The B.C. government is doubling down on clean transportation. On Sunday, we told you that it invested $395.5 million to support the electrification of public transit across the province. Now, a zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) fund is getting another go around.

The CleanBC Go Electric Advanced Research and Commercialization (ARC) program is investing $5 million in a third round of funding to support research, development, and demonstration of new made-in-B.C. technologies.

“B.C. is the first jurisdiction in the world to legislate a 100 percent ZEV target by 2040 ­– and since moving our target date to 2035 – with progressive targets for 2025 and 2030,” said George Heyman, Minister of Environment and Climate Change Strategy. “We are steadily moving toward this commitment, and in fact reached our first target years ahead of schedule. CleanBC supports these targets through many actions, including rebates, infrastructure development, training people for future jobs in zero-emission transportation and community energy, and investing in clean-energy technologies.”

A pair of local projects were notably funded from ARC’s first two rounds. First, the program invested in Victoria’s Gregory C. Marshall Naval Architect to develop an electric utility catamaran. Second, it wrote a cheque to Harbour Air to support the conversion of existing aircraft to be fully electric.

“Technological innovation is just one of many hurdles on the journey to realizing our goal of becoming an electric commercial air operator,” said Bert van der Stege, CEO of Harbour Air. “We value the Province’s support for the project, which not only supports our emission-reduction goals, but has also created good-paying cleantech jobs.”