Making the grade on energy

It’s easy to lose sight of our energy. After all, it’s invisible. Whether we’re silently fuelling our cars or turning on a light switch that allows current to flow, we use energy every day without actually seeing its source. But in a world that calls for increased energy efficiency and alternative approaches to the sources we’re used to using, losing sight of our energy just doesn’t work anymore.

In 2009, The Canadian Centre for Energy Information conducted a poll (376KB PDF) that found a full 59 per cent of respondents felt disconnected from energy policy-making decisions and only about half felt informed about energy issues in their country. This, despite the fact that a slate of (sometimes bizarre) technologies, alternate sources of transportation, and fundamental changes in the ways we use energy are changing our lives every day. Energy is changing, which means that our education has to keep pace.

Provincial and territorial energy strategy documents have consistently identified energy awareness as an important factor in any future energy plans. Alberta, for example, identifies awareness as one of its “Desired Outcomes” in its 2008 energy strategy document, while the Government of the Northwest Territories calls for “provid[ing] information and research on emerging technologies, their potential application in the NWT, and develop Alternative Energy Demonstration Projects” as one of its main energy strategy objectives.

To raise this awareness, governments have tried to educate energy consumers both on the way they already use energy — though energy efficiency campaigns, such as those produced by Quebec’s Agence de l’efficacité énergétique — and the ways in which energy is changing — such as demonstration projects like Nova Scotia’s Fundy Tidal Energy Demonstration Project. Government programs run the gamut from awareness campaigns to simple changes in existing programs, like Quebec’s resolution to provide efficient driving techniques as part of driver training, but they aren’t the only ones set to educate consumers. The energy sector, with its literal investment in the energy you use, regularly provides educational opportunities for consumers.

Among energy providers, energy conservation campaigns, like Enmax’s “GreenMax”, provide material benefits to consumers. Use less, they suggest, and pay less. Other outreach efforts, however, provide more direct educational programs. Here are three upcoming events produced by the private sector to educate Canadian consumers.

While new, more compact generating technologies provide an ever-increasing number of options for decentralizing our power, the electricity grid continues to play an essential role in our day-to-day lives. Presented by Inside Education, an upcoming Electricity Education Tour (April 22 – 24) will help participants take a look at the seemingly invisible net of electricity that powers Canadian homes.

Energy in Action (May 3 – May 28), produced by the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, has been providing community programs on energy since 2004. Its activities, designed to showcase the organization’s environmental stewardship — a common goal of industry outreach — will take place in schools across eight Western provinces this year.

GeoCanada 2010 (May 10 – 14), a conference that invites a raft of energy professionals will also include an educational component for the public. Five of them, in fact. From a poster competition designed to encourage students to consider geology in their communities to a full two-day program with hands-on exhibits, these GeoCanada Community initiatives are designed to share professionals’ knowledge with the general public.