Photo: Maddie Faunt On November 4, 2025, the very same day that the Lab’s first workshop closed a decade earlier, over 150 members of the EFL’s extended network, including founding members of the Lab platform, joined us in Calgary at Bonterra Trattoria for a very special gathering to celebrate the Lab’s 10th Anniversary . Guests attend the 10th anniversary celebration of the Energy Futures Lab | Photo: Maddie Faunt Between rounds of delicious food, drinks, and enthusiastic re

Lab Fellows gathered in September for the 2025 Fall Fellowship Workshop to continue to unpack investigations into cross-cutting tensions dampening energy transition efforts and put insights gleaned into action. Fellows Demetria Zinyemba and Jennifer Young recap the workshop's highlights and provide a summary of the processes that led to the creation of the Fellowship's 2025-26 portfolio of initiatives.

The Energy Futures Lab is kicking off a year-long celebration of its 10-year anniversary with the announcement of the tenth cohort of...

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

Dear Lab Community, Over the past nine years the Energy Futures Lab (EFL) has been hosting innovation processes and supporting...

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

We are excited to announce our newest Fellows! The EFL has been steadily welcoming new Fellows since its inception in 2015. We now have over 65 Fellows from different organizations and communities to advance EFL initiatives and continue to shape the energy system the future requires of us. The EFL Fellows have demonstrated the power of shared leadership, co-creation, and experimentation. We are proud of our Fellows and are excited to announce this impressive group who will c

In March this year we were all shocked by the COVID pandemic, causing a massive disruption in our personal and professional lives. One of the areas that, in particular, was disrupted were in-person gatherings, such as workshops, conferences and meetings. For those, like myself, who work on challenges that require innovation and collaboration of diverse groups of people, this provoked a major question: How can we continue to create engaging online experiences that are effectiv

In August of 2018 I had the good fortune to spend two weeks at the Banff Centre for Arts & Creativity for a Summer Writers Retreat. My project for that time was to write about the Energy Futures Lab. It was an intimidating program in the sense that I was there with people who were actual writers. I was one of only two non-fiction writers amidst a group of almost 20 very talented storytellers. At that time I had already made a shift in my role with the Energy Futures Lab to a

A New Reality Our world is shifting towards a low-carbon economy and the Canadian and global energy marketplace is changing. Many will debate the pace of this shift, but one thing we are certain of is that the shift is happening. Much of this is driven by increasing concerns about our changing climate. A recent study by Canadian federal scientists and academics has warned that Canada’s climate is warming more rapidly than the global average. These shifts and uncertainties ha

There’s never a bad time for the Energy Futures Lab to meet, but the gathering in February in Cochrane was particularly timely. In the wake of Teck Resources’s decision not to proceed with its Frontier Oil Sands project, and in the shadow of both a national conversation over Coastal GasLink and Indigenous rights and a growing provincial one about the merits of separation from Canada, the time was right to ask some tough questions. Things would get even crazier in the days tha

We are thrilled to share a number of connections to the recently announced Clean50 awards. David Hughes, President & CEO of The Natural Step Canada, host organization for the Energy Futures Lab, has been named as a member of Canada’s Clean50 for 2020. David played an instrumental role in co-founding the Circular Economy Leadership Coalition . He helped galvanize momentum and mobilize leading businesses, academics and NGOs towards achieving a prosperous, sustainable, closed-l

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

Since January 2019, the EFL has welcomed 25 new Fellows and 19 Convening Partners to advance EFL initiatives and launch EFL 2.0, in which we deepen our work in Alberta and explore how to extend the Lab’s lessons and learning at a national level. With the recent report that Canada’s climate is warming at roughly twice the rate of the rest of the world, more than ever, our country requires bold and collaborative leadership. The EFL has created a neutral platform to overcome di

The Energy Futures Lab is an Alberta-based, multi-interest collaboration designed to accelerate the development of a “fit for the future” energy system. It brings together a cohort of influential leaders to address current and emerging energy challenges, and generate opportunities for new initiatives and collaborations. CALGARY, February 11, 2019 – A diverse group of energy innovators and partner organizations will gather at the Energy Futures Lab (EFL) Summit in Calgary on F

2018: A Good Year Last year was a good year at the EFL. While our team is conscious that there is much to achieve in 2019, let me take a moment to acknowledge a number of accomplishments in 2018. The EFL was recognized as one of the Clean50’s Top 20 projects in Canada for 2018 for its outstanding contribution to clean capitalism. This recognition is grounds for pride in our work and evidence of the unique potential of The Natural Step Canada’s Sustainability Transition Labs

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

Amidst the drama of recent pipeline and trade war news, you may be forgiven if you missed another announcement that will be important in shaping Alberta’s economic future. On May 29th, Calgary-based E3 Metals announced that it had reached an important technical milestone that moves it one step closer to being able to extract lithium from oilfield brine. Alberta could become a key supplier of this globally-relevant material on the strength of its petroleum industry. Instead o

This spring the Energy Futures Lab welcomed 13 new Fellows. Together with the 12 who joined earlier in 2017, the new cohort adds energy and fresh perspectives to the Energy Futures Lab. Please welcome our second 2017 intake of Fellows to the Energy Futures Lab! With the EFL Fellowship we are assembling an influential network capable of tackling the complexity and polarization of today’s energy challenges. In selecting these new Fellows, we aimed to increase the diversity of r