From June 5th-9th, leading scientific, political, and business minds came together at the Perimeter Institute for the first-ever Equinox Summit: Energy 2030. The goal was to devise a blueprint for a low-carbon, electrified future that accounts for ever-expanding energy demands, security issues, and efficiency improvements within the next decade and a half. This summit is the brainchild of the Waterloo Global Science Initiative (WGSI), a non-profit partnership between the Perimeter Institute and the University of Waterloo. Formed in 2009, their overall mandate is to facilitate an international conference that catalyzes long-term scientific and technological solutions to global issues.
The Equinox Summit was the result of that effort and produced an Equinox Communique to summarize conference conclusions and outputs. The Summit was comprised of four parts. The first was a series of workshops and debates by a scientific quorum about key future energy technologies and systems. Some sessions were closed-door and some were open to the media. Among the panel of experts was Dr. Cathy Foley, president of the Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Societies, Dr. Yacine Kadi, CERN project leader, and our very own Dr. Linda Nazar, ECE professor and member of the Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology.
The second component, a social forum, gave feedback to the quorum on how their recommendations mesh with governments, industries, and civil society. The third component was an advisory panel that essentially mentored the forum. The advisors made sure the quorum and forum participants stayed relevant to current economic and political issues. They were typically from multidisciplinary backgrounds, such as Dr. Jason Blackstock of the Centre for International Governance Innovation in Waterloo, who works in energy and environmental policy but has a background in physics. The idea behind this advisory panel was to ensure realistic and implementable recommendations that work from both a political and technological standpoint. Members of the panels were certainly from around the world; experts came from institutes in China, the USA, Australia, the UK, Nigeria, Brazil, Denmark, India, Indonesia, and more.
The fourth component was about engaging the public. Public lectures were given daily by the summit’s experts. Such keynote speakers included Dr. David Keith on global climate engineering and energy land footprints, and UW’s own Thomas Homer-Dixon on Energy, Complexity, and Human Survival. TVO’s current events talk show The Agenda with Steve Paiken aired live from the Summit every night, which was a great chance to experience a live television show if you were lucky enough to get tickets or sneak in the day-of. The show typically involves the host (who also moderated the past federal election English debate) posing questions to a multi-perspective panel while audience members are occasionally polled and an online feed gets input from viewers across the country.
The taping I attended was about energy efficiency in urban buildings. The five panelists, two from Waterloo, one from Calgary, and two from Australia, covered the basic facts about what makes or breaks a building’s energy efficiency. One third of Canada’s energy consumption is residential, but most homes with advanced energy efficiency design are highly expensive – catering to the “boutique home buyer.” Dr. David Keith emphasized the need for more affordable energy-saving measures in large, shared buildings, and to keep in mind that, although our buildings are becoming better insulated and have less resource-intensive components, we are also building for more area per person in most modern buildings, effectively cancelling out the energy savings. This is an example of the Jevons paradox, where increased efficiency can actually help contribute to greater consumption.
The panels took examples from foreign countries like Denmark, Japan and the USA, where natural variations in sunlight, temperature, and precipitation are considered to minimize the amount of energy spent to control the building’s internal climate. A key problem addressed to engineers was the lack of “reporting back” about the effects of so-called energy-saving legislation. An example of this was the reported energy savings from a subsidized CFL light bulb program in Quebec, which were somewhat false because they forgot to account for the fact that the heat previously generated from incandescent bulbs reduced the energy required to heat homes in the winter. This is a simple example of how complexly interconnected human patterns of energy consumption are.
The Equinox Summit wrapped up without a hitch, and they swiftly released the Equinox Communique (available online at wgsi.org). Though concise, it is certainly more than a fluffy conference report. It goes into brief technical analysis of options to replace coal as an energy baseload. The options explored are geothermal power, improved renewable energy storage, and nuclear power. In the context of urban centres, it touches on energy mobility and efficient infrastructure. It also addresses rural electrification strategies. In the coming months, a detailed Equinox Blueprint will be published to inform policy makers, industry leaders, and technology influencers of the Equinox quorum’s collective thoughts.
With organizations like WGSI forging partnerships between the University of Waterloo and a wide range of local and international experts, it is not difficult to involve yourself in intellectual and multidisciplinary community events such as the Equinox Summit. Events like this often give our roles as engineers in society some perspective. Especially regarding global energy problems, well-rounded practical insight from engineers who also understand policy will be in high demand in years to come.
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