Driving through central Alberta is quintessential prairie. The big skies, aspen groves, golden wheat fields and sunlit canola crops are...

Innovators . Entrepreneurial. Ambitious. This is how Albertans have long described themselves, a story often centred around our successful development of the oil sands, Alberta’s most consequential bet. But now the province is faced with a difficult question to reconcile: is this who we are or just who we were? This question will be answered one way or the other, whether we respond to it directly or not. Quite simply, some forces are bigger than Alberta. The question we shoul

This post is part 2 of 3 exploring sustainable finance, bringing together the perspectives of three of our Core Working Group members: Patrycja Drainville (Associate Director, Sustainable Finance, Scotiabank), Chad Park (Vice President, Sustainability & Citizenship, The Cooperators), and Jamie Bonham (Director of Corporate Engagement, NEI Investments) As vaccines pour in across the developed world, jobs are coming back by the thousands to industries and sectors that were hit

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

In many ways, this has been the Year of Carbon at the EFL. We need to re-imagine carbon and re-imagine waste to make a substantial reduction in GHG emissions. We have been supporting carbon neutral and carbon positive initiatives as well as refreshing EFL’s portfolio of initiatives to solve interrelated climate, environmental and economic challenges. Reducing carbon emissions from oil and gas assets and leveraging Alberta’s legacy infrastructure are important areas for the La

Chad Park’s remarks from the EFL 2.0 launch reception on February 12, 2019 Over the last month something notable happened here in Alberta that not everyone may have heard about. On December 11th, the Canyon Creek Hydro Development Act received Royal Assent, enabling the Alberta Utilities Commission to issue its final approval for the Canyon Creek Pumped Hydro Energy Storage Project near Hinton. Alberta can take the bull by the horns and adapt to these changes, get in front of

Alberta is poised for a big leap forward in energy innovation. This will be on display in early November at SPARK 2017 , a two-day conference in Edmonton co-hosted by Emissions Reductions Alberta (ERA) and Alberta Innovates (AI). Many EFL partners and Fellows will be taking part in the event. In preparation for SPARK 2017, Energy Futures Lab Director and Chief Innovation Officer of The Natural Step Canada, Chad Park sat down with Steve Macdonald, ERA’s Chief Executive Offic

Oil and gas versus renewables? That’s a false dichotomy, according to the Energy Futures Lab (EFL), an initiative that acknowledges the importance of Alberta’s significant natural advantage in fossil fuels and how it can be used as a stepping stone to a cleaner energy future. The Energy Futures Lab is designed to allow stakeholders to engage with one another about Canada’s energy future, to find some common ground, and to take action together. – Chad Park “The issues around e

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

Part One: The Latest International Developments Following last month’s GLOBE Conference in Vancouver, Energy Futures Lab Director Chad Park caught up with two members of the Energy Futures Lab Advisory Council, Tzeporah Berman and Toby Heaps, both of whom had important roles at GLOBE and its surrounding events. The following is part one of the three-part discussion and focuses on some of the big international developments that Tzeporah and Toby believe are changing the playi

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