Driving the Growth of Green Start‑ups in Canada

4. Building green entrepreneurial ecosystems

Abstract

This chapter assesses policies and programmes in Canada to develop and support its green entrepreneurial ecosystems, including through funding for dedicated business support organisations, public procurement measures, and matchmaking with potential customers. Lessons from international policy experiences in Australia, Denmark, Portugal, and the United States are also presented.

Overview of policy approaches internationally

Building green entrepreneurial ecosystems

Entrepreneurial ecosystems are the broad set of interacting actors and factors that affect the scale and quality of entrepreneurship in a place (OECD, 2025[1]). Start-ups, established companies, policy makers, investors, research institutions, and business support organisations are all important players within a green entrepreneurial ecosystem (OECD, 2025[2]).

Government policy can play a crucial role in fostering the development of dynamic and productive entrepreneurial ecosystems. They are an important source of funding for business incubators, accelerators and other start-up support organisations, which provide crucial supports and services to green start-ups including mentoring, funding, access to facilities and office space, peer learning, and training. Public funding enables incubators and others to enhance the quality and expand the reach of their services and programmes. A mix of funding approaches are evident across OECD countries, with some initiatives providing funding to third-party entities and others establishing programmes delivered by public entities. Governments also play a role in boosting the capabilities of incubators and their staff through the issuance of guidance and best practices, the formation of incubation networks, and the organisation of peer learning among incubator staff. Part of the international trend towards greater specialisation in business incubators has been the emergence of sustainability-oriented business incubators, which target start-ups with green products and services and therefore play a key role within green entrepreneurial ecosystems (Fichter and Hurrelmann, 2021[3]). Policy can also support the establishment of cluster organisations or ecosystem hubs, which generally have a mandate to convene different entrepreneurial ecosystem actors and facilitate networking and partnerships. These entities are usually sector-specialised, with numerous examples of publicly-funded green-focused clusters across the OECD.

Access to finance is another core aspect of an entrepreneurial ecosystem. As described in Chapter 3, governments are increasingly operating as direct funders for green start-ups. However, they are also active in bolstering the private financing system. For example, many public funding programmes seek to derisk green projects in order to catalyse private investment. It is also common for funding programmes to attach matching funding requirements as a condition for support. Another approach is for public entities to inject capital into private funds in order to enhance their capacity to then invest in green start-ups and scale-ups.

Conditions for green entrepreneurship development are influenced heavily by the strength of markets and levels of demand for green products and services. Large corporates are an important source of demand for green innovations, with some countries having programmes in place to connect green start-ups with potential corporate buyers and fund co-innovation activity. There are also strong opportunities for green start-ups to integrate into the cleantech value chains of multinational enterprises and there is a growing policy focus on facilitating supply chain collaboration and integration (OECD, 2025[4]).

Another key policy lever to bolster demand for green goods and services is the application of carbon prices, which provide more environmentally-sustainable products with a competitive edge relative to others in the market by embedding a measure of environmental costs within final prices. Also important is the application of environmental regulations, which are necessary for ensuring the competitiveness of many green start-ups by restricting or by making environmentally-damaging goods and services more costly and thus strengthening markets for green alternatives. Governments can also boost demand more directly by procuring more from green start-ups. This can have a transformative impact for new firms by providing a reference first client that can help them to attract further customers. Many governments now have green public procurement strategies, although implementation progress is mixed. Common approaches include mandatory sustainability criteria, requirements to measure lifecycle costs when making purchasing decisions, and developing platforms to raise visibility of green goods and services.

Assessment of Canada’s policy approach

In addition to supporting green start-ups directly through the delivery of financial and non-financial assistance, public authorities are also engaged in strengthening the wider green entrepreneurial ecosystem, in order to create a more conducive environment for green entrepreneurship development. This section reviews the major policies in place in Canada to enhance the green entrepreneurial ecosystem and build demand for green start-ups’ products and services.

