The challenge of climate change, of getting the fossil fuels out of energy systems and finding ways of meeting our energy needs without ongoing greenhouse gas emissions, is upon us. We all know we need to transform our energy systems and infrastructure, but how to do it is a serious challenge. Energy is invisible in our daily lives. We turn on the light, we plug in our devices, we start the car, we hear the furnace kick on, we take a shower, we turn on the computer, and the energy is just there. We have been terribly successful at making energy a seamless and pervasive part of our life. Now we need to make it visible and rethink how we get it and use it.
The Decarbonization Forum held Nov. 17-18, 2016 at the Balsillie School of International Affairs, was designed to do just that. In the room were 50 experts from the Waterloo Region, drawn from academia, local institutions, government, businesses, and local NGOs. Each person had experience in thinking about some aspect of the energy systems. The goal of the forum was to think more systematically and holistically about the energy systems, and in particular, how to replace our dependence on fossil fuels with a sustainable energy system. The forum kicked off an effort to plan energy systems for the Region that are fully decarbonized by 2050—that do not rely upon fossil fuels at all. This is an ambitious goal, and one that surpasses the province’s goal of an 80% reduction for ghg emissions from 1990 levels by 2050.
The aims of the forum were three-fold:
- To articulate a set of pathways (and there will be more than one) for how we would like the energy futures to develop, across short, medium, and long terms
- To assess which policies and support mechanisms at the provincial, federal, or municipal levels would be most conducive to achieving the goals of energy transformation
- To evaluate the effectiveness of the forum for planning decarbonized energy futures for municipalities across Canada