How to become a CCC Cleantech exporter to grow sales

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), governments worldwide have earmarked over USD $710 billion in clean energy spending as of end-March 2022. This is 40% higher than what was spent after the 2008 global financial crisis.

According to latest update of the IEA’s Sustainable Recovery Tracker, advanced economies are set to spend over USD $370 billion on this project by 2023.

Across emerging and developing economies, however, the total amount of fiscal resources being dedicated to sustainable recovery measures is one-tenth of the amount in advanced economies. Around USD $52 billion of sustainable recovery spending is planned by the end of 2023 in emerging and developing economies.

“While the latest update of the Sustainable Recovery Tracker does point to promising signs in advanced economies, the world still needs to massively expand its clean energy deployment efforts throughout this decade, first and foremost in developing economies, if we are going to preserve the hope of limiting the global temperature rise to 1.5 °C,” said Dr Fatih Birol, the IEA Executive Director.

Global sustainable recovery spending by governments in response to Covid-19 compared to green spending levels enacted in post-global financial crisis stimulus plans. Source: IEA. Org

The gap between advanced and emerging and developing economies is unlikely to narrow in the near term given the food and fuel affordability challenges being faced due to the surge in commodity prices following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Regardless, the trend highlighted by the IEA shows that governments are committing to greater number of cleantech projects and this provides an opportunity for those providing solutions.

Examples of Canada’s investment in CleanTech

As an advanced economy, Canada is making investments in cleantech and infrastructure. For example, in March 2022, the Government of Canada introduced Canada’s 2030 Emissions Reduction Plan, which includes $9.1 billion in new investments to achieve 40-45 percent emissions reductions below 2005 levels by 2030. The plan includes measures to:

Help to reduce energy costs for our homes and buildings
Make it easier for Canadians to switch to electric vehicles
Drive down carbon pollution from the oil and gas sector
Power the economy with renewable electricity
Help industries develop and adopt clean technology in their journey to net-zero emissions
Support farmers as partners in building a clean, prosperous future

Another example is in April 2022, the Government of Canada announced $300 million toward capacity-building initiatives in Indigenous, Rural and Remote Communities. Announced as part of the Strengthened Climate Plan, investments under this program will support communities launching clean heat and power projects such as wind, solar, geothermal, hydro and biomass and support increased adoption of energy efficiency measures.

Examples of U.S. investment in CleanTech

In the weeks following the introduction of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), $28 billion in new investments in the electric vehicle, battery, and solar manufacturing sectors were announced in the United States. Some experts believe that more investments are expected.

From a government spending perspective many initiatives have been recently announced. For example, in 2022. the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $175 million for 68 research and development projects aimed at developing disruptive technologies to strengthen the nation’s advanced energy enterprise. The selected projects — spanning 22 states— will advance technologies for a wide range of areas, including electric vehicles, offshore wind, storage, and nuclear recycling.

In October 2022, the Department of the Interior (DOI) announced $210 million to bring clean, reliable drinking water to communities across the West through water storage and conveyance projects. The projects are expected to develop over 1.7 million acre-feet of additional water storage capacity, enough water to support 6.8 million people for a year.

Examples of E.U. investments in CleanTech

Recently the E.U. announced that it is investing more than €1.8 billion in 17 large-scale innovative cleantech projects. Grants will be disbursed from the Innovation Fund to help bring technologies to the market in energy-intensive industries, hydrogen, renewable energy, carbon capture and storage infrastructure, and manufacturing of key components for energy storage and renewables.

Up to 20 projects that are promising but not yet sufficiently mature for a grant will be pre-selected for project development assistance by the European Investment Bank. These will be announced in the fourth quarter of 2022.

Examples of investments in emerging economies

Latin America

The E.U. also supports several blending facilities which support global cleantech initiatives. For example, the Latin America Investment Facility (LAIF) mobilizes funding for development projects by combining E.U. grants with financial resources from European and regional financial institutions, governments, and the private sector. The fund helps Latin American countries finance projects in key sectors that are essential for the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals, such as energy, environment, water, transport, social services, and support to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

Asia

Financial institutions are also elevating their contributions. For example, acknowledging the urgency and scale of the region’s climate change challenge, Asian Development Bank is elevating its ambition to $100 billion in cumulative climate financing from its own resources to its developing member countries (DMCs) in 2019-2030. From 2011 to 2020 ADB approved about $41.6 billion in climate financing.

Resource countries

The Climate Investment Funds (CIF) from the World Bank launched CIF Industry Decarbonization, the world’s first multilateral investment program to help developing countries decarbonize hard-to-abate industries such as iron and steel, cement, chemicals and petrochemicals, aluminum, and pulp and paper. The initiative aims to deploy at least $500 million to pilot and scale innovation through existing and next-generation technologies to reduce carbon intensity and promote a circular economy.