Funding enabling support actors in the entrepreneurial ecosystem

One of the distinguishing features of Canada’s policy approach to promoting green entrepreneurship is federal and provincial governments’ frequent recruitment of third-party entities to deliver assistance to green entrepreneurs and start-ups. This has helped to create vibrant and dynamic support systems for green start-ups. Examples abound across the country, with government entities – both at the federal and provincial level – often funding programmes or initiatives delivered by private incubators, accelerators, or cluster organisations such as the MaRS Discovery District, Foresight Canada, Emissions Reduction Alberta, Écotech Québec, and the RXN Hub in Kingston, Ontario.1 The Cleantech Sector Team of the Industrial Research Assistance Program (IRAP) also funds specialist organisations in the industry to deliver services to start-ups where it is not feasible for IRAP to deliver them internally due to either time or expertise constraints. These contributions to third party organisations target gaps or weaknesses in the current support landscape. The services that are contracted include investor readiness training, mentoring, leadership skills development, and matchmaking.

These publicly supported initiatives are complemented by the activities of numerous other private or not-for-profit support actors that work to represent and coalesce green entrepreneurial ecosystem actors, the Ontario Clean Technology Industry Association being one example. These organisations play a vital role in Canada’s green entrepreneurial ecosystem, facilitating connections between green start-ups and other ecosystem actors and providing a range of valuable services and facilities to entrepreneurs. Many also serve as clusters or hubs that consolidate support for green start-ups and connect them with other ecosystem actors, including potential buyers. They also help to provide a bridge between academia and industry, leveraging a key strength of Canada’s green entrepreneurial ecosystem which is its high-quality academic research. Box 4.1 describes in more detail the different ways in which they support green start-ups in Canada.

Box 4.1. The role of non-governmental support organisations – selected examples from Canada’s green entrepreneurial ecosystem

Canada is home to an abundance of excellent support institutions from the private or non-profit sector which, often with government assistance, deliver vital resources and services to green entrepreneurs. Some selected examples that play an important role in Canada’s green entrepreneurial ecosystem include:

• MaRS Discovery District, Ontario: MaRS is North America’s largest urban innovation hub, with nearly 140 000 square metres of office, lab, meeting and event space across four buildings in downtown Toronto. It is a non-profit organisation funded mainly through rent, service fees, public support, and corporate and philanthropic donations. MaRS currently houses more than 120 start-ups and established companies. In addition to delivering numerous incubation programmes, MaRS is a convener of the innovation ecosystem. It has partnerships with a large number of corporate, academic, venture capital, public, and philanthropic institutions. MaRS’ location is central to its support offer to start-ups, with its proximity to federal offices, universities and financial institutions considered a key asset. This asset is exploited through the organisation of around 2 000 events each year, which facilitates strong interactions between different actors in the entrepreneurial ecosystem. Another success factor is its network of more than 100 volunteer experts with specialised and niche expertise. MaRS applies a mission-oriented innovation strategy, with its long-term “Mission from MaRS” programmes targeting public procurement, carbon dioxide removal, and the decarbonisation of buildings. These missions are multi-stakeholder by design, combining venture cohorts, corporate adopters, and capital partners to break cleantech out of “pilot purgatory” and into commercialisation.

• Emissions Reduction Alberta (ERA): ERA is a non-governmental organisation funded by the government of Alberta through revenues from the province’s industrial carbon price. It funds green innovation projects typically at TRL levels 7-9, targeting initiatives at the valley of death phase. The budget over the past 16 years has been CAD 1 billion, which has been deployed to support more than 300 projects, with funding amounts ranging from CAD 1 million to above CAD 10 million in non-dilutive grants. Demand for funding through ERA is very high, though many projects fall through due to them not being able to meet the ERA’s matching funding requirements. To address this, the ERA has launched a dedicated funding call for Canadian SMEs, which does not impose matching funding requirements. It has also developed a programme that provides 20 hours of mentorship to SMEs with experts in residence from the cleantech sector, in order to address gaps in expertise in issues such as technology adoption or commercialisation. Part of the success of ERA can be attributed to the flexibility with which it can operate as a non-governmental organisation, which, among other things, enables it to issue funding more rapidly. ERA also has very good co-ordination with national public entities such as NRCan, NRC and ISED, which takes the form of project co-funding and the acceptance of project referrals from trusted partners.

