Callaghan Innovation has set an ambitious target to boost New Zealand into the top 10 countries on the Cleantech Group Innovation Index (CGII) by 2022 – up from the current ranking of 22nd.
What's in this article
The CGII forecasts which countries have the greatest potential to produce CleanTech startups that will commercialise innovations over the next 10 years. Callaghan Innovation’s first-ever CleanTech report – NZ CleanTech for the World: The New Waste to Value – highlights New Zealnd’s strong position to launch profitable CleanTech businesses, particularly in the Waste-to-Value space.
‘NZ CleanTech’ refers to successful New Zealand businesses that develop innovative products, processes and services that bring about a stable climate, clean water and smart-resource use, in New Zealand and globally. Waste to Value, a subcategory of CleanTech, involves turning waste streams into income.
“New Zealand’s small scale, R&D expertise in niche areas and environmental challenges make New Zealand an ideal CleanTech testing ground,” says James Muir, Callaghan Innovation Business Innovation Advisor, Energy and Environment. “It’s clear that investing in, and supporting the development of, unproven innovations in Waste to Value needs to be a focus for New Zealand going forward.”
New Zealand also has a strategic advantage in the Biological Waste-to-Value space through the country’s connection to mātauranga (knowledge) Māori, and the role that kaitiakitanga (guardianship) plays in Kiwi innovation.
Of the 120 Kiwi CleanTech businesses on the agency’s database, 51% focus on solutions for stable climate, 28% on smart resource use, and 21% on clean water.
Overview of NZ CleanTech for the World: The New Waste to Value report by James Muir, Business Innovation Advisor - CleanTech, Callaghan Innovation.
NZ CleanTech for the World, virtual event
[James Muir]
Last week on the 18th of November 2020 we launched our first ever cleantech report to showcase successful waste to value businesses, if you haven't had a chance to see the report well we've put in a link to the report right now so check it out and let us know what you think. Back to the fundamentals, cleantech, we believe is a real and growing business opportunity and the report, the new waste of value is designed to inspire and guide cleantech innovators.
Let's pedal back to why this is so interesting to New Zealand and indeed the world, first up is that there's a really strong and growing investor interest in cleantech, let's look at some of the numbers- so a recent study by PWC found that venture capital in climate tech is growing three times faster than that in artificial intelligence and five times faster than the average growth in venture capital, another stat is back in 2013 early stage venture funding for climate tech companies was about half a billion us dollars by the time we got to 2019, this had grown to about 16 billion dollars, clearly a significant increase, and now let's just think about multinationals, so globally Covid19 has slowed down some cleantech initiative by multinationals but still very significant initiatives continue to be announced, for example we've got Amazon's two billion dollar climate pledge, we've got Microsoft's one billion dollar climate innovation, I've got Unilever's another billion dollars in climate funds, so what does this mean? What we're seeing is that multinationals are getting really interested in solving environmental challenges and they are looking more and more to invest in innovations from external sources and this is contributing to an increased engagement with small and large businesses outside of these multinationals.
Let's move on to some definitions, so what do we mean at Callaghan Innovation by New Zealand cleantech for Callaghan? New Zealand cleantech is about successful New Zealand businesses that invest in research and development to create innovative products processes and services that address three major environmental challenges- the climate crisis, water pollution and shortages and unsustainable resource use, now critically, this is about creating successful businesses and solving environmental problems not just in New Zealand but globally as well, we believe that New Zealand has a number of competitive advantages in cleantech including an increasing awareness of and a deeper more authentic engagement with Kaitiakitanga the Maori world view of how we interact with the environment, another advantage is New Zealand's track record of developing and being the test bed for novel weird technologies that have significant commercial scale this includes our international reputation and leading research and development for our primary industries and products and lastly New Zealand's awareness that cleantech provides some of the solutions for our greatest environmental challenges and at the same time provides New Zealand with an important opportunity to grow our economy post Covid.
