Larry Kostiuk knows the future of energy is complicated.
He grew up in the Canadian Arctic and trained as a combustion engineer in Alberta, at Cambridge in the U.K. and at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab in California. He then worked for NASA in Ohio and on other projects in the Himalayas, rural China and France. Living around the world taught him that, depending on a society's geography, culture and history, energy expectations and solutions can vary dramatically.
For more than a century, hydrocarbons have provided energy to drive growth and development while spewing CO2 into the atmosphere. Even though hydrocarbons remain abundant and relatively cheap in many jurisdictions, concerns over their environmental impact are compelling governments worldwide to implement contentious policies to accelerate the transition to cleaner energy sources.
In 2016, 195 countries signed the Paris Climate Agreement pledging to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. To comply, the government of Canada announced a series of measures including a requirement for every province and territory to implement a carbon tax this year, or have a federal one imposed. Meanwhile, Alberta's provincial government launched a climate change plan in 2015 that includes phasing out coal and having 30 per cent of its electricity generated by wind, hydro and solar by 2030.
With the energy and environmental landscape changing fast, investments are also being made in research to understand what comes next and how to get there. At the end of 2016, the federal government invested $75 million to launch the Future Energy Systems research initiative at the University of Alberta, which Kostiuk, an associate vice-president of research at the U of A, now leads.
Having worked on the cutting edge of energy research throughout his career, he's under no illusions about how quickly a worldwide shift can happen.
"No single alternative energy technology is going to reliably meet the energy needs of every society around the world," he observed. "So we have a lot of work to do."
