The Challenge
Mission from MaRS builds on the success of the Climate Impact Challenge, which worked closely with 10 ventures to identify and address barriers to climate tech commercialization. Through a series of focused climate action missions, Mission from MaRS will help strategically overcome key barriers to achieving climate targets in Canada and beyond.
These missions focus on some of the most important challenges and opportunities in the climate technology sector. They employ a multi-pronged systems design approach over 3-5 years, identifying high-impact projects that will lead to transformative change.
Each mission will assemble a coalition of decision makers and influencers to develop and implement action plans that strengthen Canada’s cleantech sector, scale innovative solutions and address delicate climate issues, ensuring these learnings and successes can be replicated across the country.
Mission from MaRS projects include the Climate Action Accelerator to Net Zero (CAANZero), the Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) Accelerator and the Clean and Circular Innovation Marketplace. These initiatives are carving a pathway to decarbonization and adaptation to help the world tackle climate change.
Each mission follows a similar approach:
I – High Velocity Coalitions
Leverage the extensive network of MaRS subject matter experts across corporate, government, non-profit and venture organizations that provide guidance and good governance on the development of large-scale solutions.
II – Awareness and Momentum
Thought leadership and events that highlight barriers and opportunities for scaling and adopting climate tech, profiling venture solutions and deploying case studies.
III – Action for Impact
Pragmatic, action-oriented projects that deliver results, including playbooks for the successful adoption and scaling of climate tech solutions, buyer consortiums and marketplaces and programming that support the growth and scaling of ventures.
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
While our missions bring people from all over Canada together, MaRS itself is located in Toronto, on land covered under Treaty #13 and the Williams Treaties. The area is the traditional territories of many First Peoples, including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnaabe, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat peoples. Today, these and other nations continue to experience the legacy of colonization here in Toronto and across Canada. Truth and reconciliation is a continuous process and acknowledging the land on which we live and work is only one step, with many more to come.
The Mission from MaRS team is committed to the principles of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, and aims to embed these principles within Mission from MaRS programming. MaRS seeks to contribute to an inclusive and accessible climate tech ecosystem, where diversity is celebrated and principles of equity, justice and reconciliation are incorporated and lead to action.
To celebrate the diversity already present in the climate tech ecosystem, and acknowledge the ongoing need for equity and inclusion, we are proud to present the Mission from MaRS Climate Technology Venture Diversity Award.
“MaRS has been instrumental in driving Flash Forest forward and hitting some major wins. We have loved working with MaRS and being part of the incredible vision, leadership and impact they are having in Canada.”
– Angelique Ahlstrom, co-founder and CSO & Bryce Jones, CEO, Flash Forest
“Participating in the program allowed us to break down our market in different ways and look at the driving forces with a unique lens. This impacted our own understanding of the market but led to the creation of a number of marketing materials to support sales efforts.”
– Cole Caswell, Carbon Engineering
“Mission from MaRS has improved our business' potential for success by providing us with better insights that will help with our overall strategy and market approach.”
– Remi Desa, Pantonium
Public Procurement
The Public Procurement Mission facilitates the adoption of clean and circular innovations at scale by reimagining the government procurement processes. This mission will provide communities of all sizes the knowledge, capital, support and technologies needed to fulfill their own climate action commitments. A major initiative of the Mission is CAANZero, designed to help small- and medium-sized municipalities achieve net-zero targets.
Learn more about the Public Procurement Mission
View our Public Procurement Climate Champions
Mission Project: CAANZero
Carbon Management
Mission from MaRS: Carbon Management is to strengthen the demand and supply for carbon reduction, removal and utilization in Canada. Our newly-launched MaRS CDR Accelerator will help ventures successfully navigate carbon markets for commercial growth and enable a marketplace for carbon removal innovations.
Learn more about the Carbon Management Mission
View our Carbon Management Climate Champions
Mission Project: CDR Accelerator
Climate Impact Challenge
The Climate Impact Challenge identified several scalable climate technologies at various stages of development and commercialization. This resulted in many key wins, including:
- Establishing a first-of-its-kind municipal procurement strategy for purchasing cleantech services and products from the 10 participating ventures.
- Supporting three ventures through acquisition and/or strategic partner processes to scale their technologies.
- Providing all 10 ventures with insights on pursuing new markets, fine-tuning marketing messaging and advancing policy reforms geared at enabling cleantech adoption.
- Over the course of the challenge, the ventures collectively raised $42 million in investment capital and generated $27 million in new revenues.
To learn more about Net-Zero Missions contact mfm@marsdd.com
