Compétivert achieves its objectives two years earlier than expected

Quebec companies clearly needed a program like Compétivert: in less than a year, we exceeded the $375 million budget planned for three years to encourage eco-responsible practices.

Karim Benessaieh
The Press

Launched by Investissement Québec in March 2021, Compétivert has already been used for financial interventions of 379.2 million as of March 31, for 103 projects. The “enthusiasm”, as we call it at Investissement Québec, was such that we set a new target of 1 billion by 2024, we will announce this Wednesday.

“It’s a great success,” summarizes Guy LeBlanc, CEO of Investissement Québec, in an interview. “Having launched Compétivert brought people together internally: when we talked about clean technologies, it was called Compétivert. It serves both to increase productivity, to be competitive, and also to be green. It also had a very strong impact on the business plan, and on the external public. »

The CEO is also particularly proud of the seven Master Classes, which presented testimonials from entrepreneurs and experts, seen by some 4,000 people.

Forerunners and inexperienced

The Compétivert program offers loans with a certain flexibility, such as a moratorium on capital repayment of 48 months, or equity investments in the company. In addition, fifteen industrial environmental performance diagnostics have been established in collaboration with the Center de recherche industrielle du Québec. This diagnosis proposes a list of priority actions to be carried out and “profitable and high-impact” technological innovation projects.

The vast majority of projects involved companies that were already investing in green technologies and used this program to improve them. Mr. LeBlanc gives the examples of Pyrowave, which specializes in microwave plastic recycling and which has expanded its pilot plant in Salaberry-de-Valleyfield, Lion Electric, which builds electric buses and trucks, and IngeniArts , which has developed lithium-ion batteries for forklifts.

The other group of companies, a minority for the first year of this program, are those “who are ready to do the work, but do not have the internal expertise to do so”, explains the CEO. “That’s where we are extremely useful, to help them, basically to make good diagnoses, for example with their wastewater, to purify it for reuse. »

It is these last companies that we will mainly target for the rest of the program. “Our work for the next two years, and not only for the next two years because it will continue, is to convince those who have not yet started, to support them and help them develop technologies that are cleaner. »

For the Quebec Minister of Economy and Innovation, Pierre Fitzgibbon, initiatives like Compétivert are essential. “If we want to be carbon neutral by 2050, we must multiply initiatives like this to help companies adopt eco-responsible practices,” he said in a press release.

Mr. LeBlanc assures us that this is only a first step. “It will never stop. When we talk about clean energy, we are talking about innovation. There’s always a way to be more productive and even greener. »