A previously scheduled Zoom meeting.
Speaker: Ralph Torrie
Title: Mission Retrofit: Buildings for the Post-Petroleum World
Time: 2021-10-27 13:30 Eastern time (USA and Canada)
Bio:
Ralph Torrie is Director of Research for Corporate Knights, and an internationally recognized analyst and communicator in the field of energy and environmental systems. In the early 1990s, he pioneered methods for local government climate change analysis that are now in use throughout the world. He carried out Canada’s first low-carbon scenario analysis for the David Suzuki Foundation, the first such analysis done anywhere. In addition to founding the research and software development firm Torrie Smith Associates, he has served as Assistant Coordinator of the Energy Research Group of the United Nations University and the International Development Research Centre, as Vice President of ICF International, and as Managing Director of Navigant. He has numerous publications, has served on the Boards of several nonprofit organizations, was a candidate for the Green Party in two federal elections, and lives in Cobourg, Ontario.
Summary:
There are about 9 million buildings in Canada, and they will constitute the majority of buildings in Canada for decades to come. There is no credible path to a zero-carbon future in which these buildings are not made much more efficient, and in which their operation no longer has a significant reliance of fossil fuel. The technologies for doing this are not the critical path for achieving this, and neither are the fundamental economics. The key challenges relate to the inadequacy of the current business models, supply chain infrastructure, financing methods, and public policies related to buildings. We need disruptive, breakthrough strategies to get out of the incrementalism and anachronistic business, and policy models that dominate this area of economic activity.
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