The mission of the MaRS cleantech, physical sciences and advanced materials practice is to advise and build globally competitive cleantech and advanced materials companies.  Our globally top-ranked practice is made up of established entrepreneurs with diverse backgrounds and experiences.  We’re developing partnerships in Canada and around the world, identifying financing opportunities, and creating events and publications that will help Ontario entrepreneurs in the cleantech and advanced materials sector succeed. Our discovery pipeline and collaborative model serve both the investment community and private industry.

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The MaRS Cleantech Fund provides early-stage funding to cleantech companies through its strategic relationship with the highly successful MaRS Discovery District. MaRS is where science, technology and social entrepreneurs get the help they need. Where all kinds of people meet to spark new ideas. And where a global reputation for innovation is being earned, one success story at a time.

Managing Director – MaRS Cleantech Fund

In Kick the Fossil Fuel Habit, author Tom Rand, (engineer, Cleantech authority, venture capitalist, pragmatic entrepreneur and philosopher) provides an in-depth look at ten technologies that together can bring a clean future, free of fossil fuels. Tom provides education and hope. His personal views and anecdotes are combined with a hardheaded engineering and business perspective. Beautiful color photographs bring the text to life.

Author – Kick the Fossil Fuel Habit: 10 Clean Techniques to Save Our World

Since 1984, Environmental Defence has been inspiring change by connecting people with environmental issues that affect their daily lives in their homes, workplaces and neighbourhoods. We are Canada's most effective environmental action organization. We challenge, and inspire change in government, business and people to ensure a greener, healthier and prosperous life for all.

Board Member – Environmental Defence

Founded in January 2008, MMB Research is a Toronto-based engineering firm with industry leading expertise and experience in wireless, embedded, and Smart Energy technologies. Our mission is to utilize this expertise to broaden and accelerate adoption of Smart Energy technology by creating software, tools and services that help our customers rapidly bring smart energy solutions to market.

Board Member – MMB Research

Morgan Solar was founded in 2007 to develop next generation solar power technologies that will make solar energy significantly less expensive. Based in Toronto, Canada, Morgan Solar has pioneered a whole new approach to designing and manufacturing solar modules. The result is market disruptive products that lead in efficiency, durability, and cost. Morgan Solar combines revolutionary optics with well-established manufacturing processes to make environmentally friendly energy available to all.

Board Member – Morgan Solar

Hydrostor is a Canadian company in the energy sector based in Toronto, Ontario whose technology focuses on using compressed air as the medium for storing energy. The scalable and low cost nature of the technology provides grid-scale electricity storage products which help ensure existing power and infrastructure systems are used more efficiently and helps with the integration of intermittent renewable power.

Advisory Board – Hydrostor 

The VCi Green Fund is a private venture fund, founded by Tom Rand in 2005. The fund provides seed and venture capital to companies developing technologies that reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from energy use, particularly CO2. Efficiencies and alternate sources are each considered target areas of application. We help by providing capital and active on-going participation; advice and involvement at the board level.

Director – VCi Green Funds

In 2008, Tom was made an Action Canada Fellow. Action Canada is a national fellowship program for promising young Canadians. The program enhances Fellows’ leadership skills, broadens their understanding of Canada and its policy choices, and builds an exceptional network of leaders for our future. Through its program, Action Canada creates a highly connected network of leaders with leadership development skills who are committed to Canada’s future.

Action Canada Fellow

Tom was named as a member of Canada’s 2012 Clean50, which honours individuals who have made significant contributions to Canada’s sustainability and clean capitalism. Tom was chosen from over 300 applications for his tireless advocacy of clean energy in Canada, and the financial viability of green technologies.

Member – Canada’s 2012 Clean50

Reflection of leadership on environmental issues within the business community.

