ECCIR’s President Participates in GLOBExCHANGE Panel Discussion

The global clean economy has gained significant momentum in recent years as nations continue to look for ways to tackle climate change and promote sustainability. In this regard, the role of clean technology trade, investment, and business cooperation has become increasingly important. This is just one reason why the recent GLOBExCHANGE conference was a highly anticipated event.

Held in Toronto from February 27 to March 1, 2023, GLOBExCHANGE brought together Canada’s premier community of climate and sustainability leaders to collaborate on net-zero solutions for their organizations, the economy, and our planet. While this conference was the first of its kind to be held in Toronto, it built off of the themes of GLOBE Forum– a biannual event held in Vancouver in support of sustainable innovation and clean economic development.

Moderated by Lynn Côté, the National Lead for Cleantech Ecosystems and Market Intelligence at Export Development Canada (EDC), the discussion featured a distinguished panel of experts: Britta Baron, the President of ECCIR; Bojan Opsenica, an Investment Specialist at the U.S. Commercial Service; and Catherine Stewart, the Ambassador for Climate Change at the Government of Canada.

The panel focused on discussing the opportunities and challenges involved in advancing clean technology trade and export among the fastest-growing markets for cleantech: Canada, the US, and the European Union (EU). The need for collaboration and cooperation among these regions was a recurring theme throughout the discussion.

“It makes no sense to assume that the massive challenges that are affecting the future for all of us worldwide can reasonably be solved by individual efforts in isolation from each other,” Baron said. “We need to get much better at pooling resources, building effective partnerships, and overcoming silos– national or sectorial. International collaboration is top of the agenda, despite wars and pandemics, or perhaps because of them.”

Overall, the panel discussion provided a rich and insightful conversation on the opportunities and challenges involved in growing the global cleantech market and marked one of many important collaboration held during GLOBExCHANGE in support of building a more sustainable world.