Five years ago, Calgary’s city council declared a climate emergency. Many praised the move, others criticized it as an attack on the energy sector.
Since then, a lot — so much, so freaking much — has happened.
Geopolitical instability has increased. New leaders came in at the federal, provincial and municipal levels. Donald Trump returned to the White House. AI got huge. Life in Canada got really expensive, with inflation, grocery and fuel prices and housing costs rising faster than wages — pushing affordability to the centre of political debate. And, along the way, the idea of an energy transition that would move us toward net-zero emissions became more complicated.
And that has reverberations in Calgary. We’re at a pivotal moment for the future of energy and the future of the planet. The city is grappling with the role it will play: Should it defend its oil-and-gas foundation, reinvent itself around low-carbon innovation, or find a credible path that does both?
Avenue reached out to local climate, energy and policy experts to share their thoughts on Calgary’s role in an energy transition and what work needs to be done to continue to be an energy leader. (Editor’s note: answers have been edited for length and clarity.)
Leor Rotchild – Sustainability expert and founder, Calgary Climate Week
Leor Rotchild is CEO of Kavana Partners, a strategy and sustainability consulting firm.
“Climate change has been, unfortunately, a divisive topic and hyper-politicized. It’s because the consequences are great. The impact is tremendous, and people want to put pressure on those in authority to create more willpower to act. Then, that action has potentially positive but seemingly negative consequences on the business community.
“Since the Donald Trump 2.0 era [began], we’ve seen pushback on anything environmental. Some of that is ideological, but some I’ve seen before. We’re moving back towards the start of my career, where we had to make a strong business case for climate. That’s not terrible. There’s an opportunity to restart these important conversations around the kind of material impact that climate risk could have on your business. That’s something any investor will want to know. We are entering into a more pragmatic kind of energy transition — energy transformation or even energy addition. It’s not about phasing something out. It’s about bringing more onto the grid, more energy abundance, with the advent of data centres and AI. The world needs significantly more energy.
“In the past, major conversations around climate and energy have taken place at COP (Conference of the Parties) summits in Brazil, or in cities like New York and London that hosted local climate weeks. The idea was that those are the places that could deploy large amounts of capital towards things like renewable energy.
“In this next cycle of driving the conversation, London, New York and COP summits might be less relevant in terms of driving conversation compared to the places that deeply understand energy and how food is produced and distributed. Calgary is ground zero for those two topics.
“There is a lot happening here. Many people will be surprised by that because they hear climate skepticism coming from this part of Canada. But this has been a jurisdiction that has led the way in pricing industrial carbon, and that served as the model for how to price carbon across the country and other parts of the world. We have innovated. And, when Alberta has innovated, Canada was seen as a climate leader. And, when Alberta decided it was going to sit this one out and label things a hoax and say it’s not possible, then Canada has been labelled the climate laggard.
“So what Alberta decides matters, and Calgary is the business heart of Alberta.
“We need oil for now. We need gas for now and probably for the foreseeable future. Coal we probably don’t need at all now or ever. And we also need everything else — geothermal, solar and wind and hydrogen — ideally in combination with other technologies. Alberta knows how to do this stuff.
“We need to be investing in the next growth areas. Do we want to continue to double down on one industry that is not going to produce significantly more jobs than it has in the past? Or do we invest in where the puck is going?”
Peter Tertzakian – Energy economist and author
Peter Tertzakian is the CEO and founder of Studio.Energy, a hub for corporate leaders, finance professionals and policy-makers to develop creative insights into the business of energy.
“In 2021, climate change and the mitigation of emissions were viewed as a problem. A problem has a solution. The solution was simple: tax the fuels that create emissions, do things like bike lanes, swap out power sources with renewable sources, and that will take us to a net-zero future [where the amount of greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere would be equal to the amount removed] by 2050.