Outstanding Commitment to the Environment, Earth Day Canada 2013

MaRS Discovery District

MaRS Cleantech Fund

Cape Farewell

Kick the Fossil Fuel Habit: 10 Clean Technologies to Save Our World

Venture capitalist, entrepreneur, engineer, and philosopher Tom Rand explains why climate disruption might just be our very own pot of hot water. Are we the frog paralyzed in our inaction? In a highly readable account, Rand looks to contemporary psychology, economics, business, and finance to explain our stasis in the face of one of the most fundamental problems of our time. Rand’s account doesn’t just point fingers at the bad guys, but goes deeper  to our motivations, institutional lethargy, and deeply buried assumptions about market economics.Waking the Frog is as much about solutions as it is an account of our present paralysis. Our ingenuity, technology, capital, and policy can work together to turn down the heat and at the same time enable the largest economic opportunity of the 21st century.

Waking the Frog: Solutions for Our Climate Change Paralysis

Tom Rand is a venture capitalist, author, advisor, and currently acts as both the Managing Partner at MaRS Cleantech Fund as Senior Cleantech Advisor at the MaRS Discovery District, in Toronto, Canada.

Active in the cleantech sector both as a venture capitalist and from a policy perspective, Tom understands the challenges entrepreneurs face. His focus at MaRS is on new ventures based on low-carbon technologies and the supporting infrastructure, such as renewable energy and energy efficiency.

Tom started his career as a software renegade in high school. Then he went legit and founded Voice Courier Inc. (VCi) in 1991 to service the emerging Interactive Voice Response market. Tom led VCi’s expansion to over 100 employees in three countries, with revenue in excess of US$20 million annually. The VCi Group of Companies was profitable for each of the 12 years it was under his control, and was sold in the spring, 2005.

Tom now focuses his efforts on carbon mitigation and is active in cleantech venture capital, technology incubation and commercialization, and public advocacy. Tom sits on the board of a number of clean energy companies and organizations.

Tom’s book, Kick the Fossil Fuel Habit: 10 Clean Technologies to Save Our World, is distributed by Greenleaf Book Group in the US, and Fitzhenry & Whiteside in Canada. Tom's second book - working title Waking the Frog - will be released in Canada and the US in early 2014.

Tom holds a BSc in electrical engineering from the University of Waterloo, an MSc in philosophy of science from the University of London / London School of Economics and an MA and PhD in philosophy from the University of Toronto. Tom is an Action Canada Fellow.

Carbon and Climate Science: Industrial Endgame?

Cleantech

Climate Change

Clean Energy

Economics

Personal Website

Blog

Leading Toronto into sustainability: a Q & A with cleantech guru Tom Rand

Green Gadfly: Tom Rand has opened what he calls North America’s most environmentally friendly hotel

Clean Leader Interview Series: Tom Rand

Planet Traveller digs its way into a low carbon economy

MaRS announces launch of first dedicated, early-stage cleantech venture fund

Parallels of California and Canada's Clean Tech Markets & Government Initiatives

Building North America’s Greenest Hotel

Moderator – CleanTech and Smart Technology Trends

KEYNOTE SPEECH

Lived it Lecture – Cleantech

CleanTech

KEYNOTE SPEECH: Kicking the Fossil Fuel Habit — Drivers and Opportunities for Municipal Governments

The Sustainable Metropolis: The business of smarter, sustainable cities

Environmental Action: The Path to a Flourishing Region

KEYNOTE SPEECH: Kick the Fossil Fuel Habit

KEYNOTE SPEECH – Kicking the Fossil Fuel Habit: Possibility and Necessity

Technology & Sustainability

Carbon – How Low Can We Go: The Scope and Scale of Clean Energy

KEYNOTE SPEECH – Sustainability: The Shift to a New Economy

Energy Investments

Based on Tom's upcoming book - Waking the Frog - an in depth and hard-hitting analysis of our existing paralysis on climate change, and remaining possibility for action. By understanding the systemic reasons underpinning our underwhelming commitment to climate action - psychology, economics, market dynamics, and sheer momentum - we can begin to unlock our economic and technical might on the defining problem of the 21st century.

