What if you could vote for one policy instead of one party in the Alberta Provincial Election?

Last week I felt honored to host a round table discussion on the energy industry’s political challenges/opportunities. Each attendee was asked to present one constructive idea related to energy and Provincial politics and I was inspired by their diverse proposals. We left party politics aside, along with it’s divisive simplifications. We focused on constructive ideas, rooted in many centuries of experience around the table. Individual proposals included carbon utilization, upgrading our natural resources locally to optimize the profitably of our exports, upgrading our electricity grid to decentralize power production, forming a Provincial corridor for energy infrastructure, leveraging our Uranium resources by investing in Nuclear power, solving global environmental challenges by exporting our high environmental standards to the rest of the world and utilize our expertise to lead the world in greening the energy system.

Everyone holds a different set of information, and a unique perspective. On issues as enormously complicated as how humans produce and use energy, any single person can only see a sliver of the entire technical and social picture. Despite the professional arguments of our political leaders, if you talk to the average person you’ll find at the core we agree on the same things. We all need energy, and we all want to protect our environment and our communities.

What is your constructive idea of how Alberta can improve how we manage our natural resources?

Please follow the same ground rules we did when posting:

1. Keep it positive - No bashing other viewpoints, speak in constructive terms about your perspective, not in negative terms about perspectives you disagree with.
2. Ideas, not politics - Don’t mention any specific politicians or parties, stick to ideas and policy.
3. BEST Counterpoint - Also include what you believe is the BEST argument against your idea.

As you can see the ground rules were intense, but they resulted in a much more informed and constructive conversation than is typical in politics, and I beleive these rules are even more important on social media. Thanks to attendees from The FUSE Collective, the Energy Futures Lab, SAIT's Applied Research and Innovation Services, Suncor Energy, Murphy Oil, Birchcliff Energy, Canadian Natural Resources, Petronas, JWN Energy, Accenture, Secure Energy, and others for your time and the thoughtful and civil dialogue.