Resources for Future Generations (RFG)
- A New Way of Thinking
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Resources for Future Generations 2018 is a one of a kind conference, and the challenge of building a program from nothing is an exciting one. We’ve been actively working to shape, shift, and collaboratively build a program that spans industry, social and typical conference boundaries and could not be more thrilled to present you with the outcome. Now that over 200 sessions are defined within the major themes, an overall structure for the event is developing which allows for synergy between themes, fuel for new thinking and room for dialogue. Key to the conference will be connecting the ‘big ideas’ with the practical needs of humans and society. An interactive flow of sessions and plenary-type events will allow participants to be fully engaged.
Here’s a preview of what to expect
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Day 1: Introduction to the relationships between the Earth – our planet – and the nature, distribution, availability, and extractive challenges of natural resources.
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Day 2: Consideration of future energy needs, sources and use; the nexus between energy, minerals and water, and the relationships to other areas of human endeavor.
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Day 3: Evaluation of the regional distribution of energy, minerals and water, and the resulting benefits and challenges posed for people; the availability of resources, the discovery process, responsible development, and access to markets.
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Day 4: Discussion of the future and the path forward – the types of resources that will be most critical in a changing world, the alternative sources of supply ranging from new geological environments to improved recycling, changing ownership,
new partnerships.
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Energy – Powering Civilization
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Fundamental to human civilization is a stable source of energy. Basic needs include heat, electricity and transportation. Clothing, infrastructure (think steel beams), data centers, and just about anything else you need or use in your daily life also require energy.
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Foundation of Modern Life : The SWITCH energy primer
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The ways in which we supply our needs, however, are rapidly changing and views on how we should develop energy sources in the future are divergent. The reality may be that we need a variety of solutions, along with innovative developments in efficiency and power delivery to create sustainable supplies well into the future. Earth-sourced materials will be needed for whatever supply choices we make – from oil, gas, and water to the metals and minerals needed for solar, wind and battery storage. At the same time, creative initiatives driving towards the ‘circular economy’ will also help to decrease energy inputs into many products.
RFG2018 will be a hub of activity, providing the opportunity for dialogue around the fundamentals of how society can tackle the challenges of creating sustainable energy supply. Sessions will include geothermal and fossil fuel sources, as well as supply and distribution of the metals required for ‘clean’ energy (e.g. copper, etc.). How energy sources interface with and impact fresh groundwater supplies is also an important part of the conversation.
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Switch Energy Alliance
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Understanding the energy mix, scale of global demand, and the benefits and impacts of each source of energy, is an important prerequisite to navigating the rapidly changing world. Every choice we make, whether it is a ‘no’ or ‘yes’ carries with it its own implications: good and bad. Dr. Scott Tinker, a member of the RFG2018 International Advisory Panel, started work on a project to explore these questions over 10 years ago. Along with Harry Lynch, a decorated documentary film maker, the two set out to discover the world of energy and what it would really take to “make the switch.” The result was the widely viewed and heavily-awarded film ‘SWITCH’, seen by over 15 million people in over 50 countries, and used by faculty in over 1000 universities.
Switch is also about improving the energy conversation, away from politics and emotion and towards objectivity and facts. Today, it’s polarized and unproductive. Switch focuses on practical realities and encourages a balanced understanding. A large part of the effort has also been the creation of some 300 high-production quality, short-format videos and lesson plans, creating a resource for educators and their students to use and explore, and providing vital fundamental information about how society both creates and benefits from secure supplies of energy. Scott and Harry are collaborating again to make a sequel, Switch ON, to address the devastating, widespread, yet unheralded issue of energy poverty, and how that impacts the world. |
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CANADA – what is its energy landscape now, and what does the future hold?
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Join the conversation at GENERATION ENERGY, a current initiative of NrCan and the Government of Canada to engage Canadians across the country in the questions of how we make, move and use energy.
