What's stopping us from making the residential sector totally green?

A special workshop on identifying barriers to change and innovation
to reduce impacts of climate change in the residential sector

When: Monday, February 23, 2009, 9:00 am to 4:00 pm
Where: Telfer School of Management, University of Ottawa, Room 4101
55 Laurier East, Ottawa, K1N

The residential sector in Canada generates at least one tenth of greenhouse gases. These emissions can be reduced by as much as 60% by the year 2030. All this requires is the deployment of known technologies, innovations, and practices, already in the market.
What's stopping us from reaching that objective?

Key questions to be addressed:

What have we learned?
Over the last thirty years we have tried to reduce usage of fossil fuels. Many of the necessary technologies already exist and are available in the market. Refinements and improvements are always possible, but there is enough available already to make a big difference. So what have we learned from these years of federal, provincial, and municipal efforts to reduce energy consumption of Canada’s residential sector?

What are the barriers to change?
Identify major themes and obstacles, including jurisdictional, legal/economical, and behavioural challenges

What are some common themes?
Discuss common themes and possible integrated areas of intervention.


Program
- Overview of objectives and sustainable visions
- Some of the presenters and resource persons:
Hugh MacLeod, Associate Deputy Minister
to the Premier of Ontario: Climate Change
Peter Love, Chief Energy Conservation Officer,
Conservation Bureau, Ontario Power Authority
David Foster, Director of Environmental Affairs
Canadian Home Builders’ Association
Gordon Shields, Executive Director
Net-Zero Energy Home Coalition
Dana Silk, General Manager
Envirocentre, Ottawa
Also
- Preliminary results from the Telfer School research project
on barriers to innovation and change
- Recent case studies
- Breakout into groups and sharing of past experiences
- Synthesis and priorization of major barriers to innovation and change
- Next steps

To register, click here

For further information: makingithappen@telfer.uottawa.ca

Making it happen: what to do to reduce Green House Gases by 50%

Many people have designed approaches and scenarios for dramatically reducing our energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. This includes the early work by Amory Lovins on energy soft paths, especially the low energy scenario that he did for Canada as part of his work on the Conserver Society for the Science Council of Canada in the mid-70s (“Canada as a conserver society: resource uncertainties and the need for new technologies”, Science Council of Canada, Ottawa, 1977). These scenarios demonstrated that with existing technology, it is possible to run our economy effectively with a fraction of the current energy and fossil fuels.

More recently, Ralph Torrie’s work for the David Suzuki foundation (see “Kyoto and Beyond: The low-emission path to innovation and efficiency”, Suzuki Foundation, 2002) listed approximately 150 distinct technologies and changes, which if implemented completely, would result in a 50% reduction in GHG emissions from 1990 levels, by the year 2030.

All of these 150+ technologies which he lists in his low-carbon scenario are proven and available on the market. If we deploy and implement all of them, we will actually exceed the Kyoto targets. The graph and table below show the results of his scenario calculation, and how the deployment of these technologies will result carbon emissions, sector by sector.

This graph (no. 51 from Torrie's original paper on p. 115) shows how GHG emissions are reduced over the years, sector by sector.

This table shows the percentage reduction by the year 2030 in CO2 emmissions, sector by sector. It is taken from Torrie's table 26, p.117.

To achieve the 60% reduction in GHG emissions for the residential building sector, Torrie calculates that we need to deploy and implement no less that 58 different technologies and changes.

Similarly, we need to deploy and implement 28 different technologies and other initatives to achieve the 71% reduction for the commercial building sector.

For the passenger transportation, deploying and implementing 34 technologies and changes will yield a 75% reduction in eCO2 emmissions. And as Torrie points out, all these technologies are proven and exist on the market.

What next?

Our project "Making it happen" will continue to explore these 150 technologies, see if we can update that list - after all, technologies have evoleved since 2002.

But most importantly, we will look at barriers - institutional, cultural, behavioural, political, etc. that impede or slow down the deployment of these technologies.