• Écotech Québec: Écotech Québec is the cluster organisation for the province’s cleantech sector. Its core role is to represent Québec’s green entrepreneurial ecosystem, which it performs through financial support from private partners, the organization Communauté métropolitaine de Montréal, and the governments of Québec and Canada. One of the key activities is to connect developers of green technologies with potential clients, which could be either companies or government actors. Écotech Québec places a focus on talking to companies and municipalities to understand their environmental and organisational challenges and subsequently to identify Québec or Canada-based cleantech solutions that respond to these challenges. This responds to one of the major challenges that green start-ups face, which is finding first customers. Écotech Québec also plays an important role in bringing together the different actors within the green entrepreneurial ecosystem, with the aim of ensuring that different entities and support initiatives are pulling in the same action.

• Foresight Canada: Foresight Canada is a cleantech adoption accelerator and the largest national platform for connecting cleantech buyers and suppliers. It is highly active on the demand side, offering a suite of adoption services for potential cleantech customers. It also supports green entrepreneurs and start-ups in the development and commercialisation of their technologies, products and services. In 2024, Foresight Canada facilitated more than 30 000 meaningful connections between innovators, investors, and public- and private-sector buyers and funders. This resulted in an estimated CAD 2.2 billion in capital deployment and CAD 549 million in revenues and reflects a best practice in demand-driven innovation support.

• The RXN Hub in Kingston, Ontario: The RXN Hub is located at a first-of-a-kind facility designed to provide the resources for entrepreneurs to validate, scale and deploy innovative technologies in the chemical technologies sector. This facility includes wet labs, piloting bays, pre-manufacturing bays, among other things. The hub was founded by a broad coalition of public, private and non-profit organisations at both the national and local level. In addition to the physical infrastructure, the RXN Hub also provides advisory services and connections to the wider ecosystem, leveraging its more than 100 delivery partners.

• Ontario Clean Technology Industry Association (OCTIA): OCTIA, which is sponsored by Export Development Canada, works to represent Ontario’s cleantech sector to policy makers and regulators in order to create a conducive environment for the sector’s growth. It also provides its members – among which are cleantech start-ups and large public companies – with resources, expert guidance, and networking opportunities. OCTIA is also a member of the Canada Cleantech Alliance, which is a national coalition of cleantech industry associations and accelerators that advocates for conducive policies and seeks to connect enterprises with buyers and investors. Companies with fewer than five employees can become members of OCTIA for an annual fee of CAD 250 through a special start-up membership.

• The Verschuren Centre, Nova Scotia: The Verschuren Centre is a collaborative space where cleantech companies can access large scale piloting facilities, product testing labs, and technical expertise. The aim is to support these companies in commercialisation their technologies. Another support provided through the centre is access to a large network of ecosystem partners, both nationally and internationally.

Canada’s proactive approach to supporting clusters and support entities such as business incubators has helped to foster the growth of many vibrant, productive, and well-connected green entrepreneurial ecosystems across the country. In addition to funding third parties, governments have also launched their own agencies to function as ecosystem orchestrators and catalysts. One example of this is the creation of Innovate BC, which reports to the Ministry of Jobs, Economic Development and Innovation of the government of British Columbia. However, there is a perception among some stakeholders that the support landscape for green start-ups has become overly congested in some parts of the country, resulting in overlapping mandates, duplication of support, and challenges navigating the available programmes. Some also point to onerous procedures associated with managing public contribution agreements for third-party support organisations and complying with reporting requirements.

Domestic market opportunities for green entrepreneurs could be strengthened

A point often raised by stakeholders is that scaling up and achieving commercial success in the domestic Canadian market can be challenging for green start-ups. This is attributed to a range of factors, including risk aversion in the corporate sector, a lack of engagement from public procurers, as well as the relative natural resource abundance of Canada, which weighs on demand for green products and services overall. The difficulties that green start-ups face in finding domestic customers is one of the motivations behind the development of such a strong support system to facilitate the internationalisation of Canadian companies, as described previously. However, a lack of domestic buyers can also stymie green start-ups’ entry into international markets, since foreign buyers often want the security or reassurance of the product or service having been demonstrated successfully in Canada by a reputable reference client before making a commitment themselves to buy.

