As a country that embraces the transition to a low carbon economy, the UK has very much adopted the idea that Green is what makes Britain GREAT. This is a concept that resonates not just with the UK but also with our valued partners, like Quebec. The challenge we face now is to convince people that being green can also promote wider growth and prosperity.
The clean technology sector in Quebec has grown rapidly over the past years, making it a priority sector for our Consulate-General in Montreal.
Last month, in partnership with Ecotech Quebec, the leading Quebec cleantech cluster, we took a delegation of five Quebec small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to the UK to explore the clean technology market and to learn more about the low carbon policies in place. The sector currently employs 940,000 people in the UK and it contributed to 1/3 of the country’s economic growth in 2011/12.
These Quebec SMEs are all innovative companies that have developed cutting-edge technologies in their respective areas of expertise, some having established themselves as worldwide leaders. An example is Celluforce, a company at the forefront of the commercial development of NanoCrystalline Cellulose, an abundant and renewable material with wide-ranging applications in advanced manufacturing.
Our visit focused on the Greater Manchester area, as it is one of the most dynamic UK regions for the low carbon industry.
One of the highlights of the mission was the visit to the Greater Manchester Waste Disposal Authority‘s waste-to-energy plant, which is still being built and is the biggest of its kind in Europe. The objective of the plant is ambitious: reaching zero waste by 2015. Visiting a plant of this size while it is still under construction gave us a few privileges like having the opportunity to enter the combustion chamber, which, once operational, will reach temperatures greater than 800 degrees Celsius!
We also visited C-Tech Innovation, an innovation management and technology development company. There we had the opportunity to see several cutting-edge technologies developed by the company, including a food destruction unit used on the British Royal Navy ship and a zinc-plastic battery developed in partnership with Hydro-Quebec. For the Quebec companies, and for C-Tech Innovation, it was interesting to see how their own technologies could be coupled with the ones developed in the UK to further push their innovative solutions.
It was a busy week with productive meetings and fascinating visits, but the UK’s strong commitment towards a low-carbon economy was a revelation for the delegates. They were impressed by the range of clean technologies deployed to reach the country’s ambitious targets. During the mission, we also witnessed how the industry, the universities and the government work jointly, a key element to strengthening the UK’s low carbon economy.