AI Analysis: Business enterprise in-house research and development expenditures on environmental and clean technology products, by industry and geographic region

Executive Summary

Canadian business enterprise R&D spending on environmental and clean technology products grew 58.3% from $1,794.7M in 2020 to $2,840.3M in 2023, reflecting strong momentum in clean technology investment. However, the distribution is highly concentrated: 52% of the 4,674 observations are exactly zero, and 75% of all reported values fall at or below $2.5M, meaning a small number of industries and regions drive the vast majority of spending. The dataset spans 17 geographic regions and 72 NAICS industry categories, offering a detailed but uneven picture of where environmental R&D investment is — and is not — occurring across Canada.

Key Findings

• Total Canadian R&D expenditures on environmental and clean technology products increased by 58.3%, rising from $1,794.7M in 2020 to $2,840.3M in 2023.
• The distribution is extremely right-skewed: the median value is $0M while the mean is $17M, with 52% of all 4,674 observations reporting zero spending.
• 75% of all reported values are $2.5M or below, while the single largest value — Canada's 'Total, industries' in 2023 — reaches $2,840.3M, acting as a dominant outlier.
• Using the IQR method, 799 data points were flagged as statistical outliers, all exceeding the $6.2M threshold, highlighting how concentrated investment is among a small number of industry-region combinations.
• The dataset covers 72 NAICS industry categories across 17 geographic regions, with top-ranked industry-region combinations averaging the highest environmental R&D spend over the 2020–2023 period.
• Year-over-year correlation analysis shows that regional spending rankings remained largely stable across the study period, with the same regions consistently leading clean technology R&D investment.
• Data quality flags (STATUS codes) are present throughout the dataset, with some estimates marked as unreliable or requiring caution, which may affect the precision of reported figures for smaller regions and industries.