Developing countries

The Green Climate Fund (GCF) is the world’s largest climate fund, mandated to support developing countries raise and realize their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) ambitions towards low-emissions, climate-resilient pathways. It most recently approved several projects including

USD 23.3 million for Enhancing Adaptation and Community Resilience by Improving Water Security in Vanuatu
USD 39.4 million for The R’s (Reduce, Reuse and Recycle) for Climate Resilience Wastewater Systems in Barbados
USD 9.0 million for Peruvian Amazon Eco Bio Business Facility
USD 220.5 million for Programme for Energy Efficiency in Buildings
USD 76.6 million for E-Motion: E-Mobility and Low Carbon Transportation
USD 105.5 million for Supporting Innovative Mechanisms for Industrial Energy Efficiency Financing in Indonesia

Export opportunities for Canadian businesses

The growth in cleantech projects and investments by governments provides an opportunity for Canadian businesses. If you’re a Canadian exporter looking to seize a government procurement opportunity abroad, CCC can help.

Canadian Commercial Corporation is a Crown corporation that offers international contracting expertise to forge commercial contracts between Canadian businesses and foreign governments. We enable Canadians to compete successfully in complex and highly competitive government procurement markets.

Our specialty of government to government (G2G) contracting is one part of the federal government services that includes agencies like the Trade Commissioner Service (TCS) and Export Development Canada (EDC).

To help exporters and capitalize on new, more varied opportunities, we gather intel through our relationships with foreign government buyers, exporter partners and colleagues across the Government of Canada. We then pass on these insights to Canadian companies to give them a competitive advantage.

Opportunities across all levels of government

Our G2G contracting doesn’t always mean “national government to national government”. While CCC does represent the Government of Canada, we negotiate contracts with the full array of government entities — from municipalities and regional authorities all the way up to the national government departments, ministries, and agencies, as well as state-owned enterprises, public utilities and more.

Infrastructure and cleantech projects can come under the purview of national, state, or regional governments, though it can also be a municipal responsibility. Projects include transportation infrastructure, health, energy, and natural resources. Buyers might be commissioning the deployment of an alternative energy grid or a new highway or rail line — infrastructure (quite often) that connects communities and plays a key role in economic development.

These ministries may be looking for international suppliers that have the expertise and experience to bring together construction, operational capabilities, and financing for projects of high social and economic importance. They are sensitive to the risks of failed tenders and bribery or corruption and are looking for a procurement approach that delivers a successful project.

It is under these conditions, that CCC can provide value to both the government entity and the Canadian business.

Effective risk mitigation = attractive proposals

CCC’s government to government contracting approach helps to mitigate procurement risks for foreign governments to acquire products or services from Canada. Our extensive experience allows us to identify early on where potential risks might arise, and to structure the contract to address them in ways that are advantageous to both the buyer and supplier.

We conduct a comprehensive due diligence review of the technical, managerial, and financial capabilities of every Canadian business we support. Before contract negotiations even begins, we’ve already confirmed the supplier’s reliability, ethics, skills and capacity to deliver on the project,

Our contracting and risk mitigation approach combined with our unique sovereign guarantee that the contract will be delivered according to the terms and conditions, gives buyers the confidence for improved project outcomes.

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Working with CCC

As a Canadian business, here are a few prerequisites and what’s involved working with CCC

Ask yourself, “Are we a good fit?”

If you have a solid lead with a foreign government buyer, have been selling your product or service for at least two years and can provide us with audited financial statements, your deal may be a good fit to get CCC’s government to government contracting support.

Complete our integrity compliance assessment

This is required for all Canadian exporters who want to work with us. As a first step, we’ll send you a due diligence questionnaire to learn more about your business and practices and whether you use agents or other representatives. We’ll also ask you to sign a certificate of integrity compliance.

When it comes to due diligence, we also look at three dimensions of your business:

Technical — to confirm you have the technical expertise to take on and fulfill the contract.
Managerial — to confirm your company’s leadership team can keep the business running for the duration of the contract, and that you have a project team ready to deliver. We may also look for past success managing export contracts in markets with similar risk profiles.
Financial — to confirm you have the balance sheet to handle the scope of the contract and that we are not putting the Government of Canada at undue financial risk.

At this point, we’ll determine if we’re a good fit for you and your deal. If we have any more questions, we’ll do what we call an “enhanced managerial review” to better understand the processes and policies you have in place to prevent bribery, corruption and other illegal or unethical practices.

Get your deal approved

If the integrity compliance assessment is positive, your CCC account manager will bring your proposed deal forward for formal approval. We’ll sign a teaming agreement with you to pursue the opportunity together using the G2G contracting mechanism. We’ll also let you know what our fees will be at this point so they can be built into the proposal and price you’re preparing for your buyer.

Gain a partner for your contract win

We build a partnership with your sales team and align Government of Canada support and advocacy for your sale as required to get to contract signature.

Finding cleantech opportunities and support

For those looking for more standard tender opportunities with foreign governments, CCC offers a tool called the Global Bid Opportunity Finder. This portal is exclusively for Canadian companies and provides a listing of bid opportunities from over thirty sources in over 200 countries. Five thousand new opportunities are added to the portal daily. Register for free.

The Government of Canada also offers support for cleantech providers through its Clean Growth Hub (Hub). The Hub is made up of 17 federal government departments and agencies that support Canadian cleantech innovation and business growth. CCC joined the mix of Hub partners to support the Canadian government’s whole-of-government service model and to open opportunities for Canadian cleantech businesses to gain access to government procurement markets around the world.

Whether you produce smart city technologies, sustainable infrastructure solutions, or other cleantech products and services, contact us to find out how CCC can help you.

This post was last updated on January 11, 2023.