A lot was on the line back in May of 2024. A small conference room on Tsuut’ina lands to the west of Calgary was filled with...

Accelerating Investment in Emerging Net-Zero Aligned Energy Industries a Clear Priority Budget 2023 offered a much-needed response to...

In the global race to reach net-zero and decarbonize, Canada should be the bookie’s favorite. Long renowned as a nation of both abundant...

The Energy Futures Lab’s Grid Sandbox Innovation Platform  The evolving grid  In 2022 it’s easy to take the flip of a light switch for granted. For the most part, people are accustomed to a dependable grid, meaning the intricate systems that provide access to safe, uninterrupted, and affordable electricity are often obscured. But uninterrupted power isn’t a given; it’s the result of a careful balancing act that can be tipped off kilter by any number of different factors.  Tha

Canada has the raw materials and commodities that the world is increasingly desperate for today, and the innovation capital to turn them into the future-fit energy that will be in demand for generations to come. ... Nobody ever said the energy transition would be easy, but few likely imagined it would be this chaotic. In retrospect, it was probably tempting to think that the transition to a low-emission economy could be a gentle and gradual affair. Well, so much for that. Wit

The Energy Futures Lab contributes to a growing battery metals industry The EV Revolution Every so often, humans stumble upon a resource that accelerates our progress in unimaginable ways. With the discovery of fire, we learned to illuminate the world around us, unearthing countless new opportunities. We learned to harness the wind and the sun, we made something of bitumen and natural gas. Each of these discoveries allowed us to move forward in leaps and bounds. But at the he

Alberta’s hydrocarbon sector faced an uncertain future in a world moving towards lower-carbon energy before the pandemic, with existing trends  accelerating  since March 2020. This uncertainty towards the future of the sector offers both risks and opportunities. The province’s rich natural resource wealth and highly skilled workforce have potential to capture a growing share of the clean technology market, and play a pivotal role in reaching climate targets. In order for Albe

Planning for the future is complicated. We don’t know for sure what the future will look like. That means — and forgive me for being a little nerdy here — defining “future fitness” is a  probabilistic  question: we have to assess “fitness” across a range of possible futures. At the same time, the future also isn’t entirely out of our control. Policy choices we make now can influence which futures are more (or less) likely to come to pass. Sound complicated? A new report from

Around the world, countries, corporations, and people are picking up the call for a net-zero future. This global rallying cry is highlighting that we need to do more to reach a lower emissions future and we need to do it at an exponential pace. We cannot close the gap between our reality today, and our aspirations for what is possible, without developing and deploying technologies that both manage our greenhouse gas emissions and add value to our economy. The transition to a

The outbreak of COVID-19 has triggered a global economic crisis that was unimaginable even two weeks ago, and perhaps nowhere is that being felt more acutely than in Alberta. In addition to the obvious consequences of social distancing on businesses and industry, we’re also dealing with a gut-wrenching collapse in oil prices that’s being driven in part by a deepening conflict between Saudi Arabia and Russia. Taken together, the combination of falling oil prices and a temporar

On Tuesday this week, I was interviewed by host Laura Lynch on CBC Radio One’s Vancouver morning show, the Early Edition, for a segment about Alberta. The experience of the interview has me thinking a lot about the challenges we need to overcome in Canada to address energy and climate issues together. The framing for the interview was the recent announcement by Premier Rachel Notley about Alberta temporarily curtailing oil production, set against the messages from this week’s

The increasing drive towards a low-carbon future is demanding that we look differently at the way we live, eat, commute, and transport goods. Easy, convenient, and relatively affordable mobility is embedded in our lifestyle, which makes changes at scale challenging. This has opened the space for ideas across a range of innovation priorities, including 1) implementing new technologies and supporting cleaner fuels; 2) providing low-carbon mobility options; and 3) applying regul

No one ever said the transition to a new energy economy would be easy. From the very beginning, The Natural Step Canada (TNSC) was under a great deal of pressure to describe the impacts and outcomes of the Energy Futures Lab (EFL). We resisted prescribing a solution. Our Fellowship – more diverse than we could have hoped – has created a shared vision and innovation pathways, generated new ideas, and brought existing initiatives into the lab to amplify and scale. Describing an

Reflections from our Energy Futures Lab Fellows “The Albertan Oil Sands, and the province’s economic dependence on them needs to be an important focus for the province as it shifts to a modern energy future that is economically lucrative and sustainable.” – Aproov Sinha What does the future of Alberta’s energy system look like to Apoorv Sinha, founder of Carbon Upcycling Technologies , Research Manager of zEroCor Tubulars Inc , and Energy Futures Lab Fellow? “In the future, i