There are some programmes being introduced to address this issue of weak domestic demand and help green start-up firms to acquire first customers in Canada. Innovate BC (British Columbia) and NRC IRAP together run BC Fast Pilot projects, which supports BC-based SMEs to conduct pilot installation and testing of their innovative technologies with a potential early-adopter. Firms must have a prototype or ready-to-demonstrate technology as well as an identified potential customer or early adopter. Since the programming started in 2019, CAD 9.9 million has been invested into 75 BC pilot demonstrations. In 2025, a further 23 pilot demonstrations will be funded with an investment of CAD 3 million. The 2025 funded projects address critical priorities such as emissions reduction, wildfire management, household energy efficiency, maritime safety, waste management, and broader sustainability challenges. While a positive step, BC Fast Pilot projects cover only one province in Canada. Similar support would be highly beneficial throughout Canada, potentially at an even larger scale.

Box 4.2 presents selected examples of national level initiatives from the OECD that seek to foster meaningful commercial partnerships between start-ups and scale-ups and potential buyers.

Box 4.2. Matchmaking programmes to connect start-ups with potential buyers

Ignite Sweden

Ignite Sweden was established in 2017 by Swedish Incubators and Science Parks (SISP) – Sweden’s non-profit industry association for incubators and science parks. It is funded by both Vinnova (Sweden’s national innovation agency) and private actors and has the mission of fostering innovation through connecting start-ups and scale-ups with public organisations and large, private corporations. Vinnova recently committed SEK 30 million (approximately CAD 4.3 million) in funding for Ignite for the period from December 2024 to November 2027.

Ignite has a member group of 1 618 start-ups, 329 corporations, 46 public organisations in 14 countries. It has organised 103 matchmaking events, 7 013 meetings (of which 63% were follow-ups), and has initiated 610 commercial deals. Ignite also lists more than 2 500 start-ups and scale-ups in its database. SISP’s role as the founder and co-ordinator of Ignite Sweden has been key to enabling Ignite to build up this network. Ignite Sweden monitors the start-ups in the incubators and science parks and contacts the ones where it sees potential for collaboration with large firms. To connect large corporations with start-ups and scale-ups, Ignite Sweden provides the former with access to a network of start-ups and scale-ups, as well as need analysis and information on best practices for the large corporations. For the start-ups, Ignite Sweden opens the doors to the right customer, and provides sales training, coaching, legal and negotiation support as well as introductions to corporate codes of conduct.

It is recognised that the start-ups and scale-ups can be vulnerable when entering business with a large corporation, given the large differences in size, culture, legal knowledge and cash flow. Ignite Sweden strengthens the position of the start-ups by representing and advising them in this relationship. It also ensures that the corporate motive for the start-up collaboration is to establish meaningful business and development support for the start-ups. To ensure a good match, Ignite Sweden monitors what the large firms need in the moment. It also encourages them to consider the kind of innovations in products and processes they will need in the future, to ensure that their needs are aligned with the business plans of the start-ups.

Bpifrance Le Hub

Bpifrance is France’s public investment bank. Its mandate has grown gradually since its formation in 2012, launching a series of accelerators in 2015, becoming the French export credit agency in 2017, and integrating CDC International Capital to become France’s sovereign fund in 2018. Bpifrance has a number of venture capital funds that make investments into French start-ups. It also offers consulting for SMEs and a range of accelerator programmes.

Bpifrance’s Le Hub is designed to support the start-ups and innovative companies that have received investment from Bpifrance’s venture capital funds. An important focus for Le Hub is fostering connections between Bpifrance’s start-ups and corporate partners, which is overseen by the Corporate Relations and Business Development Department. Le Hub offers start-ups access to a large network of corporate decision makers and organises matchmaking opportunities and events for start-ups to meet potential partners. In 2024, more than 1 050 business connections were facilitated, involving more than 150 corporate players from France and internationally. Le Hub also recently launched the “Tech for Business Observatory”. This is an online platform where corporate buyers can access information on innovative French start-ups with market-ready products and services that can potentially meet the organisations’ needs.

