Funding to accelerate industrial emissions reductions, scale clean technologies, and strengthen low carbon supply chains

VANCOUVER, BC, April 29, 2026 /CNW/ – NorthX Climate Tech (NorthX) today announced $3 million in non-dilutive investments in four companies developing breakthrough technologies to decarbonize some of BC’s highest-emitting industrial sectors. The funding will support ShiftX Technologies, Kinitics Automation, CURA, and Hydron Energy–accelerating pilot deployments, de-risking early-stage technologies, and advancing pathways to commercial scale across energy, heavy industry, and resource-based systems.

“Clean technology innovation is essential to strengthening Canada’s industrial and climate competitiveness,” said the Honourable Tim Hodgson, Minister of Energy and Natural Resources. “Projects like these are made-in-Canada solutions to improve efficiency, build stronger supply chains, and create good jobs, while positioning Canada as a clean energy superpower and the strongest economy in the G7.”

BC’s industrial sectors represent some of the province’s largest emissions sources and some of its greatest opportunities for economic and climate impact.

“Reducing emissions and building a thriving economy are not mutually exclusive – by driving industrial decarbonization, you can have it both ways,” said Adrian Dix, Minister of Energy and Climate Solutions. “By funding cutting-edge companies like ShiftX Technologies, Kinitics Automation, CURA, and Hydron Energy, NorthX is not only supporting our government’s methane emission reduction and industrial decarbonization goals but is also making BC more competitive on the world stage.”

NorthX is pleased to support the following companies, each addressing a distinct piece of the decarbonization puzzle:

ShiftX Technologies is developing a cleaner, more compact hydrogen production system that operates at lower temperatures and costs than conventional methods, making it well suited for industrial and marine fuel applications. Its sorbent-based reactor technology is designed to scale, and NorthX is backing a first-of-its-kind pilot to accelerate its path to commercialization.Kinitics Automation is commercializing a zero-emission, drop-in replacement for the methane-venting pneumatic devices widely used in natural gas operations. Its non-venting electric actuator eliminates methane leaks at the source while improving efficiency, reliability, and reducing maintenance demands. The market opportunity is substantial as more than 261,000 of these devices across Canada must be replaced by 2030.CURA is producing zero-carbon lime at commodity-competitive prices through an electrochemical process that captures pure CO₂ for permanent storage. The technology is designed to retrofit directly into existing cement and lime plants, requiring no new supply chains or changes to existing processes, lowering the bar for industry-wide adoption. CURA’s pilot project is progressing toward commercial-scale production, targeting one of the most emissions-intensive sectors in the industrial economy.Hydron Energy is expanding its RNG-based platform into direct air capture, enabling carbon-negative CO₂ removal while recovering rare gases critical to satellite propulsion and other high-value applications. By extracting these gases at ambient conditions, rather than through energy-intensive cryogenic distillation, Hydron delivers a lower-cost, lower-emissions alternative that also reduces Canada’s dependence on geopolitically vulnerable supply chains.

Driving industrial competitiveness through decarbonization

As global demand for low carbon products accelerates, industrial decarbonization is becoming essential to maintaining access to capital, customers, and international markets. Clean technology adoption can also improve operational performance, including enhanced efficiency, reduced fuel consumption, lower waste, and streamlined production processes.

Together, these investments reflect NorthX’s commitment to scaling Canadian climate innovation and accelerating the deployment of practical, high-impact decarbonization solutions across industry.

“Industrial decarbonization is one of the most important and complex opportunities in the global energy transition and we believe BC is uniquely positioned to lead,” said Sarah Goodman, CEO of NorthX. “These companies are developing the kinds of hard tech solutions that can transform how major industries operate, reducing emissions while strengthening economic growth and long-term climate competitiveness.”

Impact at a glance:

$57.6 million in non-dilutive funding deployed$301M million project value supported89 projects supported874 jobs created$621 million in follow-on funding catalyzed

About NorthX:
Founded in 2021 with an initial investment from the BC Government, the Government of Canada, through Natural Resources Canada’s Energy Innovation Program, and Shell Canada, NorthX Climate Tech (NorthX) is a catalyst for climate action, funding the climate hard tech solutions that transform industries and build lasting prosperity.

