Humans are the masters of Earth when it comes to energy. We reap it from fossil fuels, the sun, wind and waters, even from the atom. You are using it now to read these words. Yet we waste most of it in the form of heat, whether it’s the blazing temperatures inside the engine of your car or the heat pouring out of the smokestack of a factory. By most, I mean up to 70 percent. That’s ridiculously bad for both our wallets and our environment.

What if there was a technology that could harvest the waste heat from factories, power plants and data centers and turn it into electricity? Well, there is – and it is being born at a startup housed at a university in an underappreciated corner of Ontario Province called Durham.

In our new podcast, Intelligence Test, I speak with the inventor of this technology, Brendan MacDonald, and Alison Burgess, who runs communications and engagement for the Durham Region. You need to hear from them both because this remarkable advance is not just the product of one brilliant mind – it is the child of a deep and rich ecosystem of innovation that Durham and its partners have built deliberately and methodically.  It is one of the reasons that ICF named Durham a Certified Intelligent Community this year.