J-Startup

J-Startup is a programme offering a range of supports to innovative Japanese start-ups to help them to succeed in the global market. Private partners – include venture capital investors, accelerators, and large corporates – identify and recommend promising start-ups from their network for participation in the programme. These start-ups are then reviewed by an external judging committee appointed by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry of Japan. Start-ups that successfully pass through this screening process can enter onto the programme and receive the J-Startup certification.

The J-Startup programme is based on the joint-delivery of support by the government and private actors. Business matching with large firms, ministries and agencies is an important pillar of the government support for start-ups in the programme. Meanwhile, private sector partners also provide referrals to potential customers for the participating start-ups. In addition, the government allows the programme start-ups to use the J-Startup logo and publicises the companies via a dedicated website and in the media. Start-ups can also attend overseas government missions and events, access regulatory sandboxes, and benefit from simplified procedures and preferential access to public subsidies.

Another area of relatively untapped potential for bolstering domestic demand for green start-ups’ products and services is public procurement. Public procurers in Canada exhibit a risk averse approach, tending to opt for products or services that are already well-known and established. There is a wide view among stakeholders that the government can do more to support the green entrepreneurial ecosystem by buying more Canadian cleantech. While there are some green criteria that public procurers are required to take into account, these are generally not mandatory, and most decisions are ultimately driven by “best value” considerations. In 2017, the government launched the Innovative Solutions Canada (ISC) programme, a government-wide procurement-based programme that connects federal departments to innovative Canadian companies, leveraging government purchasing power to stimulate the research, development and commercialisation of Canadian technologies. The programme has funded nearly 300 clean tech-related projects since its inception, investing over CAD 125 million in green innovation. Some technologies sponsored by ISC include GreeNovel’s microwave-based prototype that breaks down non-recyclable plastics for efficient extraction, and Morgan Solar’s sunshades, which can be installed over windows to generate power while allowing light through.

Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC) is developing a Green Public Procurement Tool to make it easier for public entities to find green products or services being developed by companies – a key barrier to green public procurement at present. The tool will comprise a database of green products that have been verified by at least one environmental certification programme. The plan is to launch and make the tool public in 2026, meaning that private entities as well as public procurers could leverage the information to find suitable green and clean tech products made by companies from Canada or abroad. If implemented, such a tool would respond to a major bottleneck in Canada’s green entrepreneurial ecosystem and would strengthen green start-ups’ ability to tap into domestic public, and indeed private, markets.

Environmental regulations are needed to reinforce green start-ups’ competitiveness

Another issue affecting the adoption of green technologies is the stringency of environmental regulations. Stakeholders report that in some areas, such as waste disposal or the use of recycled materials, Canada’s regulations may be more lenient than in other countries, for example in Europe. This results in a slower uptake of circular economy products and services. This point feeds into the broader issue often raised by stakeholders that the natural resource abundance of Canada can weaken incentives for the uptake of greener products and services.

While environmental regulations are needed to stimulate demand for green start-ups’ products and services, it is also critical that they do not place an undue burden on these same companies. SMEs and start-ups often struggle with regulatory compliance due to lacking the internal resources of larger companies. This is a particularly significant issue for green companies given that they operate in highly regulated sectors. Regulatory challenges are compounded in Canada by the high degree of regulatory heterogeneity that exists between the country’s provinces and territories. These can make it difficult for green start-ups to scale up and expand their operations to other parts of the Canadian market.

Lessons from international experience

This section presents lessons from the policy experience of Australia, Denmark, Portugal and the United States in building entrepreneurial ecosystems that support green startups.

Ecosystem engagement and promoting grass roots champions

A key success factor for many of the most effective green entrepreneurship promotion initiatives internationally is that they have embraced a bottom-up approach that engages the entrepreneurial ecosystem in the design and delivery of programmes. This typically involves three critical design elements:

• Intentional mapping of ecosystem actors.

• Convening stakeholder engagement sessions early and often, with a central role for start-up founders and small business owners.

• Resourcing ecosystem connectors who act as trusted brokers to bridge across and break down silos.

