MCCHE Convergent Innovation Webinar Series: Dave Sawyer
Canada and the World Net Zero Challenge: Exploring Pathways, Policy development, and Technological Opportunities
Presented by Dave Sawyer
Dave Sawyer is an environmental economist with a twenty-five year track record in helping solve policy challenges for sustainable development, bridging political realities with sound economic theory. He provides innovative modelling, analytics and institutional support to reveal the implications of environmental policy choices. He has held positions with Environment Canada, Canada’s Commissioner of Environment and Sustainable Development and leading Canadian consultancies. Most recently, he was the International Institute for Sustainable Development’s vice-president for climate, energy and partnerships, leading a team of 20 adaptation and mitigation specialists working on low carbon, climate resilient development globally. He was the lead author of important Canadian reports on national carbon policy, such as the National Roundtable on the Environment and Economy’s Getting to 2050 and Achieving 2050. Dave has also been working in developing countries on the socio-benefits of low carbon development.
Abstract
Canada has now committed to a more ambitious Nationally Determined Contribution to achieve emission reductions of - 40 to 45% below 2005 levels by 2030. At the same time, it is committed to achieving deep decarbonisation levels consistent with net zero emissions by 2050. Make no mistake, these are ambitious emission reduction trajectories. Notably, net zero by 2050 requires Canada to bend emissions down to a level of about one tonne per capita from current levels of about 20 tonnes per capita nationally and close to 70 tonnes per capita in Alberta and Saskatchewan. All this needs to be achieved in under thirty years or in the lifespan of three light duty vehicles or one industrial boiler. Just five years ago, such deep ambition did not seem practically feasible. David will discuss the two key reasons from this, the first bearing on Canada carbon mitigation policy architecture; the second, on the pace of technological change that has clearly sped up, with technological breakthroughs in batteries and storage, industrial decarbonization, and transportation. David will present analysis and modeling conducted by the Canadian Institute for Climate Choices about possible net zero pathways for Canada. These net zero pathways will be juxtaposed against recent policy developments and technological opportunities that make the transition to deeper decarbonisation more feasible by the day. Ongoing challenges and head winds will be highlighted as well as opportunities to strengthen current policy development.
Chair: Laurette Dubé (Scientific Director of MCCHE)
Co-Chair & Moderator: John G. Keogh (Professor of Practice, MCCHE; Founder, Shantalla Inc.)
Special Panel: Panel of scientists and action leaders will build upon this in-depth economy-level analysis of Canada Net Zero strategy to explore challenges and possibilities for the agri-food sector in Canada and around the world, linking to the UN SDGs. They will discuss strategies to cascade down and up national policies into sector- and enterprise-level investments, innovation pipelines, operations and logistics, laying out key foundation for the integrative digital and institutional architecture needed to reach societal scale (e.g., standards, metrics, monitoring, adaptive learning). They will also discuss show effort deployed for Net Zero could be linked to other aspects of development, e.g, Zero Hunger, Affordable Health for All, or Inclusiveness, as suggested in current calls for a world reset on convergence economy, ackowledging that developed and developing worlds share the same planet and harnessing the full power of entrepreneurship and innovation around the globe.