are important to the City of Montréal, the cleantech industry fits right in.
A hotbed of cleantech expertise
Montréal’s clean technologies industry sees companies tackle several of the planet’s most pressing environmental technological concerns head on, from the electrification of the transportation network to decarbonization technologies, AgTech, bioenergy, aviation, waste and water management, and energy efficiency.
Areas of local cleantech innovation include:
- Chemistry
- Transportation
- Building decarbonization
- Agricultural technologies
- Renewable energy
A highly educated workforce
Montréal has a deep and growing pool of highly qualified talent, with 575,800 STEM workers populating the city at any given time, and 70,000+ university students enrolled in cleantech-related programs. The local higher education scene makes Montréal a bona fide city of knowledge, home to a work force to be reckoned with.
Several institutions offer cleantech-related degrees and certificates, including:
- McGill University
- Concordia University
- Université de Montréal
- Université du Québec à Montréal (UQÀM)
- Université de Sherbrooke – Longueuil Campus
- École de technologie supérieure (ÉTS)
- École nationale d’administration publique (ENAP)
- HEC Montréal
- Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS)
- Polytechnique Montréal
A home base for world players
Thanks in part to this deep talent pool, the city’s competitive operating costs and a series of attractive tax and financial incentives from the Québec (and Canadian) governments, Montréal has attracted a number of important cleantech research facilities and organizations. Over 80,000 people work in cleantech-related jobs in Québec at more than 400 innovative companies, generating nearly $8 billion in annual revenue.
Major players based in the city like Atkins-Réalis live alongside new ground-breakers like Enerkem (who’ve developed a process of manufacturing biofuels and renewal chemical products from non-recyclable waste) and GHGSat (the world’s first high-resolution satellite capable of measuring greenhouse gas emissions from any industrial facility in the world).
A list of some of the ground-breakers active in Montréal include:
- National Resources Canada’s CanmetENERGY lab
- The Water Treatment Technology and Process Research, Development and Validation Centre (CREDEAU) at Polytechnique Montréal
- The Research Centre on the Dynamics of the Earth System’s Geotop
- The Industrial Research Group in Technologies of Energy and Energy Efficiency (T3E)
- The Natural Gas Technologies Centre (NGTC)
- HydroQuébec’s research Institute, IREQ
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