Getting the word out on energy

Every year, thousands of kilometres apart, Canadian researchers across the country offer the chance to change the way we use our country’s enormous energy reserves. Now they have an online home.

Bringing together distinct but complementary energy research from across the country, The Canadian Centre for Energy Information’s Energy Research and Innovation Directory is a searchable listing of projects and organizations designed to present Canadian innovation to like-minded researchers and businesses around the world. It’s a site designed not only to highlight energy research, but also to encourage the kinds of collaboration that make innovation possible.

The directory’s subjects include an expansive survey of current Canadian energy research, offering links to current projects and information on organizations like The Centre for Sustainable Transportation at the University of Winnipeg. A nonprofit group committed to “provid[ing] leadership in achieving sustainable transportation in Canada,” the Centre is a prime example of how Canadian research is offering fresh options for energy use, in this case on Canadian roads.

Defining sustainable transportation as a balance between access, safety, health, affordability, efficiency, choice, economy, emissions, resource use and noise, The Centre for Sustainable Transportation has highlighted and evaluated possible transportation solutions in some 30 projects like the “ecoEnergy for Personal Vehicles Program,” which uses a speaking GPS device called “Otto” to influence driver behaviour by providing audio feedback on street signs and idling. The Centre also coordinates Kids on the Move, an Ontario-based program aimed at developing province-specific guidelines “for achieving transportation and land-use arrangements that meet the needs of children and youth,” and recently completed its “WinSmart Baseline GHG Emissions Study” (552KB PDF), a profile of Winnipeg’s vehicle emissions compiled for Transport Canada.

According to Arne Elias, the Centre’s executive director, his organization’s mandate is an essential in a country where awareness is growing, though not always with proportional action results. “We talk a lot. We can do a lot more,” he says.

Seeing the need to evolve beyond from what he calls “a very challenged situation,” Elias proposes a threefold plan that includes behavioural changes from drivers, as shown in the Otto project; technological change, substituting more efficient technology for inefficient, older technology; and infrastructural changes. Real change is possible, he says, and there are already indicators that consumers and major decision-makers are aware of that possibility.

Citing programs like the federal subsidy program for hybrid cars and recent upgrades to municipal transit systems, Elias observes that, within the last two to five years, there has been a marked shift toward a greater awareness of transportation issues, albeit an awareness that is by no means universal.

“I’m often amazed at the high level of interest, lay interest, and expert knowledge that some people have,” he says. “And I’m also quite often surprised by how misconceived some of the notions are that other people have.”

Spurring interest in its initiatives and providing a chance to educate the public, the Centre for Sustainable Transportation’s most accessible forum has been the media, who’ve recently taken more interest in the organization, founded in the mid-‘90s, because of rising gas prices. Otto, for example, has already generated its fair share of coverage, and the Centre’s co-organization of the PHEV (Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles) 2007 Showcase and Forum, brought attention to the organization’s mandate.

It’s an integrated process of feedback between the Centre, the public and energy experts that continues to drive the organization’s mission, with consumer education working in tandem with expert contributions. Like the Centre for Sustainable Transportation, the Energy Research and Innovation Directory is designed to encourage understanding between energy experts across the country and abroad, demonstrating that solutions to our current energy crises are both essential and possible.

“We have those kinds of stakeholder meetings from which we then generate studies, and those studies are also a way of educating people, and those studies can generate some interest,” says Elias. “Then, when we’ve done the study and put it in the news, we’re able to discuss some of the recommendations that have come out of it. That’s a more traditional way of doing things, but it also involves the expert community, which we think is important.”