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Update on climate change efforts: An upcoming seminar on COP21 and OSPE’s submission to MOECC

COP21

In light of the new Global Climate Change Agreement generated from the United Nations’ 21st Conference of the Parties (COP21), OSPE anticipates that engineers will play a key role in the fight against climate change and the reduction of carbon emissions.

COP21
COP21_151208c-0642, CC image courtesy of Mark Dixon on flickr

If you’d like to learn more about the results of COP21, OSPE is partnering with Mindfirst for a luncheon seminar on Thursday, January 21, 2016 entitled Mindfirst Lunch Seminar: What Happened at COP21? Outcomes from the UN Climate Negotiations in Paris. OSPE members receive a substantial discount off the regular price using the promo code M1PartnerOSPE. Click here to register now. We hope to see you there.

Recently, OSPE attended a session conducted by the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change (MOECC) that detailed design options relating to the proposed cap-and-trade system. MOECC’s presentation was distributed to stakeholders with a December 15 deadline for comment.

To gather engineering perspectives on the proposed options, OSPE called on key subject matter experts (SMEs) with experience and knowledge in this area. Examples of the recommendations generated by OSPE’s cap-and-trade SMEs include:

  • Ontario’s cap-and-trade system needs to reflect the province’s unique qualities and should not adopt a system and rules that were developed in the United States
  • MOECC should afford an adequate amount of time for consultation and design of the cap-and-trade auction to reflect the unique requirements and advantages of Ontario
  • The implementation date should be at least one year after the finalization of market rules to increase certainty to participants
  • The methods, procedures, rules, regulations, and implementation of a cap-and-trade system should be thoroughly transparent

In addition to this submission, OSPE will work on the development of a series of reports throughout 2016 that are linked to topics outlined in Ontario’s Climate Change Strategy, such as transportation, green buildings, energy, excess soils, and underground infrastructure.

If you would like to help OSPE develop these reports, click here to find out how you can participate as a subject matter expert in 2016.

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Comment (1)

  1. Engineers can play a significant role in many aspects of the sustainability discussion. In the aerospace sector – several GTA engineers have been instrumental in the establishment of the Green Aviation Research and Development Network (GARDN) which is engaged in projects to help improve sustainability in aviation. The GARDN effort is augmented by the Sustainable Aviation program being offered at the University of Toronto (UTIAS) which trains graduate engineers in key technology solutions focussed on sustainability. Both of these initiatives are linked to other global initiatives in aviation environmental sustainability.

    Engineers help to ensure that the conversation on sustainability is well balanced – with practical solutions and a technology roadmap that helps to capture substantive improvements over the longer term. It is essential that engineers are at the table for climate change discussions as frequently the solutions are technology based and require a technical based advocacy to ensure that they are correctly undersood and applied.

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