Waking the Frog: Unlocking our Paralysis

A bare-knuckled approach provided by a seasoned and pragmatic entrepreneur on the necessity, possibility and difficulty of making a transition to a low-carbon economy. The talk includes an overview of low-carbon infrastructure, cutting edge clean technologies, capital requirements combined with an underpinning of climate science.

Kicking the Fossil Fuel Habit: 10 Clean Technologies to Save Our World

This workshop will focus on clean technologies and new technologies around smart grid that provide buildings and municipalities with efficient and effective measures to reduce energy costs and dependency.

CleanTech and Smart Technology Trends

Managing Director at MaRS Cleantech Fund I, L.P.

Tom Rand at the Toronto E3 Canadian Roundtable

E3 Canadian Roundtables - Tom Rand Part 1

Tom Rand, Green-Tech Venture Capitalist, responds the question of how to affectively influence policy changes in regards to energy. Tom is the author of the book - Kick the Fossil Fuel Habit: 10 Clean Technologies to Save Our World - and is currently the Cleantech Practice, Lead Advisor at the MaRS Discovery District and he sits on the board of a number of clean energy companies and organisations. Tom's Website: www.tomrand.net The Book: www.ecotenpublishing.com Twitter: twitter.com @TomRand Facebook: on.fb.me

Tom Rand - The Challenges of Influencing Changes in Energy Policy #GreenTech

Tom Rand, Cleantech Practice Lead at MaRS Discovery District, inventor of the Green Bond, previous entrepreneur and successful Venture Capitalist talks about his journey to build "the continent's greenest hotel" - Planet Traveler. MaRS - Building Canada's next generation of global technology companies. marsdd.com

MaRS Best Practices - Green or Green Wash?

Visit us online to watch more videos and join the conversation: www.rdigitalife.com Follow us on Twitter twitter.com Follow us on Facebook: www.facebook.com Clean-tech venture capitalist Tom Rand, author of "Kick the Fossil Fuel Habit," joins Ramona Pringle at Ryerson's DMZ, a start-up incubator, to talk about how technology is impacting our relationship with the natural world, and to offer up some clean tech solutions. From video games to robot romances and everything in between: What is the evolving relationship between humanity & technology? We are the species that create tools, and those tools expand our reach. But how are our technological tools changing the construction of identity, the fabrication of meaningful relationships, and our concept of personal space? From community to environment, currency to love, we're tackling some of the key topics in the human experience and gathering different perspectives, to see how our concept of the world around us is changing. Each month we're taking on a new topic and talking to different experts, innovators, authors, artists and sociologists. But that's just the beginning. We want to hear from you. do you have a question for an expert? An opinion? A story you want to share? Log in to www.rdigitalife.com and you can upload your own videos straight to the site, to have your voice heard.

rdigitalife: Tom Rand on Environment

Tom Rand outlines his Green Hotel project at TEDxToronto. About TEDx, x=independently organize event In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self- organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x=independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.* (*Subject to certain rules and regulations)

TEDxToronto - Tom Rand - 9/10/09

Sick of our fossil fuel addiction? Kick It is funny, irreverent - but hard-hitting and informative. Here's Tom Rand - engineer, philosopher, author and venture capitalist - telling you how we can "Kick the Fossil Fuel Habit". www.kickthefossilfuelhabit.org

Kick It

Chris Chopik of EvolutionGreen speaks with Tom Rand at the Community Power Conference 2010, Toronto.

Tom Rand at Community Power Conference

E3 Canadian Roundtables - Tom Rand Part 2

It is clear to anyone who counts carbon levels and reads the business pages that — despite good intentions — our global economy is on a collision course with extreme climate change. Even the highly conservative International Energy Agency recently confirmed business-as-usual gets us to nearly 6° C of warming this century. Yet we remain paralyzed. Why?

Tom Rand discusses his new book, Waking the Frog: Solutions for Our Climate Change Paralysis, and the underlying reasons that keep us from acting with effort to solve the climate change problem, from the psychology of denial to a deep and inherent conservatism in the business community.

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