Thanks for the question.
You're right. Everybody is positioning themselves to be a leader in this area, so you're going to hear from me very much what you've heard from others. I'm going to back it up with some really hard facts, not that some of my colleagues necessarily haven't done that.
I'm talking clean tech generally but clean energy as well. The data on clean tech are hard to come by. It's not a sector in Stats Canada's national accounts, but some work is under way right now, which we are participating in at WD interdepartmentally. The best data source we have now is a report that showed 40% of the clean tech companies in Canada are in western Canada. Twenty-five per cent of them are in British Columbia, so the economic geography of British Columbia is highly favourable to clean technology.
Our WINN program is not targeted to a particular sector. The first three intakes of WINN have been open to any sector that has technology commercialization potential. Over half the money that we have ended up spending has gone to clean tech, not because we directed it there, but because that's where the opportunities lie.
In addition to being able to visit Prince Rupert, one of the best parts of my job is in looking over these applications that we get in for the WINN program from the clean tech companies in particular. When I see the entrepreneurial spirit and the smarts that are on display in western Canada, it blows me away.
Probably one of the best signs of that is clean tech projects that we haven't been able to fund. We've funded quite a few that I'm quite proud of, but we've also not been able to fund the clean tech projects that were, in my view, quite deserving of funding and have scored very highly in our assessment project in things like ore sorting, new materials based on biomass, landfill gas recapture, and in capturing waste from waste streams from agricultural activities. We've had a number of really fantastic applications in areas like that, which we haven't been able to fund.
What we have funded is a good sign of why B.C. in particular and the west in general is a clean tech hotbed. What we haven't funded is also a really good sign.