Financial Impacts And Incentives Of Renewable Energy
Hi there everyone,
My name is Christopher Pratt and I'm just one of the amazing group of people that I have the privilege to be working with at Alberta Distance Learning Centre (ADLC) on our inquiry and action and within Climate Action 150. We're looking forward to meeting everybody else from across the nation that is also working on this nation-wide project!
So far, our group has done some basic research regarding climate change in Alberta. We have looked into alternative professions that could become available if we, as a province, shifted towards more sustainable and renewable energy sources, as well as how our education might need to change in order for the next generation to be employed by such ventures. We've also looked at the cost surrounding renewable energy (both financially and also to the environment, just to see how less of an impact Renewable Energy would have on our surrounding environment). As Alberta's economy is firmly rooted right now in the fossil fuels we also wanted to get an idea of how much of our province exactly revolves around the oil industry.
In the middle of all this research is our main three questions which are:
1. How will the individual financial status of Albertan's be affected if the province, as a whole, moves towards more renewable energy sources and bases its economy off of more environmentally sustainable industries?
2. Would other possible jobs be available to Albertans if the province put in motion the process of slowly phasing out our oil sands production?
3. How do we begin to educate the next generations in Alberta so that they are ready for such a transition, should it happen?
We've found some really encouraging and interesting information so far. For example, through our talks with Jeff Reading, an epic former teacher with the CBE who now is heavily involved in helping to mitigate climate change, we learned that there are numerous clean energy startups based in Alberta, with more popping up every day! This could be the alternative industry to the oil and gas sector.
In order for this change in the industry to happen, though, we must change our education system to suit this. As well, climate change must be addressed in schools, which all of us feel certainly isn't being done under the current Alberta Education curriculum. Many of the next generation are unaware of the issues climate change poses to society.
That is a very quick summary of all our research to date. We hope to have another progress report up soon to further state our research and answers into the main three questions above and also to lay out a rough plan of how we're going to take our research and put it into action.
Until then!
-ADLC Climate Action 150 Group
