New innovation campus aims to position PEI as cleantech hub

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Prince Edward Island is making a $40.5-million bet on a rural innovation campus to help drive its transition to a net-zero economy by 2040.

Designed to bring together researchers, students, industry professionals and government stakeholders, the new initiative aims to attract private investment and to position PEI as a hub for clean technology development.

These groups will work together and form a centralized ecosystem, offering a sense of community and driving innovation to benefit the island economy.

Located in Georgetown, about 50 kilometres east of Charlottetown, the campus – Cleantech Park – will span about 20 hectares. At its centre will be the Cleantech Learning and Innovation Centre, home to the Cleantech Academy, a collaborative initiative involving the Government of Prince Edward Island as well as local postsecondary institutions Holland College and the University of Prince Edward Island.

According to Export Development Canada, environmental and clean technologies contributed approximately $80-billion to Canada’s GDP in 2022, while Statistics Canada estimates the sector supported more than 360,000 jobs nationwide – roughly 1.7 per cent of all jobs – in 2024.

Aside from PEI, other provinces across Canada are working to attract cleantech investment. For example, British Columbia is among the country’s cleantech leaders through programs such as the Innovative Clean Energy (ICE) Fund, which supports emerging technologies that advance the province’s clean energy and environmental priorities.

The vision for PEI

Brendan Curran, member of the Legislative Assembly for Georgetown-Pownal in PEI and the former clean technology project co-ordinator at the PEI Energy Corp., says the innovation centre and academy are part of a provincewide priority to invest in clean technology development.

“The intention is to attract business and global investment in clean technology to Prince Edward Island, while having a research centre nearby to test products, troubleshoot ideas and drive innovative projects,” Mr. Curran says.

The hope is to build on the island’s established strengths in sectors such as precision agriculture, aquaculture and defence-related technologies, he adds. This includes developing tools that help farmers manage their operations more effectively and innovations that reduce the environmental impact of commercial fishing.

Mr. Curran also acknowledges that cleantech is gaining momentum within PEI’s well-established bioscience cluster, which has rapidly grown into one of the province’s largest contributors to GDP.

The location of the forthcoming cleantech campus offers an advantage.

“Georgetown has a history of shipbuilding, construction and manufacturing, and the Cleantech Park sits on the site of a former pulp-and-paper mill,” says Mr. Curran. “We’re in proximity to the Eastern Seaboard and key shipping and trucking routes to get [products] to market. We’re small enough to create our own future in this, but also big enough to make it happen.”

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The Cleantech Learning and Innovation Centre

Heather Joudrie, property manager at Crown corporation Finance PEI, says the 44,000-square-foot centre is expected to be completed in the fall, with students and researchers from the University of Prince Edward Island and Holland College expected to be among its primary occupants.

Designed as both an education and innovation hub, the building has been planned with flexibility in mind. Spaces can accommodate a range of industrial applications and include corridors sized to move large equipment, such as boat engines, throughout the facility. The ground floor will offer incubation spaces where students, researchers and private-sector partners can collaborate on new cleantech solutions, while common areas throughout the building are intended to foster a sense of community across sectors.

“The space serves as a link between education and the private sector, providing the facilities for them to work collaboratively,” says Ms. Joudrie of the new facility.

The broader goal is to create a pathway for businesses to grow within the park, she says.

“The intent is that once a company develops a product with commercial potential, they would graduate from the facility and look at developing a building on the park to scale up their business or scale up production so that it becomes a commercial application.”

The centre’s sustainability features include a rainwater recycling system, solar panels and a battery energy storage system (BESS). A digital display at the building’s entrance will also track real-time energy consumption, allowing visitors to see the building’s performance as it operates.

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Net-zero design

“The solar power system is 420 kilowatts, and we have a one-megawatt-hour battery as well as a backup generator,” says Elliott Coles, principal and director of electrical services at Coles Associates, a multidisciplinary architecture and engineering firm based in Charlottetown that led the design and engineering of the Centre.

In practical terms, a one-megawatt-hour battery can deliver one megawatt of power for one hour, with the actual duration depending on the building’s energy demand. For scale, one megawatt is enough to power around 800 homes at once, according to the Canada Energy Regulator.

What distinguishes the power system is the technology that integrates each power source, which he describes as a nascent technology in Canada. The system can automatically prioritize essential operations, shed non-critical loads and continue to operate in an islanded mode during abnormal conditions such as extreme cold or when there’s a lack of sunlight.

While the facility is designed to operate primarily on renewable energy, it will remain connected to the utility grid as a safeguard.

For Douglas Coles, principal and director of engineering at Coles Associates, sustainability extends beyond energy consumption alone.

“Sustainability isn’t necessarily the most efficient building. It’s a building that, over its lifecycle, will generate the greatest good for the greatest number of people,” he says.

That philosophy informed the project’s long-term approach. Rather than focusing solely on achieving net-zero targets, the design team prioritized durability and adaptability, balancing energy performance with the costs of operating, maintaining and eventually replacing building systems over a projected lifespan of 50 to 60 years.

The team also worked with a climatologist to account for projected sea-level rise and shifting temperature extremes, designing the building for today’s climate as well as the environmental conditions expected decades into the future.

Scalability of similar cleantech campuses across Canada

Replicating similar cleantech campuses across Canada will depend on a willingness to invest in emerging technologies, in addition to strong community support.

Mr. Elliott Coles says a project like this takes a shared understanding that investments in innovation and sustainability can deliver long-term community benefits.

With strong engineering and stakeholder support, he says the team was able to demonstrate that emerging technologies offer better value in the long run, despite not being the most cost-effective option upfront.

For Mr. Curran, PEI is in a unique position to bridge the gap between economic development and environmental sustainability. “Once established, PEI could be a model for other rural communities to balance environmental sustainability and economic development, and use one to foster the other,” he says.