Telmadarreie, Dr. Ali

2021 Winner: Emerging Change Maker sponsored by RSM Canada

Dr. Ali Telmadarreie is a natural leader

Over the course of his academic career, he has mentored 23 undergrad, graduate and post-doctoral researchers, published over 30 papers, co-created and co-taught a new course for undergraduates, and filed four invention disclosures, resulting in three patents. He seized the initiative to co-found CNERGREEN in 2019, a start-up seeking to commercialize one of his patents. He has served as CEO of CNERGREEN since its founding, and under his leadership the company is gaining significant momentum.

CNERGREEN’s mission is to help the oil industry transition to a low carbon future through enabling them to recover more oil while storing more CO2, all without drilling new wells. The key to achieving this is a step-change in foam technology: CNERGREEN tailors nanoparticles and commercial chemicals to make CO2 foam stable in any reservoir. Under Dr. Telmadarreie’s leadership, CNERGREEN has made remarkable progress in a very short time and has received significant recognition for its potential to significantly change the impacts of oil recovery in older wells and reservoirs.

CNERGREEN accepted to CDL

CNERGREEN was accepted into the Creative Destruction Lab (CDL) – Rockies (Energy stream) in its first year of operation. Dr. Telmadarreie successfully applied to the GreenSTEM program and became a fellow in 2020. He has made extremely effective use of the program funding, rapidly gaining traction with CNERGREEN and raising $1.5M in funding over the past two years for further development of his innovations.

His leadership skills convinced two experts in business development and technology deployment to join CNERGREEN, enabling him to focus on strategy, while also driving partnerships with large service providers to enable field pilots of CNERGREEN’s technology.

“At Techstars we believe entrepreneurs can change the world. CNERGREEN and its CEO Ali Telmadarreie was one of nine applications accepted into the 2020-21 Accelerator program of the close to 400 submitted applications from 44 countries.  The combination of game changing technology and a drive to enable the oil & gas industry to reduce its carbon footprint while supporting fellow entrepreneurs to accomplish their goals is what makes Ali a Change Maker. Ali received the $50,000 Prize award for the 2021 cohort!”

 Audun Abelsnes
Managing Director
Techstars Energy Accelerator
Oslo, Norway