The Innovation Rebate Program (IRP) provides financial incentives for projects that assist Nova Scotia companies as they scale to increase their competitiveness.

The program supports companies as they innovate, drive productivity, increase production capacity, and adopt cleaner and more sustainable approaches to growth across Nova Scotia.

The Innovation Rebate Program works as a rebate against a company’s direct costs. Eligible expenditures will include direct costs of Eligible Projects as defined in the Innovation Rebate Program Guidelines.

An Eligible Project is a project approved by Invest Nova Scotia for purposes of the IRP and may include:

• Implementation of new, significantly improved, and/or more sustainable production processes;
• Supporting the principles and goals of Nova Scotia’s Environmental Goals and Climate Change Reduction Act. This can include, but is not limited to, improving energy efficiency, integration of the use of renewable energy, waste reduction, circular economy activities, greenhouse gas emissions reduction and increasing resilience to the impact of climate change;
• Scaling production capacity for companies producing sustainable and clean products that will support Nova Scotia and other jurisdictions in meeting their sustainable prosperity goals;
• Strengthening supply chains to enable production in Nova Scotia (projects that replace existing Nova Scotia based producers are not permitted);
• Increasing production capacity to enter new markets and/or produce new products;
• Establishing new production facilities in Nova Scotia; and
• Value-added processing for traditional industries such as forestry, seafood, and agriculture

An Eligible Project must have a minimum total budgeted Nova Scotia investment (excluding tax) of no less than $350,000. The maximum amount of Eligible Project Costs to which the IRP rebate will be applied is $15,000,000.