Some examples of this ecosystem-driven policy approach in action in the United States include the implementation of the Small Business Administration’s (SBA) America’s Seed Fund – which houses the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (SBTT) funding programmes –, the Department of Energy’s Lab-Embedded Entrepreneurship Programme, and the National Science Foundation’s I-Corps programme. In the case of America’s Seed Fund, the SBIR and SBTT schemes rely primarily on ecosystem support organisations, such as incubators, investors and research institutes to raise their awareness among potential beneficiaries. SBIR also conducts active outreach to engage with innovators. The SBA itself also has a Director for Ecosystem Development, signalling the embeddedness of ecosystem-thinking within the organisation. California’s Zero-Emission Vehicle (ZEV) programme is an example of a state-level initiative whose success was underpinned by an emergent ecosystem response, facilitated by grass roots connectors and entrepreneurs who were proactive in engaging in partnerships to adapt to the new regulations.

Ecosystem-engagement is also a success factor for Australia’s National Innovation and Science Agenda (NISA). Prior to its launch, the strategy underwent numerous revisions based on proactive consultations with the entrepreneurial ecosystem and other stakeholders. This involved hackathons, a discussion paper, research and global benchmarking, roadshows, and direct feedback from ministers and key ecosystem stakeholders. This enabled the government to develop a co-ordinated and systems-based approach, with the NISA including 24 policies in total.

Establishing entities to co-ordinate and promote green entrepreneurial ecosystems at national level

While there are public-supported cluster organisations that specialise in green sectors in Canada, their activities are principally centred at the province-level. Canada’s green entrepreneurs and start-ups could benefit from the presence of specialised clusters or ecosystem hubs that act to coalesce activities and actors at the national level.2 In Denmark, 14 national cluster organisations were launched in 2021 – one for each of the sector strongholds and emerging industries identified by the Business Promotion in Denmark 2020 – 2023 strategy (OECD, 2022[5]). Through this initiative, national cluster organisations have been established for the environmental technology sector (“CLEAN”) and the energy technology sector (“Energy Cluster Denmark”). The aim of the clusters is to promote innovation and connect Denmark’s research, business, and policy communities. This is achieved through the creation of domestic and international networks and the facilitation of matchmaking and partnerships, including with potential customers. For example, CLEAN is a partner of the EU Techbridge project, which matches North American customers with European SMEs with innovative water and energy solutions (OECD, 2022[6]). Denmark’s cluster organisations – alongside the Danish Business Hubs, Accelerace, and Tech BBQ – also collaborate with Denmark’s publicly funded “Beyond Beta” incubator, which delivers pre-accelerator and accelerator programmes to high potential start-ups. This collaboration is a good example of delivering joined-up supports for start-ups and scale-ups in a co-ordinated way across different entrepreneurial ecosystem actors.

Bolstering demand for green entrepreneurs’ products and services

One of the areas Canadian stakeholders often point to as somewhere the government could be more active in supporting green entrepreneurs is through increased public procurement of Canadian cleantech. In particular, there is a space for public entities to be first customers for innovative green start-ups where private actors might be reluctant to take on the risk of adopting as yet unproven technologies. This could significantly improve domestic market conditions for green start-ups, particularly during the critical “valley of death” commercialisation stage.

Greener public procurement is a long-held aspiration for numerous countries, with many in the OECD having launched dedicated strategies and ambitious targets for more sustainable procurement practices among public entities. However, meeting these targets can prove difficult due to a variety of factors including low awareness of green alternatives, a tendency to favour lowest-cost options, and legal issues surrounding the incorporation of certain criteria within public tenders. The approaches of other countries to navigating these challenges offer some lessons that could be of relevance in the Canadian context.

In Portugal, the Council of Ministers in 2023 published a resolution (Resolution 123/2023) establishing ecological criteria for public tenders, as part of the national strategy for green public procurement. These criteria include taking into consideration the environmental sustainability of the goods or services procured and establishing minimum environmental sustainability standards. Depending on the type of tender, these ecological criteria are mandatory, voluntary, recommended, or optional. This is an example of how green criteria can be embedded into procurement systems incrementally, with sensitivity to the types of products being purchased. Meanwhile, the United States has had success in strengthening procurement opportunities for green start-ups by adding more new and small firms to approved vendor lists. This in turn raises awareness of the companies’ available products and services among potential buyers, helping to boost procurement opportunities even in the absence of SME or start-up set asides for public procurement.

