InnoTech Alberta has established an international partnership, the organization announced this week.
The Alberta Innovates subsidiary this month forged a collaborative agreement with Montanuniversität.
Montanuniversität, also known as the University of Leoben in Austria, will work with InnoTech Alberta on the advancement of hydrogen technology.
More specifically, a Memorandum of Understanding will see the two forces advance methane pyrolysis, a process in which hydrogen and elemental carbon are produced from natural gas with minimal emissions.
Hydrogen has been described as a “fuel of the future,” with the worldwide hydrogen market estimated to be worth $2.5 trillion by 2050. And Alberta is Canada’s largest producer.
Tom Whalen, Vice President of Applied Research at Alberta Innovates, and Bonnie Drozdowski, Executive Director of Clean Technologies at InnoTech Alberta, signed the Memorandum with Robert Obenaus-Emler, Senior Researcher at the University of Leoben.
An Austrian delegation including Obenaus-Emler toured InnoTech’s resources, which include more than 200 workers who operate more than one million square feet of research and lab space.
The organization’s industrial-scale portfolio of real estate and research infrastructure features “some of the most sophisticated laboratories, test facilities, field sites, pilot plants, and equipment to run ad hoc testing or experiments to full-scale, multi-year research projects with detailed plans and commercialization opportunities.”
InnoTech Alberta was originally founded in 1921 as the Science and Industrial Research Council of Alberta, which was at the time a first-of-its-kind research organization in Canada.
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