“Now, given the state of the world, we have a set of dilemmas. That’s different from a problem. A dilemma has no solution, only difficult choices. We have difficult choices to make about what we spend our money on. For example, are you spending money on carbon-mitigation infrastructure or on repairing the water pipe? When it comes to energy transition, putting excessive taxes on vital commodities that we use every day is challenged by affordability.
“Five years ago, people said things like, ‘I really want to get off fossil fuels, but it’s expensive.’ Today, there’s plenty of choice. I understand if you don’t have money to buy a new car or put up solar panels, but to say that it’s very difficult to do these things is no longer true.
“Civil society, if it chooses to address this problem, has more control than it did five or 10 years ago. Yes, driving all of society on renewables is very challenging, particularly in northern climates such as ours. But, at a minimum, it’s a shared responsibility, and the shared responsibility is much easier today because consumers have a lot more choice.
“We’re coming out of an era where addressing the climate problem was driven by aggressive policy. We’ve learned the effectiveness of that was limited. Emissions around the world are not going down.
“Carbon policies were supposed to encourage the energy transition from an established paradigm of energy systems to more electrification. What we see now, though, is that electrification isn’t being facilitated so much by policy, but by the steep pull on electric power by data centres and other factors.
“AI is a surprise accelerator of technological advancements in ways policy was not.
“Renewable energy is feeding into [electrification], and that’s positive. Adoption of new technological paradigms, like renewable energy, gains momentum with scale because their costs go down. Those costs have come down dramatically and will continue to go down. But the AI world is not just drawing on renewables. It’s drawing upon everything. Over the next 10 years, the draw of AI will help renewables and other energy alternatives related to electrification achieve more scale and greater cost competitiveness, potentially faster than any carbon policy could have accomplished.
“I don’t know if we’ll see net zero, but we could see substantial emission reductions by 2050 by virtue of accelerated adoption in the electrification world. It doesn’t necessarily mean oil and gas is going away.”
Arlene Strom – Chancellor, Mount Royal University (MRU)
Arlene Strom joined MRU as chancellor in 2025 after a career at Suncor, where she’d served as chief sustainability officer, general counsel and corporate secretary. She’s on the advisory board of Portage Energy, a company producing sustainable aviation fuel from municipal waste.
“One of the most important things that Calgary can do is foster the conditions that support collaboration and appropriate risk-taking. When I think about collaboration, it’s not just about getting in a room and working towards achieving our respective goals; it’s about the hard work that comes with aligning interests and sitting in the uncomfortable space where we can make significant progress on big challenges like climate change.
“As Calgarians, we’re proud of our entrepreneurial culture and expertise. We can apply that to expanding our ability to offer low-carbon energy and improve our resource-sector performance, and also to develop new large-scale projects. For example, Calgary’s landfills are a large source of methane. If we could actually divert waste before it reaches the landfill, that’s a very low-cost way to eliminate emissions.
“We have the infrastructure and capital that comes from being an oil and gas power centre. We have the opportunity to build infrastructure that could significantly improve our carbon footprint.
“Broad-based education will also play an important role. At MRU, we are thinking about problem-solving skills that help to position students for the future. Most of our students stay in Alberta, and about 94 per cent are employed when they graduate. These are students who are going to make significant contributions here. Our post-secondary institutions are a part of Team Calgary [a public-private economic partnership] that’s working with organizations like Calgary Economic Development. That positions us really well for Calgary to be a hub for convening and collaborating.
“This moment is a ‘yes, and’ opportunity for Calgary. It does involve change, but it doesn’t mean we have to leave people behind. We must embrace the discomfort of understanding where we need to change. If we can be a place where we have some of the biggest oil sands companies and we’re developing sustainable aviation fuel companies, that’s huge. It doesn’t mean we’re leaving behind an industry that has contributed to our success. It means we’re willing to sit in the discomfort of the question: Where do we need to change to build even further?”
Myrle Ballard – Canada Research Chair in Weaving Indigenous Science and Sustainability Science
Myrle Ballard was named the first director of the Indigenous Science Division at Environment and Climate Change Canada. She’s an associate professor at the University of Calgary.