The report we launched last week focuses on one category of clean tech namely waste to value so what is waste of value? In summary waste of value involves turning waste streams into revenue streams our report explores industrial waste of value and biological waste of value in more detail, there are other types of waste to value innovation but we chose these two areas because they present significant commercial and environmental opportunities for New Zealand innovators the report includes case studies of successful businesses and how Callaghan Innovation together with other organisations activated their innovation and accelerated their growth.
And here's an example of one of those case studies this is Zinc Covery winner of Callaghan Innovations environmental innovation prize 2020 Zinc Covery is all about solving problems for the steel galvanising industry worldwide Zinc Covery has developed a novel process to economically recover the zinc and regenerate the acid during the steel galvanising process the company's technology and business model has enormous commercial potential and once at scale will dramatically reduce the amount of zinc and acid that ends up in landfill and wastewater not just in New Zealand but globally
So our environmental innovation sea prize is part of New Zealand inc's two-year plan to strengthen the clean tech ecosystem as Stefan noted earlier New Zealand can take the lead on clean tech globally Callaghan Innovation together with other organisations are working together to set up the conditions for New Zealand businesses large and small established and startup to create and grow clean technologies for this reason our chief executive Vic Crone has laid down the challenge for New Zealand to be in the top 10 cleantech countries by 2022. Sea prices focus on environmental innovation the new waste to value report today's event all feed into this significant and ambitious goal and early next year we'll be further building on this work by assessing global opportunities for climate technologies and continuing to build and deliver on the two-year plan to strengthen New Zealand's cleantech ecosystem but this work isn't about cleantech businesses it isn't just about Callaghan Innovation it's about working together as NZ Inc this slide shows just some of the organisations and people that have assisted the waste to value businesses in the report one of the key findings of the new waste of value report is that it takes a village to create and grow New Zealand cleantech for the world such collaboration activates innovation and accelerates the growth of cleantech businesses helping them to develop profitable and scalable solutions for the pressing environmental challenges that we're all facing.
Growing investor interest in CleanTech
CleanTech is already capturing investors’ attention: venture capital investment in ClimateTech alone is growing three times faster than in AI and five times the average growth in overall venture capital investment, according to the latest data from PWC.
“Environmental challenges are only getting bigger and more complex, so business-led innovation needs to play an even bigger and more complex role in solving these challenges,” says Muir.
The value of Waste-to-Value innovations to New Zealand’s economy is already estimated to be in the billions. Muir says innovation is essential to develop solutions for both environmental problems and New Zealand’s economy, and to contribute to New Zealand’s economic recovery after COVID-19.
The CleanTech report highlights two specific areas of Waste to Value – Biological and Industrial – that have significant and largely untapped commercial opportunities in New Zealand, and shows how partnerships between innovators, investors and government agencies are essential to maximising these opportunities.
For example, nanotechnology and extraction specialist, Ligar, has partnered with Te Whāi Ao Ltd, the investment arm of Te Awanui Huka Pak, owned by Māori horticulturalists. Through Ligar’s spinout business, The Refinery, the businesses are working to commercialise valuable bioactive molecules extracted from waste materials from hops, avocado, kiwifruit and hemp, creating a potential Māori-led export sector.
Kiwi giant, LanzaTech, is a strong example of an Industrial Waste-to-Value success story, having raised more than US$250m over the past 15 years. Its technology turns industrial gas into ethanol which can be used as an energy source, such as jet fuel, reducing CO₂ emissions.
Callaghan Innovation’s CleanTech report showcases a range of Waste-to-Value success stories and provides practical advice on how businesses can turn their own CleanTech concepts into commercial realities.
CleanTech event – NZ CleanTech for the World
On 25 November, we’re hosting our inaugural CleanTech event – NZ CleanTech for the World – to delve into the report themes and hear from CleanTech experts on how to drive innovations in this space.
Hear from a panel of Kiwi CleanTech experts: Veronica Stevenson, Humble Bee founder and CEO, Ashton Partridge, Manufacturing Systems Chief Science Officer and Shalini Divya, TasmanION Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer
These experts will be joined by US-based Kiwi eco-pioneer Dr Sean Simpson, LanzaTech Chief Scientific Officer and Co-Founder. Find out more and register.
