Oliver David (OD) Krieg is the President of Intelligent City, a Vancouver-based company redefining how we build housing using mass timber, advanced manufacturing, and parametric design. Intelligent City is working to solve Canada’s climate and housing crises.

About Intelligent City: Intelligent City manufactures prefabricated building panels out of renewable mass timber. Their platform enables faster, lower-carbon, and higher-quality housing construction that can scale across Canadian cities.

About OD: With a background in architecture, robotics, and computational design, OD was one of the earliest team members at Intelligent City. He’s helped guide the company from early research and prototyping to full-scale manufacturing, including recent projects in Vancouver and Toronto. Their work is pushing the frontier of what’s possible in Canada’s construction and climate sectors.

In our conversation, we discuss:

• The carbon math behind mass timber and why end-of-life planning matters
• What’s slowing down construction, from financing models to permitting
• What it takes to get developers and builders to shift mindsets and start exploring mass timber and prefab
• The role of Canada’s forest supply chain in enabling sustainable construction
• OD’s vision for local factories building homes across across the country

You’ll gain firsthand insight into what it takes to bring climate tech into a sector that can be slow to change and adapt, and why prefab construction might finally be ready to scale in Canada.

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Canada needs to retrofit millions of homes - fast. But outdated tools, confusing incentives, and a narrow focus on ROI are holding us back.

In this episode, Arman Mottaghi, CEO of Properate, lays out what it will take to bring retrofits to scale. We explore how Properate is rebuilding the software stack for home upgrades, why health and comfort are the real drivers of adoption, and how single-family homes - an overlooked part of our built environment - could become a climate linchpin.

We cover:

- The hidden impact of low-rise residential buildings

- What’s broken in Canada’s retrofit ecosystem

- How Properate is bringing energy assessments into the 21st century

- Why indoor air quality could be the secret weapon to unlock more retrofits

- Navigating ROI without consumer carbon pricing

- Creating feedback loops across governments, homeowner, and contractors

- Bootstrapping a climate tech company without VC funding

This is a conversation about the systems change behind climate tech and what it takes to create momentum in a market.

→ Check out the full show notes and resources on our website

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Nyla Ahmad is the COO at Alvéole, a company helping commercial real estate go nature-positive, starting with rooftop beehives. What began as a tool for tenant engagement has evolved into a scalable biodiversity monitoring platform, combining physical infrastructure with environmental data collection.

Nyla brings a background in media and telecom, having held senior leadership roles at Rogers and OWL Kids, before making a career pivot into sustainability. At Alvéole, she’s helping property owners prepare for the next wave of ESG disclosures, turn rooftops into biodiversity sensors, and reconnect people with nature.

Learn more at https://www.alveole.buzz/

In our conversation, we explore:

• Why biodiversity is the next frontier in ESG—and why it’s so hard to measure
• How rooftop beehives act as biosensors, collecting eDNA and pesticide data
• What’s driving commercial real estate interest in nature-based solutions
• The role of tenant engagement in return-to-office strategies
• What’s coming in the regulatory landscape (like GRESB and TNFD)
• How Alvéole is scaling across 70+ cities with 2,200+ hives and 80 million bees
• Lessons from customers, and why data and education go hand in hand
• Reflections on a career transition from telecom to climate

You'll gain insight into how real estate owners are starting to measure nature-related risk, how Alvéole blends tech and hands-on experiences to drive action, and why connecting people with nature might be the most overlooked lever in the climate fight.

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⁠→ Check out the full show notes and links on our website

→ Support the show by leaving a review on Spotify or Apple!

→ Send feedback and episode ideas to [email protected]

Alex Deslauriers is the founder and CEO at FireSwarm Solutions, a startup revolutionizing wildfire suppression. FireSwarm is developing AI-powered swarm algorithms that enable heavy-lift drones to fight wildfires.

Alex brings over 25 years of experience in aerospace engineering and aviation software (including work with the US Navy on F-18 programs) before pivoting to wildfire tech after losing his own property to the Gun Lake fires in 2023. Now, he’s applying his extensive aviation experience and a talented team to tackle this growing climate challenge.

In our conversation, we explore:

• How FireSwarm’s drone swarms can close a critical nighttime gap in firefighting
• The economics of drone swarms
• How drones perform on efficiency, precision and lifetime costs
• Why wildfires represent a national security issue and Canada’s opportunity to lead
• The regulatory landscape and FireSwarm's path to deployment with Canadian wildfire agencies
• Partnerships with First Nations communities and municipalities

You'll learn about how wildfire response works on the ground, how autonomous drones make fire suppression safer and more effective, and the intersection between climate tech and national security.

📬 Subscribe to the Climate Tech Canada newsletter and get weekly updates on Canadian climate tech funding, industry news, and trends directly to your inbox. Sign up at ⁠climatetechcanada.ca⁠

→ ⁠Check out the full show notes & resources mentioned in this episode⁠

→ Support the show with a review on Spotify and Apple!

→ Send feedback and episode ideas to [email protected]

Marc-André Forget is the founder and CEO of dcbel, a startup transforming our relationship with energy at home.

dcbel enables homeowners to easily manage their solar, EV charging, and battery storage, integrating them into their intelligent home energy system - Ara.

dcbel recently secured a $55 million funding round led by the Canada Growth Fund, and is now deploying dcbel across North America and Europe.