“I grew up on the rez. I grew up with a knowledge of the environment that was passed onto me — things like the way birds behave when there’s going to be changes in the weather. It wasn’t until I started my master’s that I recognized this is a science.
“My mother tongue is Anishinaabemowin. I study the names of places. The Indigenous names of places are named after their original role in the ecosystem. For example, in the Indigenous language, Saskatchewan is called kisiskâciwan, which means where the water drains.
“Now, I’m doing research that stretches from the Rockies to Manitoba, studying the watershed and identifying the Indigenous names of places. We can learn a lot from the Indigenous name of an area. Those names identify what a place was in the original naming of the ecosystem — was it always prairie?
“Indigenous Peoples’ knowledge is really important as Calgary transitions from oil to something else. Decision makers need to rely on their knowledge of the peoples, of the lands and waters. Their knowledge is not superficial. They know what’s underneath. Indigenous people know when something is abnormal because of the connection that they have with the land. They are the first to observe the real-time changes happening with the land and the species. But a lot of times, they’re not respected for their knowledge.
“I’ve written about a framework, Three-Eyed Seeing, which uses bridging, braiding and weaving of Indigenous science, Western science and all our relations (meaning everything else besides humans) to help make predictions about weather and climate change. Bridging is where the two sciences meet. Then braiding is when you start to work with other knowledge streams, and weaving is when they start to incorporate Indigenous science with Western science into decision making. It’s very important to use Indigenous science and decision making at all levels of government moving forward.
“We need to be more in tune with what the water is saying, with what the species are saying, because we can learn a lot from them. And using these three voices will be stronger in managing energy and transitioning.”
Chris Severson-Baker – Executive director, Pembina Institute
Chris Severson-Baker has been instrumental in key climate-action campaigns, including the phase-out of coal power and mapping a path to carbon-neutral oilsands. He is a leading expert on responsible energy development.
“Calgary is the energy city in Canada. It’s located in the energy province. That has been our identity for a long time. But the world is moving into an energy revolution. We’ve entered the age of electricity. If Alberta wants to continue to be the energy province and Calgary the hub of the energy industry in Canada, we need to embrace what’s happening globally.
“There’s no reason why we can’t continue to be the energy hub of Canada. We should be welcoming energy innovation and new technologies with open arms. We should use the wealth, knowledge and skilled folks that we have here to continue to be leaders in energy.
“There are things happening globally that we could do here. In some jurisdictions, utilities encourage households to install smart thermometers, and you can voluntarily enter into a contract with the utility where they can draw down energy from your battery and charge it back up again to avoid peak demand times. This is a way to avoid having to build expensive infrastructure like power lines and power plants. We could do this. We could set our mind to being the place that has the most liberal policy and regulations. People could do what they want in their homes in terms of generating electricity, storing electricity and participating in these types of demand-side management programs.
“We want people to set up their Canadian headquarters in Calgary, prove their new technology and scale it up here, rather than do those projects elsewhere. We should do what we can to make sure that innovative projects don’t have to go somewhere else to do a full-scale commercial demonstration project, which is what’s been happening in Alberta lately.
“We could bring back the renewable energy sector. We were seeing increasing growth of renewable energy until the moratorium happened. So far, it’s not showing any signs of coming back. We have an open market for electricity, and that was part of the reason why companies from around the world were interested in developing renewable energy projects here.
“We could do more for electric vehicles in Calgary. EV uptake is taking off. More models are going to come onto the Canadian market, and they’re going to be more affordable. The thing that is going to be standing in the way of EV adoption is concern over where drivers can recharge. The city can address that by having an abundance of options and advertising them.
“If you drive around Calgary, you don’t see a lot of signs indicating EV charging stations. You don’t see much advertising for fast charging available. That would be a real, tangible thing, because, when people are making that decision to buy an EV, they get tripped up by the fear that they’re going to get stranded.”