Rooted in British Columbia but global in vision, we unite visionaries, investors, industry, government, and partners to scale technologies that drive deep decarbonization and economic growth for Canada. Like the “X” on a map, we pinpoint that pivotal moment when potential is immense, but capital is scarce, that place where local strengths become global solutions.

SOURCE NorthX Climate Tech

Version 12.0 of StarlingX is here. StarlingX is an open source cloud infrastructure software stack that makes it simple to deploy, distribute and manage both distributed (edge) applications and centralized cloud.

AUSTIN, Texas, April 29, 2026 /PRNewswire/ —

What: An OpenInfra Foundation project, StarlingX combines the strengths of successful open source cloud technologies—including OpenStack, Kubernetes, Ceph, and QEMU/KVM—and reconfigures them into a platform for distributed applications of all kinds, accounting for geographic dispersion, low-overhead communication, and the need to manage very large hardware deployments.

Who: StarlingX is widely used in production among large telecom operators around the globe, such as T-Systems, Verizon, Vodafone, KDDI and others. Hardened and stress-tested by telecoms, StarlingX is now a highly performant distributed cloud architecture ideal for demanding use cases such as railway systems, autonomous driving platforms, aerospace communication and flight systems, drones, critical energy infrastructure, industrial automation and more.

Why: The StarlingX platform has been extensively hardened in production environments for years. With each new release, the open source community continues to refine its capabilities, security and operational efficiency to meet evolving industry demands. Learn more about the enhancements in StarlingX 12.0: https://www.starlingx.io/blog/starlingx-release-12/

“StarlingX continues to advance cloud technologies for mission-critical industries. As an ongoing supporter of the project and original contributor to the code base, we are encouraged by its growing commercial adoption within the ecosystem. We look forward to further supporting this momentum with our ongoing collaboration and by delivering expertise with our commercial distribution of StarlingX in Wind River Cloud Platform.” — Paul Miller, CTO, Intelligent Systems, Software and Services, Aptiv

“StarlingX 12.0 represents a significant leap forward in edge scalability and operational efficiency. By refining our core architecture and expanding our support for diverse hardware profiles, we are ensuring that the community has the tools necessary to meet the evolving demands of the next generation of edge infrastructure. It’s a proud day for the project and everyone involved in this milestone.” — Shuquan Huang, StarlingX Technical Steering Committee member

“We are thrilled to witness another StarlingX release and all the results delivered by this amazing community. StarlingX 12.0 brings important new features for authentication and security, OS and Kubernetes updates and OpenStack support to the new version (OpenStack 2025.1 – Epoxy) and new external storage options. The community engagement and the ecosystem are shining and bringing accelerated results. Encora is excited to continue supporting the expansion of StarlingX.” — Thales Elero Cervi, Encora, StarlingX OpenStack project lead, StarlingX Technical Steering Committee member

Where: Download StarlingX 12.0 at https://opendev.org/starlingx

Learn More:

Release blog post: https://www.starlingx.io/blog/starlingx-release-12/Release notes: https://docs.starlingx.io/releasenotes/index.html#release-notesProject documentation: https://docs.starlingx.io/Website: https://www.starlingx.io/

About the OpenInfra Foundation

The OpenInfra Foundation builds communities who write open source infrastructure software that runs in production. With the support of over 110,000 individuals in 187 countries, the OpenInfra Foundation hosts open source projects and communities of practice, including infrastructure for AI, container-native apps, edge computing and datacenter clouds. The OpenInfra Foundation is part of the nonprofit Linux Foundation. Join the OpenInfra movement: www.openinfra.org

Contact: 

Robert Cathey
Cathey Communications for the OpenInfra Foundation
robert@cathey.co 

Allison Price
OpenInfra Foundation
allison@openinfra.org 

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/media-advisory-starlingx-infrastructure-of-choice-for-distributed-cloud-and-worlds-largest-telecommunications-providers-available-in-version-12-0-today-302756934.html

SOURCE OpenInfra Foundation

Founded by Aashna Parsa, youth-led YND’s innovative gamified Ally in Training™ app, supported by 26 student leaders across nine states, fosters vital neurodiversity allyship and self-advocacy skills.

