No Shortcuts: A Panel on What It Really Takes to Commercialize Climate Tech
Aire Labs, Amplify Capital, and Climate Tech Canada are bringing together investors, lenders, developers, and operators for a conversation on what it really takes to get a climate technology to commercial scale.
Getting a climate technology to commercial is one of the hardest things to do in this industry. The path is full of compounding challenges: engineering assumptions that don't survive contact with a real site, business development cycles that stretch years before a single contract closes, supply chains and permitting processes that can unravel a project long after the financing is in place, and capital markets that still don't know how to price any of it. This panel digs into where things actually break, why the first project is categorically harder than every one that follows, and what the people who've lived it wish they'd known earlier. Expect real opinions and some hot takes.
Format: Moderated panel discussion followed by open networking
Audience: Climate infrastructure founders, project developers, venture investors, debt providers, and ecosystem partners
About the Panelists:
Andrew Gilbert, Aire Labs Head of Project Success at Aire Labs, Andrew spent three years at the DOE reviewing and diligencing $15B+ in clean energy investments. He knows what separates projects that get financed from the ones that don't.
Trish Nixon, Amplify Capital Venture Partner at Amplify Capital, Trish has spent her career bridging early-stage climate ventures and the capital markets needed to scale them. She's backed some of Canada's most promising hard tech companies, including CURA and FeX Energy.
Amit Modi, FGS Founder of FGS, Amit is a project development executive with 20+ years of experience turning early-stage climate technologies into bankable infrastructure. He's secured hundreds of millions in project equity and debt across waste-to-value, low-carbon fuels, and energy storage.
Andrew Friedenthal, e-Zinc Director of Market Development at e-Zinc, Andrew has spent over a decade commercializing cleantech across hydrogen, pyrolysis, biogas, and long-duration energy storage. He brings a builder's perspective on what it actually takes to move a technology from pilot to market.
Phil De Luna, CURA Co-founder and CTO of CURA, Phil has led climate technology scale-up across the NRC, McKinsey, Deep Sky, and now his own venture. He's one of Canada's most recognized climate innovators and knows the gap between lab and commercial scale better than most.
About the Hosts:
Aire Labs is building the control center for climate infrastructure projects. The Aire platform unlocks faster and more reliable modeling workflows for development teams, enabling them to structure their work, accelerate their analysis, and map the path to key decisions as they navigate financing stages.
Amplify Capital is a Toronto-based early-stage impact fund backing companies using transformational technology to address climate, health, and education. Their climate portfolio spans long-duration energy storage, carbon tech, and other innovations accelerating the transition to a low-carbon economy. Together, we're bringing the infrastructure side of the ecosystem into the same room — to have the conversations that don't always make it onto the main stage.
Climate Tech Canada is Canada's go-to resource for founders, operators, and investors navigating the climate tech ecosystem — connecting the people building the next generation of climate solutions with the capital, community, and context they need.