Tom Rand
Environmental Sustainability Expert & Venture Capitalist
Tom Rand is founder and director of VCi Green Funds, a seed and venture capital fund in the low-carbon sector. His efforts are focused on carbon mitigation and he is active in Cleantech venture capital, technology incubation and commercialization and public advocacy. Rand is the Cleantech Practice, Lead Advisor at the MaRS Discovery District, helping the next generation of Canadian Cleantech companies grow to global leadership. Additionally, Rand is the co-developer of The Planet Traveler, a project that claims to be the “greenest hotel in North America”, in Toronto, and he is the author of Kick the Fossil Fuel Habit: 10 Clean Technologies to Save Our World.
Tom Rand 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. Rand led its expansion to over 100 employees in three countries, with revenue in excess of $20 million US 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.
Currently, Rand focuses his efforts on carbon mitigation and is active in Cleantech venture capital, technology incubation and commercialization and public advocacy. He is founder and director of VCi Green Funds, a seed and venture capital fund in the low-carbon sector. Rand is the Cleantech Practice, Lead Advisor at the MaRS Discovery District, helping the next generation of Canadian Cleantech companies grow to global leadership. He recently published Kick the Fossil Fuel Habit: 10 Clean Technologies to Save Our World.
Rand is co-developer of The Planet Traveler, a project that claims to be the “greenest hotel in North America”, in downtown Toronto, and sits on the Board of Directors of Morgan Solar. He holds a BSc in electrical engineering from the University of Waterloo, a 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. Rand is an Action Canada Fellow, and was project manager of the influential Green Bonds public policy team. In September 2011, Tom was honoured as one of MaRS Discovery District's Clean50 honorees for his contribution to advancing the cause of sustainability and clean capitalism.
Rand’s perspective on climate change is both pragmatic and optimistic. His bare-knuckled approach is refreshingly straightforward, while missing none of the subtlety required to balance the economic, political, scientific and technological sides of this important topic.
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2. Planet Traveler: North America's Greenest Hotel
This presentation outlines a very pragmatic example of business leadership on the issue of climate change. The hotel project incorporates a half-dozen existing technologies (geothermal, solar thermal, solar PV, drain water heat recovery, efficient lighting, smart thermostats) to lower carbon emissions by three-quarters. Planet Traveler was the first building to locate geothermal pipes beneath City property, and thus enabled a new relationship between buildings owners and the City. Rand's approach is pragmatic, and he argues against over-analyzing problems before acting, and has little time for existing standards like LEED. The lesson from the hotel is that by leveraging just 5% of a building's value, carbon emissions can be lowered by 75%, and this can be done at a profit. Putting a global perspective on this project: given that buildings worldwide are responsible for 40% of carbon emissions, the lessons from Planet Traveler speak to the possibility of lowering global carbon emissions by a third.
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1. Kick the Fossil Fuel Habit: 10 Clean Technologies to Save Our World
Rand offers a comprehensive approach to issues related to our transition to a low-carbon economy. Technology options, political constraints and possibilities, policy options, financial and economic considerations and climate science itself can all be covered to varying degrees, depending on the audience. A main theme that is clearly differentiated: Rand believes our economy can run without fossil fuels, but is no naive advocate of all things green.
Rand is willing to ask hard questions about the technology options available to us, and the scale of investment required to move the needle on carbon emissions, asking the provocative question "What do you get for a trillion dollars?" as a way to generate analysis. Rand speaks as a scientifically literate venture capitalist.
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We recently welcomed Tom Rand as our keynote speaker for the Halton Apprenticeship Advisory Council (HAAC) Honour Roll Awards. As an event that honours skilled trades excellence in our community, we wanted Tom to focus on how the skilled trades workforce is changing with the emerging green economy. We found Tom to be extremely easy to work with; he embraced our topic and worked it into his presentation. At the end of the event, we heard nothing but rave reviews from our event attendees, and those comments were also reflected in our event evaluations. Thanks Tom for making this HAAC Honour Roll Awards so successful.
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February 2010Kick the Fossil Fuel Habit: 10 Clean Technologies to Save Our World
Kick is richly illustrated and accessible, it addresses achievable solutions that will have a real and meaningful impact on the future for our children. It's been conceived to appeal to a broad range of readers on multiple levels. For those who skim read and pull quotes and captions, Kick provides an engaging glimpse of this fascinating subject. For those who seek deeper understanding, the lively, factual text provides an easy-to-understand summary of the technologies and supports all claims with scientifically verified endnotes-from a politically neutral technology expert. Kick will engage, entertain and educate the public about one of the most important subjects of our time. The book deals with Solar, Wind, Geothermal, Biofuels, Hydropower, Ocean, Smart Buildings, Transportation, Efficiency and Conservation and the Energy Internet.
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