LOS ANGELES, April 29, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Youth for Neurodiversity Inc. (YND), a youth-led nonprofit, is showcasing its gamified app Ally in Training™ through an interactive youth-led exhibit at the California School Health & Behavioral Health Conference (April 27–28 at the Hilton Los Angeles/Universal City).

The exhibit highlights allyship, strengths-based understanding of neurodiversity, and student mental health, featuring live demos of Ally in Training™ alongside CalHOPE’s youth mental health app Soluna.

Founded by Aashna Parsa, a rising high school student at Stanford Online High School and incoming freshman at The Harker School, YND brings together neurodivergent and neurotypical youth to promote inclusive learning, peer connection, and strengths-based understanding.

Based in San Jose, Parsa’s inspiration to take action emerged from her personal journey navigating neurodiversity within her family and close community, alongside adapting to physical challenges following an injury last summer. She further drew motivation from the 2025 Stanford Neurodiversity Summit and Vanderbilt University’s Neurotech Frontiers conference organized by the Janus Innovation Hub and the Frist Center for Autism & Innovation. Moreover, she developed and submitted a written research input to the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights’ 2026 youth mental health, facilitated by a worldwide consultation of youth leaders and changemakers supported by the United Nations Youth Office.

“Growing up around neurodiversity and navigating my own challenges showed me how isolating differences can feel,” said Parsa. “Rooted in the principle “Nothing About Us Without Us,” I built Ally in Training™ to make learning allyship feel like play. Our participation in this significant conference allows Youth for Neurodiversity Inc. to connect directly with the educators and health professionals who are instrumental in shaping supportive environments for neurodivergent youth. We believe our unique youth-led approach and the innovative Ally in Training™ app are powerful tools for fostering peer connection and driving our mission forward.”

YND is growing rapidly with 26 student leaders and members across nine U.S. states and Africa, with strong representation across California, including Los Altos, San Jose, Saratoga, Palo Alto, Redwood City, Los Altos, San Mateo, and Morgan Hill.

At the conference, Parsa is joined by fellow student leaders Annie Liu and Jisoo Hur from Los Altos High School, and Unaysah Ron and Omar Ron from Ocean Grove Charter, to demonstrate the app and engage with educators and health professionals.

YND is a community member of the United Nations Youth Office’s flagship initiative on Youth Mental Health and Wellbeing and a proud partner of the California School-Based Health Alliance. The organization is also a community member of Office of Community Partnerships and Strategic Communications under Gavin Newsom, reflecting its engagement within California’s youth health and education ecosystem.

YND student leaders also participated in advocacy efforts on April 15, 2026 in Sacramento, supporting California Assembly Bills 2071 (Digital Wellness) and 1669 (Student Mental Health) with co-sponsor of the bills GENup, a California-based nationwide student-led organization dedicated to transforming education policy by amplifying youth voices.

Maxwell Palance, mentor to Aashna Parsa and Co-Chair of the Stanford Network for K-12 Neurodiversity Education & Advocacy (NNEA), 2026 Davos Neurodiversity Summit Leadership Wall Honoree, and NASA Neurodiversity N3 Network Research Intern and Scholar, said:

“Aashna Parsa and the Youth for Neurodiversity team embody the future of authentic, youth-led neurodiversity advocacy. Neurodiverse minds bring unique perspectives and ways of thinking that challenge assumptions and spark breakthroughs. By creating spaces where different ways of thinking are supported, we expand what’s possible for everyone. Their gamified Ally in Training™ app is an innovative tool designed to bring neurodivergent and neurotypical teens together to build allyship and self-advocacy skills. I’m excited to see them sharing this work at the California School Health & Behavioral Health Conference.”

About Youth for Neurodiversity Inc.

Youth for Neurodiversity Inc. is a California-based, international youth-led 501(c)(3) nonprofit that breaks barriers for neurodivergent and differently-abled youth by celebrating differences, championing strengths, and mobilizing allies. The organization brings together neurodivergent and neurotypical teens worldwide to build connections, reduce stigma, and promote universal design, assistive technology, sensory-friendly spaces, and youth-centered policy. Learn more at youthfornd.org.

Website: youthfornd.org Instagram: @youthfornd

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/youth-for-neurodiversity-inc-ynd-unveils-ally-app-at-ca-school-health-conf-apr-27-28-2026-302756689.html

SOURCE Youth for Neurodiversity Inc.