. Electric Industry Fundamentals and Restructuring: June 16-17, Edmonton.

. Introduction to the Natural Gas Industry: July 21-22, Calgary.

. Financial Modelling and Valuation: June 19-20, Calgary.

. Introduction to the Upstream Petroleum Industry: June 23-24, Calgary.

            InternationalModelForest Network Global Forum 2008: June 16-21, Hinton, Alberta. FMI visit http://imfnglobalforum2008.blogspot.com/

            Canadian International Petroleum Conference and Society of Petroleum Engineers Joint Conference: June 17-19, Calgary. FMI visit http://www.petsoc.org/CIPC_2008/

            Geothermal Energy Utilization Associated with Oil and Gas Development: June 17-18, Dallas, Texas. FMI visit http://www.smu.edu/geothermal/Oil&Gas/2008/Geothermal_Energy_Utilization.htm

            5^th Anniversary Renewable Energy Finance Forum – Wall Street: June 18-19, New York City. FMI visit http://www.reffwallstreet.com/

            31^st IAEE International Conference…

            Martha Kostuch embraced her friends and her enemies. That was the wisdom and the generous nature of Alberta’s most enduring environmental advocate, who died in April.

            During her 30 years as a friend of the environment, Martha learned how to bring together people and groups with opposing views, and get them to work effectively on solving some of Alberta’s biggest environmental problems. She empowered people, and she believed in the power of consensus.

            Not that Martha suffered fools gladly, especially those foolish enough not to have done their homework on environmental issues. She always did her homework. She…

By Elona Malterre

            Collaboration between private-sector corporations and non-governmental organizations can help the business’s bottom line, the community and the environment, GLOBE 2008 heard.

            Engaging communities to help achieve business objectives while protecting the environment is “an investment” rather than an expense, Paul Hunt, director of sustainable development and stakeholder relations at Calgary-based Enbridge, told a session on “NGO Collaborative Models: Emerging Trends.”

            Companies must earn a ‘license’ to operate in a community, he said, adding that “the community bar is higher than the legal limit.” Corporate involvement in communities will continue to grow as “governments continue to devalue and abdicate”…

VANCOUVER – Canada’s cement industry has developed a ‘roadmap’ to sustainability but some provincial regulations are hampering efforts, industry executives told GLOBE 2008.

            The industry has reduced emissions of sulphur dioxide by 14 per cent and nitrogen dioxide by 23 per cent since 2003, even with a 10-per-cent increase in production, Alan Kriesberg, president of Lafarge North America’s western region cement division, told a GLOBE session on “Sustainability & the Global Cement Industry.”

            The Canadian industry’s absolute levels of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions increased by 8.5 per cent, or one million tonnes of CO₂e between 2003 and 2006,…

By Elona Malterre

            Global companies can benefit society while becoming both more profitable and sustainable, GLOBE 2008 delegates heard.

            Discussion at the “Dialogue: Business – A Force for Good” session was framed around the report, Tomorrow’s Global Company: Challenges and Choices, written by a team of business and civil society leaders from East and West and signed by 19 corporate executives. The report, produced by Tomorrow’s Company in London, U.K., is available at: (www.infosys.com/beyond-business/global-company-tomorrow.pdf).

            Tony Manwaring, chief executive of Tomorrow’s Company and moderator of the GLOBE session, described his firm as a “think and do tank” focused on the role of business…

By Elona Malterre

VANCOUVER – Efforts to commercialize Canadian clean energy technology are hobbled by timid and impatient venture capital investment and too little government support, experts told GLOBE 2008.

            “What’s broken in Canada is the venture capital system . . . (it is) too risk-averse – too little money, too late in the stage,” Dave Gerwing, president of Menova Energy Inc., told a session entitled “A Toolbox for Technology Commercialization.” Venture capitalists want too much of a company for the investment they’re making and they demand too short a payback time, he said.

            Gerwing, whose company is based in Kanata,…

VANCOUVER – Canadian companies have been slow to tap a $100-billion opportunity for environmental services and products in the Middle East, GLOBE 2008 delegates heard.

            The World Bank has estimated the need for such services and products in the Arab world will be $100 billion over the next 10 years, Ronald Portelli, managing director of Alturki Environmental in Saudi Arabia, told a GLOBE session on “Greening the Gulf.”

            Investment banker Goldman Sachs projects that the six countries that make up the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) which includes Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates, will reap a US$5-trillion ‘windfall’ from oil and gas as world prices…

VANCOUVER – Canada’s forest industry has significantly cut its greenhouse gas emissions and is committed to becoming “carbon neutral” by 2015, says the head of the Forest Products Association of Canada (FPCA).

            But the Canadian forest industry’s drive to become carbon neutral – without relying on carbon offset projects or buying carbon credits – is being undercut by rapid deforestation in other countries and by illegal wood suppliers, Avrim Lazar, FPCA’s president and CEO, told GLOBE 2008.

            Merely stopping pollution, conserving energy and talking about sustainable development “aren’t enough” to reduce global GHGs by the amount needed to avoid…

VANCOUVER – Provinces and states are driving policy on greenhouse gas (GHG) reductions in North America, but federal jurisdictions in both Canada and the U.S. are expected to play a greater role, experts told a GLOBE 2008 session.

            In Canada, the federal government is committed to publishing regulations this fall, lawyer Barbara Hendrickson, a partner with McMillan Binch Mendelsohn LLP in Toronto, told a session on “Climate Change Policy & Regulatory Trends in North America.” There is “quite a bit of uncertainty” how the federal regulations will fit with provincial regulations, although most observers believe Ottawa’s plan “is copying largely the Alberta…

VANCOUVER – British Columbia wants in on a growing global carbon trading market the province views as a “place of opportunity,” not a “place of fear,” the head of B.C.’s Climate Action Secretariat told GLOBE 2008.