In Denmark, the government’s strategy for green public procurement, published in 2020, sets out proposals to impose mandatory requirements for the purchasing of eco-labelled products for some product groups such as cleaning or paper products. The list of these mandatory products was planned in the strategy to be updated each year. Public procurers are also required, for certain products, to calculate life cycle costs when making procurement decisions, rather than basing choices on costs at the point of purchase. Another positive feature of Denmark’s public procurement space is the Partnership for Green Public Procurement, which develops common procurement goals that its members commit to implementing. Among its members are 25 municipalities as well as the Ministry of the Environment and certain universities and regional governments. This is a good illustration of how the switch towards green public procurement can be accelerated by leaning into public entities that are willing to be first movers in adopting more sustainable procurement practices. Nonetheless, like in Canada, there are significant outstanding barriers to green public procurement in Denmark that are delaying procurers’ move towards more sustainable products and suppliers. To examine these obstacles and explore potential solutions, Independent Research Fund Denmark has provided funding to the University of Copenhagen to conduct a project investigating the legal barriers to green public procurement and the extent to which green criteria are currently being applied by procuring entities.

Complementarities between environmental and resilience policy agendas

Geopolitical developments and volatility in recent years have brought an increased policy focus on defence, security and resilience. This brings certain opportunities for cleantech companies, whose products and services often align not solely with environmental goals but also with countries’ resilience agendas. For example, the generation of renewable energy utilising domestic resources reduces greenhouse gas emissions while also lowering countries’ reliance on energy imports, thus boosting energy security. Similarly, moves to onshore production of critical chemicals, minerals, components, and fuels – for instance through the production of ammonia through clean hydrogen – strengthen demand for domestic cleantech solutions.

In the United States, public investment into clean energy has for a long time been framed as a means of tackling both climate change and energy security. For example, the Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E) – which funds innovative energy technologies that are too immature for private investment – places energy independence and energy security at the core of its mission. Since 2009, ARPA-E has provided USD 4.1 billion in funding to more than 1 690 energy projects. Similarly, the Inflation Reduction Act has the stated aim of addressing the “twin challenges” of climate change and energy security. Positioning green technologies firmly within the national security agenda can increase private investors’ willingness to invest in cleantech by providing a signal of a long-term and credible political commitment towards supporting technologies in this area. This is because the political and public consensus behind addressing security issues and economic resilience is often broader than for tackling environmental challenges. For Canada, this means ensuring that support for green technologies is embedded in the messaging and content of public initiatives to promote national security and economic resilience. Similarly, green entrepreneurship programmes should emphasise their alignment with the national security and resilience agendas.

References

[3] Fichter, K. and K. Hurrelmann (2021), “Sustainability-oriented business incubation: framing and supporting sustainable entrepreneurship”, in Handbook of Research on Business and Technology Incubation and Acceleration, https://doi.org/10.4337/9781788974783.00038.

[1] OECD (2025), Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Diagnostics.

[4] OECD (2025), The evolution of cleantech manufacturing.

[2] OECD (2025), The Green Transition of SMEs and Entrepreneurship in Portugal.

[6] OECD (2022), Policies to Support Green Entrepreneurship: Building a Hub for Green Entrepreneurship in Denmark, OECD Studies on SMEs and Entrepreneurship, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/e92b1946-en.

[5] OECD (2022), Promoting Start-Ups and Scale-Ups in Denmark’s Sector Strongholds and Emerging Industries, OECD Studies on SMEs and Entrepreneurship, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/8f9bd7b0-en.

Notes

← 1.  An earlier initiative that helped to strengthen Canada’s entrepreneurial ecosystem is the CAD 100 million Canada Accelerator and Incubator Programme (CAIP), which ran from 2014 and 2019 and provided non-repayable grants to 16 incubators and accelerators selected for their excellent track records in supporting start-ups and their ecosystem embeddedness.

← 2.  Through the Global Innovation Clusters, the Government of Canada has established national clusters in five sectors (digital technologies, advanced manufacturing, protein industries, scale AI, and ocean). However, there is not currently a dedicated national cluster organisation for cleantech or the environment.