Mouli Cohen, Founder of Voltage Capital and investor in clean technologies supported the Ottawa company SunOpta BioProcess Inc.’s project that involves production of ethanol from wood chips and sugar substitute- xylitol that is becoming popular everyday. The company promises that the project will come into action with the demonstration of a 16.6 million dollar plant in Ottawa by the end of this year.

The company will receive a sum of 3.3 million dollars from Sustainable Development Technology Canada. Mouli Cohen believes that it’s a fair deal as this project is keen on bringing clean technologies out in the market from the labs. Also, this is a great opportunity for new jobs for the Canadians. The SDTC has been funding since 2002 and has completed 15 rounds of funding since then. It has funded a giant sum of 464 million dollars in 183 projects. It has also invested a billion dollars’ sum in the private sector.

Cohen believes that is important to have such funding agencies that achieve economic as well as environmental goals. He says that the clean technology will not last if it’s under funded.

SDTC still holds a sum of 86 million dollars, mostly saved for water and soil clean up projects.

19 projects were identified by the federal government across Canada that have the opportunity to receive funds from Clean Energy Fund, a new fund created as an incentive for clean technologies in the budget of the federal government.

Three projects from Ontario were selected: one would examine the power generation from in-river hydroelectric turbine, second will research more abut heating homes using solar thermal technology and the third project will explore about storing energy generated from renewable resources in the old, used batteries of the electric cars.

Mouli Cohen holds the view that investment in projects that aim at bringing clean technologies into practice should be well funded. These are the only projects that can bring economy the added advantage of environmental protection. And this task is a hard one. A lot of research is involved, there’s high chance of failure in experiments, building plants takes up a lot of money too. If not funded adequately, how will the projects even work? And if these don not work, then the clean technologies won’t last either. Clean tech is a promising field and investment in this is a wise option, that’s what Mouli Cohen believes.

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