(Montreal) A Quebec investment fund dedicated to financing greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction initiatives is launching a call to Quebec entrepreneurs to submit their projects.
The Inlandsis fund, held by Fondaction and Priori-T Capital, has existed since 2017. The portfolio has financed around forty projects in English Canada and the United States, but never in Quebec.
The investment platform now wants to remedy this situation, after announcing last December the mobilization of 130 million for its Inlandsis II fund. More than 30 investors, including Investissement Québec, the Lucie and André Chagnon Foundation, the Société Financière Bourgie and HEC Montréal, contributed to the financing.
A first call for tenders to propel Quebec initiatives is being launched this month by Inlandsis, which is deploying its capital on regulated and voluntary carbon markets in North America.
“We are looking for decarbonization projects in Quebec. We are looking for projects that are linked to nature-based solutions. […] “We can invest in fairly small projects of 2 to 3 million, and we can go up to 15 million Canadian,” said the fund’s general manager, Mark Netto, in an interview.
Proposals should aim to reduce or eliminate carbon emissions in a variety of sectors. They may target, among others, biochar production, afforestation and reforestation, carbon capture and sequestration, sustainable forest management.
Inlandsis presents itself as “the first Canadian fund, and one of the few in the world, to offer project financing exclusively linked to environmental credits.” It says it has the ambition “to reduce the equivalent of 24 million tonnes of CO2 over the next 10 years, equivalent to the annual emissions of 2.67 million Quebecers.”
Projects must comply with voluntary or regulated carbon markets such as the cap-and-trade system for greenhouse gas emissions (SPEDE), established in 2013 by Quebec.
According to Mr. Netto, the absence of initiatives funded by Inlandsis in Quebec to date can be explained in particular by the fact that there are few project protocols eligible for offset credits on the province’s regulatory carbon market, which therefore reduces the number of opportunities.
“In the SPEDE program, two of the protocols are for coal mines that do not exist in Quebec. There is also a protocol for landfill sites. There are several projects for that, but they are too small and were launched before the creation of the fund,” says Mr. Netto.
“There aren’t many developers in Quebec compared to the United States,” he adds. With the call for tenders, Inlandsis wants to see if there are other Quebec entrepreneurs with whom the portfolio has not yet been connected.
The deadline to submit a proposal is August 31.