Thank you very much for the question. I won’t have enough time to answer it in six minutes, but we’ll be happy to send you our thoughts and the list of barriers we’ve identified.
It is good that many billions of dollars are available to drive the adoption of clean technologies. However, it also needs to be well directed and aligned. Also, we need to make sure there is proper accountability so that these programs and investments are actually contributing to protecting the environment and fighting climate change.
In the innovation sector right now, there are a lot of solutions. Some companies are struggling to meet their financial needs, that is, they’re always a little bit short on funding. In the case of both public and private funding, you can currently accumulate up to 75% in public contributions, but it is extremely difficult to get that 25% of private funding. How do we do it? By using blend financing or by giving more latitude. For example, municipal contributions could be considered private funding. These projects are about adopting clean technology and implementing it within their own jurisdiction, as customers or consumers. Several such solutions are possible.
Also, as you said, when it comes to the regulatory aspect, we need to speed up the approval processes that give access to programs. If it takes six or nine months to get the money, that’s too long for a small startup. It often takes a year and a half to two years to get the funding and test a technology to get it to market as soon as possible. That means programs need to be accelerated. We also need programs to be flexible and adapt over time, because what’s relevant today may not be relevant in two or three years.
I could tell you about it for the entire afternoon. Instead, I’ll send you our brief with our recommendations by October 10th.