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Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Complex Energy and Climate Problem with Sara Hastings-Simon
In an increasingly complex world, many of the big challenges facing society today require interdisciplinary solutions, with the energy and climate challenge as a key example. But interdisciplinarity is much more than addressing each of the separate elements in silos. The motivation must come from answering questions about systems, not simply from the perspective of one or even all the individual silos and connections across distant fields are most challenging but also often where the most progress can be made. Drawing on her experience as a policy think-tank, as a business consultant, and as a scientific researcher, Sara will speak to how principles and insights from each of these dimensions can be combined to solve the energy and climate challenges we are facing today.
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CBC News, July 15, 2016Television
Opinion: Low renewable energy prices shouldn't have been shocking
Edmonton Journal, January 9, 2018Print
Ontario's Economic Investment Outlook Dims With New Government Energy Actions
Economist, Pembina Institute lend support to reversing energy system overhaul
CBC News, July 25, 2019Online
URL: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/support-for-reversing-energy-system-overhaul-1.5225806
Can the oil and gas sector enable geothermal technologies? Socio-technical opportunities and complementarity failures in Alberta, Canada
by Aletta Leitch, Brendan Haley, Sara Hastings-Simon
Published by Energy Policy
February 1, 2019
Regions that produce and export fossil fuels experience strong carbon lock-in. Yet, successful fossil fuel sectors also equip a region with skills and resources that could promote the development of certain low-carbon technologies. This paper considers potential complementarities between the oil and gas sector and low-carbon geothermal energy technologies in Alberta, Canada. We find that resources from oil and gas could enable the development of geothermal technologies because of similarities in areas such as actor skills, policy institutions, political networks, sub-surface information, and physical infrastructure. We also present an improved conceptual framework to study socio-technical complementarities based on the technological innovation systems (TIS) approach. Our framework allows for a more active search for unexploited opportunities to develop a new technology within a given regional or sectoral context and highlights the possibility for system complementarity failures.
URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421518307018
Biography
Dr. Sara Hastings-Simon is an associate professor in the department of Earth, Energy and Environment, and School of Public Policy at the University of Calgary where she directs the Masters of Science in Sustainable Energy Development. She is a macro energy system researcher and her work is focused on understanding how low-carbon energy transitions happen within different sectors of the economy, and how policy responses can improve outcomes. Hastings-Simon is also co-founder and co-host of Energy vs Climate a webinar and podcast that explores the energy transition in Alberta, Canada, and beyond. She is the chair of the panel for Clean Growth with the Canadian Climate Choices Institute.
Her previous roles include Director of Clean Economy at the Pembina Institute, founder of Business Renewable Centre Canada, and practice manager for Clean Technologies at McKinsey & Company. Hastings-Simon holds a PhD in physics from the University of Geneva.