            B.C. also realizes the urgent need for action on climate change, after seeing “some of the most prominent evidence” in the mountain pine beetle epidemic that has devastated lodgepole pine forests, Graham Whitmarsh told a session on “Global Carbon Market – Moving Forward.” The beetle epidemic “is symptomatic of what will happen on a global basis if we don’t address this (climate change),” he said.

            The…

VANCOUVER – Arguments can be made for either a carbon tax or a global carbon trading system or a combination of both as the most effective way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, experts told GLOBE 2008.

            But all the experts agreed on one thing at GLOBE’s closing town hall on “Carbon: Tax or Trade:” The world must somehow put a price on carbon to achieve significant cuts in emissions needed to avoid catastrophic climate change.

            “Whichever way we go, the atmosphere can no longer be ‘free,’” said Mark Jaccard, professor of the School of Resource and Environmental Management at SimonFraserUniversity.…

VANCOUVER – Carbon capture and storage (CCS) will become an integral part of “responsible” oilsands development and a key technology in Canada for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, some experts say.

            But other experts, at a GLOBE 2008 session on “CO₂ Capture and Storage,” say CCS technology faces significant cost and regulatory challenges, and will initially be used only where it makes economic sense – for enhanced recovery of conventional oil and unconventional gas.

            “The potential for CCS to play a significant role (in reducing CO₂) emissions) is very real,” Gerry Protti, EnCana Corp.’s executive vice-president of corporate relations and president,…

VANCOUVER – Buildings in Canada are responsible for about 35 per cent of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions, representing the single greatest opportunity to reduce emissions, GLOBE 2008 heard.

            Emissions from commercial buildings could be reduced to 1990 levels by 2030, by taking a best-practices approach that uses building materials that are readily available and affordable and have a 10-year payback period or less, said Jonathan Westeinde, chair of the Advisory Group for Green Buildings in North America for the Commission for Environmental Cooperation based in Montreal.

            Emissions from residential buildings could be well below 1990 levels within the same time frame,…

VANCOUVER – Governments need to think about sustainability in terms of economic opportunities rather than economic risks, four government ministers told GLOBE 2008.

            “There is gold in going ‘green.’ It is the right decision and B.C. is stepping up to the plate,” B.C. Economic Development Minister Colin Hansen said at the “Ministerial Dialogue on Sustainability.”

            B.C. “is firmly in the forefront” in pursuing a vision for the future that ensures both economic prosperity and sustainability, Hansen said. The province has “the most aggressive strategy of any jurisdiction in North America” in leveraging green technologies into economic growth, because “(the) green economy presents…

VANCOUVER – The world is moving away from a hydrocarbons-based economy toward a cleaner “bioeconomy” fuelled by biomass, experts told a GLOBE 2008 session.

            But North America is lagging behind European and South American countries, especially Brazil, in advancing the bioeconomy because of misdirected incentives and a lack of political will, some of the panelists said at “The Business of Biomass” session.

            “Gasoline is on its way in Brazil to becoming an alternative fuel,” said Joel Velasco, chief representative in North America for UNICA – Sugar Cane Industry Union in Sao Paulo, Brazil. UNICA represents more than 100 sugar…

VANCOUVER – Emerging technologies for producing biofuels will shift the demand from corn-based ethanol – blamed for rising food costs – to more sustainable products, experts told a GLOBE 2008 session.

            Federal Environment Minister John Baird announced at GLOBE that Ottawa-based Iogen Corporation’s application for federal funding for Canada’s first commercial cellulosic ethanol plant has progressed to the due  diligence stage. This brings “Canada one step closer to making our country’s first full-scale cellulosic ethanol fuel facility a reality,” Baird said.

            Iogen and its partners Shell and Goldman Sachs plan to use specialized enzymes to convert wheat straw and other plant fibre into sugars…

By Elona Malterre

VANCOUVER – Renewable energy businesses in North America are growing rapidly but they still need government financial incentives and policy changes to compete with conventional energy industries, GLOBE 2008 delegates heard.

            The global power industry as a whole has grown by about two per cent per year, while growth in renewable energy sources have soared by about 25 per cent annually – including 50 per cent per year for solar energy alone, Angiolo Laviziano, CEO of REC Solar California, told a session on “Clean Energy: Growing Renewable Energy.” REC Solar builds solar power plants for large corporations as…

VANCOUVER – Fossil fuels will continue to dominate the global demand for energy for at least the next 20 years, with higher energy prices for consumers and renewables playing only a minor role.

            That was the ‘consensus’ prediction by energy experts at a GLOBE 2008 session entitled “The Future of Energy Dialogue.”

            Greenhouse gas emissions will continue to rise in the atmosphere to well above ‘safe’ levels – in terms of precipitating climate change – of more than 500 parts per million, predicted Bob Elton, president and CEO of BC Hydro. “I don’t believe from what I’ve seen that we’re…

Sustainability Seen as Key To Economic Prosperity
By Elona Malterre and Mark Lowey

VANCOUVER – Achieving sustainability will bring both economic prosperity and long-term protection of the planet’s environment, GLOBE 2008’s opening plenary heard.

            British Columbia’s drive to become more sustainable is prompted not only by concern for the future of our children’s children, but by the devastating effects of climate change already impacting the province, B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell told delegates at the 10^th biennial environmental business conference and trade show in Vancouver.

            Nearly 80 per cent of B.C.’s pine forests have been infested by the mountain pine beetle, while 10 out of…