sustainable alternative energy, a priority

Conserve existing energy avoid generating more electricity

By William Doyle-Marshall

 A distinguished three-member panel of experts discussed for more than an hour earlier this month the existing situation regarding the need to find alternative clean energy. “The Carbon Conversations: Charting A Sustainable Future” was aimed at addressing the carbon crisis with a view to finding the opportunity for solutions. They concluded there is urgent need for political commitment for vital action to be taken. 

   Dr. Suresh Narine, a Trent alumnus, director of the Trent Center for Biomaterials Research, moderator, noted that carbon has become one of the single most important threats “to our way of life, because of its proliferation due to our activities, anthropogenic activities and it touches on very many facets of our lives.”

  While one of most readily examples that come to mind would be carbon emissions from petroleum, Dr. Narine said carbon is also very important to food supply. “Our bodies are made up of almost entirely carbon and our world is regulated by the exchange of carbon,” he added.

   Steven Franklin, president of Trent University told the gathering that The Center for Biomaterials Research which sponsored the conversation is unique in North America and it’s on the cutting edge of research and technology development that is changing the world. The Center’s Research aims to create a more sustainable future and it brings together the sciences with humanities and social sciences to examine biomaterials within an ethical framework, Franklin explained. “The research touches on agricultural utilization and the geographical, environmental and commercial impacts,” the President added.

   Ms. Annette Verschuren, Chief Executive Officer and Chair of NRStor Incorporated, a new venture accelerating the commercialization of energy storage technology, disclosed that her passion for sustainability started at a very young age when she observed her father using liquid manure which no one had proven useful before him. “All my young life I always understood that profitability and sustainability really went hand in hand,” she stressed.

  Listening attentively to Carbon footprints panelists

  

Her passion was further fuelled upon retirement from Home Depot. MsVerschuren went around the world with her husband and visited 16 countries -- a lot of them developing countries. “It was very clear that there were three things that really had to be addressed, really need solutions. One is food, one is water and one is energy and so I wanted to do something in that area and also recognized the critical importance of managing greenhouse gases,” the CEO emphasized.

In the last two weeks she disclosed: “we passed 400 parts per million CO2” and that number is quite frightening. We are way over extracting these resources and not replacing them and things are getting worse. Our goal in Canada is to reduce emissions 17% below the 2005 level by 2020. Government projections show that we will likely miss our goal by a wide margin,” Verschuren continued.

 She predicted that improving grid efficiency and enabling more clean energy will lead to fossil fuel consumption falling significantly. Ontario has more than enough generation capacity and it is imperative that those resources currently at the disposal of the province are used more effectively. “It’s more sustainable to conserve the energy that we already produce through efficiency than to generate more electricity,” the corporate leader advised.

   David Patterson, a serial entrepreneur whose company North Water developed the largest Canadian entry in the hedge funds of funds business has a little bit of a problem looking at the world from the point of view of the carbon account in opposition to looking at it from the point of view of the economy or from the point of view of business. Patterson is deeply involved in both. However, it’s very clear to him that the profit motive has created “our modern world” and it’s not going away anytime soon. “It is also very clear that the 400 parts per million is also not going away anytime soon. That’s an issue,” the entrepreneur added.

The gathering was reminded that both nature and human life are organized in systems of balancing loops and re-enforcing loops where feedback comes back and either balances the system or re-enforces the direction of the system. Those feedback loops are in place to keep systems in existence. This is one of the reasons why things are so hard to change in this world, Patterson emphasized. Those feedback loops are there for the purpose of protecting systems’ existence, he said.

   The former President of Guyana Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo appealed for governments of the world to signal their intention to act on recommendations of the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) where the negotiations are taking place.