Marc-André brings over a decade of energy sector expertise to the conversation, and shares his perspective on building dcbel, how our relationship with energy is changing, and the transformation he sees on the horizon.

In our conversation, we explore:

• How dcbel is creating an "iPhone moment" for home energy management
• Why homes are becoming the new battleground in energy markets
• How rising electricity costs and blackouts are changing consumer behaviour
• The path to customer adoption
• dcbel’s recent $55 million investment from the Canada Growth Fund
• Why finding the right investor fit is critical for long-term success
• Scaling hardware manufacturing
• Marc-André's predictions for the future of home energy

📬 Subscribe to the Climate Tech Canada newsletter and get weekly updates on Canadian climate tech funding, industry news, and trends directly to your inbox. Sign up at climatetechcanada.ca

→ Check out the full show notes & resources mentioned in this episode

→ Support the show with a review on Spotify and Apple!

→ Send feedback and episode ideas to [email protected]

Mike Kelland is the co-founder and CEO of Planetary, a carbon removal startup that’s aiming to draw down gigatonnes of carbon from the atmosphere by accelerating the ocean’s natural, carbon absorbing abilities.

While the world urgently needs to reduce the amount of carbon pollution going into the atmosphere, it’s also becoming clear that we need to remove our historic emissions if we want to limit the worst effects of climate change.

Planetary is working to draw down some of the 8 gigatonnes of CO2 we need to remove every year by 2025 to hit our climate goals. Ocean-based carbon removal is relatively new with lots of technical and measurement problems to be solved, but it’s one of the highest potential pathways for gigatonne-scale removal.

I sat down with Mike in person in Ottawa to talk about Planetary’s approach to carbon removal, the challenges of measuring carbon removal in the open ocean, and how they plan to scale physical plants on coastlines around the world.

→ Go here for full show notes and links

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At this year’s Carbon Removal Day in Ottawa, we caught up with experts working across the life cycle of carbon removal to discuss the state of carbon removal, keys to scaling up, and Canada’s leadership potential.

Our Guests

[0:54] Phil De Luna is the Chief Science & Commercial Officer at Deep Sky, a project developer and owner-operator of carbon removal projects.

[7:12] Carson Fong is a Program Manager at the Business Renewables Centre Canada and the Pembina Institute’s Carbon Dioxide Removal Centre.

[12:20] Jane Kearns - Partner at Evok Innovations, a Canadian venture capital firm investing in the energy and industrial transition.

[18:30] Genny Shaw - Co-founder and CEO at Gaia Refinery, a carbon removal startup that merges direct air capture (DAC) with biomass carbon removal.

→ Go deeper with full show notes and links.

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Matt Loszak is the co-founder and CEO of Aalo Atomics, a company building factory mass-manufactured nuclear power plants, purpose built for AI data centres.

The explosive growth of AI is driving up data centre energy consumption, and big tech players are looking for reliable, low-carbon energy sources to step up. Aalo’s small, modular reactor systems are purpose built for the needs of data centres and use a mass-manufacturing approach to lower costs and project timelines.

In this conversation, we explore why nuclear power is experiencing a resurgence after decades of limited deployment, the advantages of small modular reactors versus traditional large nuclear plants, how nuclear safety has improved with modern reactor designs and fuel types, Matt’s journey from SaaS to deeptech founder, and much more.

→ Go deeper with full show notes and links

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In this episode, we sit down with Dr. Christine Gabardo, co-founder and CTO of CERT Systems, a climate tech startup working to produce essential chemicals without fossil fuels.

CERT's technology takes CO2 from industrial carbon capture systems and turns it into sustainable, high value chemicals like ethylene using water and electricity.

The CERT team brings decades of experience in electrochemistry, materials science, and engineering, and was the first in the world to demonstrate the conversion of industrial emissions into ethylene as a finalist in the NRG COSIA Carbon XPRIZE.

In our conversation, we unpack how CERT Systems' technology works, how it could be a pathway for producing sustainable aviation fuel, lessons learned from the Carbon XPRIZE, scaling up 10,000x, why people underestimate the market for sustainable ethylene, building effective pilot partnerships, and more.

More info and show notes available here.

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Our guest today is Rashmi Prakash, founder of Aruna Revolution. Aruna is a sustainable fibre company making compostable menstrual pads that are better for our bodies and the planet.

We talk about the intersection of climate and human health, how they’re turning agricultural byproducts like stems into sustainable, high performance fibres, and Rashmi’s journey from medical engineer to startup founder.

Talking points:

• The impact and scale of single-use menstrual products
• Biodegradable vs compostable materials
• Balancing technology development with consumer product strategy
• Scaling up production to 1 tonne
• Creating sustainable supply chains through direct farmer relationships
• The transition from engineering to entrepreneurship

Episode Notes

• Aruna Revolution on Dragons' Den
• ISO's Menstrual Product Standards
• Scale Your Everest

If you liked this episode, please leave a review! You can also send feedback and ideas for future episodes to [email protected]

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