Monday April 22, 2024

What If We Get This Transition Right?

For an energy transformation of this depth and scale, we better have a clear idea of where we’re going. After all, how can we build pathways to a destination we can’t fully envision?

Webinar Summary

Canada’s climate goals rely on retooling our economy to be net-zero emissions by 2050. For an energy transformation of this depth and scale, we better have a clear idea of where we’re going. After all, how can we build pathways to a destination we can’t fully envision?    

But what does a net-zero future even look like? In this webinar, we asked a diverse panel of technical, governance, and strategy experts to weigh in on what a competitive, prosperous, and fully electrified economy would look like in practice. What actions can we take now to secure Canada’s role in the new energy economy? What does it mean to have a skilled and employed clean energy workforce? In short: what if we get this whole transition thing right? 

Watch this conversation with experts Bentley Allen, Transition Pathway Principal at Transition Accelerator and Teresa Kramarz, Assistant Professor and Environmental Governance Lab Co-Director at the University of Toronto, on how we can leverage science, strategy, and storytelling to paint a clear vision of our net-zero future—and what actions we can take now to ensure that future becomes reality. 

Moderator

Jane McDonald

Board Member

Jane McDonald is the Vice President of Climate and Nature Solutions. Previously, she led two of Canada’s major sustainable economy think tanks, Smart Prosperity and the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD). She is a member of Canada’s Generation Energy Council, which produced the first energy vision for Canada consistent with the country’s climate goals, and the Farmers for Climate Solutions Task Force. She is a Director of The Transition Accelerator, and a delegate to the Net-Zero Data Public Utility, the world’s first global repository for private sector climate transition-related data freely accessible to all.

Jane began her career in the private sector, launching new environmental markets at New York investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald where she brokered some of the first-ever carbon credit deals between large energy companies and international projects. She then directed a successful advocacy effort to have renewable electricity from major Canadian utilities included in President Obama’s Clean Power Plan.

From 2015-2106 she served as Policy Director in the office of Canada’s Minister of Environment and Climate Change, through the signing of the Paris Agreement, the adoption of a national climate strategy and the implementation of a national price on carbon pollution.

In 2020, she joined an independent group of Canadian finance, policy and sustainability leaders who formed the Task Force for a Resilient Recovery, publishing a roadmap for a long-term COVID recovery strategy to keep Canada competitive in the fast-growing global clean economy.

Outside of her work, Jane has taught as an Adjunct Professor of Environmental Finance at the University of Toronto, served on the board of many non-profits, is a 2007-2008 Action Canada Fellow and a 2024 winner of the Clean50 Award.

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Speakers

Bentley Allan, PhD

Transition Pathway Principal

Bentley Allan, PhD, is a Transition Pathway Principal at the Transition Accelerator, as well as an Associate Professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Allan is an award-winning scholar who has written on the dynamics of international order, science and politics, climate policy, and the political economy of decarbonization. He provides regular advice to government and industry on geopolitics, industrial strategy, and policy.

He has co-lead the development of three sector strategies and roadmaps in collaboration with industry partners. He is the co-coordinator of the Centre for Net-Zero Industrial Policy which advances research and action to strengthen and mobilize Canada’s expertise in modern industrial policy, enabling strategic collaboration between government, industry, indigenous communities, labor, and financial institutions in pursuit of good jobs and a competitive economy.

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Teresa Kramarz

Assistant Professor, School of the Environment in the University of Toronto.

Teresa Kramarz is an Assistant Professor at the School of the Environment in the University of Toronto.  She is the Co-Director of the Environmental Governance Lab, the Co-Chair of the United Nations Development Programme’s External Advisory Group for Energy Governance and the co-convener of the Accountability in Global Environmental Governance Task Force of the Earth System Governance network. Her work focuses on the governance of extractive industries in the renewable energy transition, environmental accountability, and environmental partnerships led by international organizations. She has published three books – “Forgotten Values: The World Bank and Environmental Partnerships” and “Global Environmental Governance and the Accountability Trap” with MIT Press; and “Populist Moments and Extractivist States in Venezuela and Ecuador: The People’s Oil?” with Palgrave. Recent articles appear in Regulation and Governance, Environmental Politics, Global Environmental Politics, and Energy Research and Social Science. She has been working on environmental policy and governance issues for almost 30 years starting as an international civil servant in the World Bank and United Nations Development Programme, and then as a scholar.

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Elena Pravettoni

Clean Power Lead, Energy Transitions Commission

Elena is the Clean Power Lead for the Energy Transitions Commission (ETC), a global coalition of leaders from across the energy landscape committed to achieving net-zero emissions by mid-century. Elena oversees the analytical work programme on clean power, collaborating with the ETC’s Commissioners and experts. Her current focus has been on a report series on Barriers to Clean Electrification, and she is the lead author of the ETC report Making Clean Electrification Possible: 30 years to electrify the global economy. She has also led work for global mitigation efforts for the ETC’s Keeping 1.5°C Alive series, working with COP teams. Prior to joining the ETC, Elena worked in the Energy group at IHS Markit in Washington DC and London, focusing on long term global energy scenarios. She was also the research assistant for Pulitzer-Prize winning author Daniel Yergin’s recent book on energy geopolitics, The New Map. Elena holds an MA in International Relations and Economics from SAIS Johns Hopkins, and a BA in European Studies with First Class Honours from King’s College London.

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