June 6, 2017
Canadians need incentives to adopt low-carbon technology
Canada can become a major player in clean energy as it meets its commitments under the Paris climate agreement, says environment researcher
As global leaders react to President Donald Trump pulling the U.S. out of the Paris climate accord, a Waterloo researcher says Canadians need a positive vision of the future in order to accelerate the transition to a low-carbon energy system.
“It's not about punishing or penalizing a particular sector in this economy,” says Sarah Burch, a professor in Waterloo’s Department of Geography and Environmental Management. “It's about communities becoming physically healthier because we're using active and mass transport. It’s about our cities becoming aesthetically more beautiful because we're integrating green space with urban space. It’s about moving towards shared autonomous vehicles that are vastly more efficient and electrified - instead of consuming fossil fuels.”
Burch, a lead author on the recent scholarly consensus report called, Re-Energizing Canada: Pathways to a Low-Carbon Future, says: “Decarbonization presents abundant opportunities for prosperity and for achieving other sustainability initiatives.” The report Burch helped lead was co-authored by more than 70 university researchers from 10 provinces. It identified the urgency, barriers and economic opportunities for Canada’s transition to a low-carbon future.
“Canada has to take dramatic steps immediately to decarbonize our cities, as well as our energy system if we're going to have any hope of reaching our commitments under the Paris Agreement or keeping warming below two degrees,” adds Burch. “The de-escalation of fossil fuel consumption has to happen immediately.”
The report, commissioned by Natural Resources Canada, provides an overview of how Canada can make the low-carbon transition, while remaining globally competitive. The authors identified social, political and organizational issues as key barriers.
“Governance is crucial,” Burch stresses. “Low-carbon technological innovation is important, but the most pressing challenges are social and political. Unless we create the right incentives for people to use those technologies, unless we coordinate our efforts and communicate the benefits of this transition, we're just not going to get there.”
But the good news, according to the 60-page independent report, is that technologies already exist that will get the transition underway. “With its uniquely vast endowment of renewable energy resources, Canada can seize the global low-carbon energy transition as an opportunity to build a major new economic engine for the country.”