“Generation Energy is about inviting Canadians to share their ideas on
how Canada will forge its energy future.”
— The Honourable Jim Carr, Minister of Natural Resources
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RFG2018 SESSION SAMPLES
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The Earth
- Geomicrobiology - driving force in earth history
- Sedimentary depositional systems: local to basin scale
- From EarthScope to the Canadian Cordillera Array; integrated Earth systems observatories
- High and ultra-high temperature metamorphism; new approaches to kinetics, models, geochronology, and interpretations
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Minerals
- Multiparameter integrated footprints of mineral systems
- Secondary processes on ores: from sugergene enrichment to element dispersion
- Magmatic arc fertility and the genesis of porphyry Cu-Mo-Au deposits
- Ensuring the supply of critical materials to meet the UN 2030 Sustainable Development Goals
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Energy
- Marine geosciences and energy resources for future generations
- The role of Geoenergy Test Beds in developing future energy systems
- Clean energy resource development opportunities for indigenous peoples with benefits to larger society
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Water
- Natural gas and groundwater
- Groundwater management for providing safe drinking water and food security in low-income countries
- Environmental impacts to water by resource extraction
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Resources and Society
- Resource development conflicts: challenges and solutions
- The role of indigenous perspectives/traditional ecological knowledge in natural resources projects: exploration to reclamation
- The changing role of geological surveys
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Knowledge and Education
- Beyond the science: communicating with key decision makers
- Learning from and empowering young leaders: early-career geoscientists implementing sustainable development.
- Citizen science in energy, minerals, water and the earth
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PARTNERS IN THE FIELD
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Clean Energy Canada leads at the interface of policy research and public engagement. The organization builds awareness and support for solutions that address climate disruption while fostering an energy-efficient, environmentally responsible and prosperous economy. This is accomplished by providing credible research and analysis, convening influencers for dialogue, and informing and inspiring policy leadership. Clean Energy Canada is a non-partisan think tank based at the Simon Fraser University Centre for Dialogue.
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What is Clean Energy?
Clean energy policies, technologies, or services are those that accelerate the shift to a renewable-based energy economy by increasing renewable energy supply, reducing consumer and industrial energy demand, improving the infrastructure and systems that transmit, store, and use energy, and enabling market penetration of clean-energy solutions.
For many, a clean energy job probably conjures up images of working in an engineering lab, manufacturing solar panels, or assembling a wind turbine. Sectors like mining are rarely top-of-mind in conversations about building a clean, low-carbon economy.
The metals and minerals produced by mining, however, are essential to increase the global supply of solar panels, wind turbines, smart grids, LED light bulbs and electric cars. Copper is just one example.
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Copper has emerged as an essential material in the clean energy transition, not because it’s critical for any one technology but because it’s critical to the whole clean energy system. The McKinsey Global Institute estimates that primary copper demand could grow by nearly two per cent annually, reaching 31 million tonnes by 2035—a 43 per cent increase over current demand.
Beyond copper there are up to 19 metals and minerals needed for solar PV panels—including six critical materials. The opportunity associated with solar power alone is immense. Thanks to falling technology costs—which dropped 58 per cent between 2010 and 2015—solar is emerging as the leading source of new electricity in countries around the world. In the next five years, the International Energy Agency projects that the amount of solar power capacity worldwide will nearly double.
Development of these metals and minerals may be vital, but cannot happen without a continued drive towards robust sustainable mining practices and the combined efforts and involvement communities and indigenous peoples as partners in the process.
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Energy in Mining
Opportunity for Sustainability
The extraction of the metals needed for human development and sustaining society also requires significant energy inputs with obvious environmental consequences and impact on operational costs. As mining continues to develop stronger and better sustainability practices both communities and operations are benefiting from the changes. A range of operations in different environments and producing various materials are embracing ‘clean energy’ as part of their operations. Examples of renewable energy projects include energy storage and innovative wind power at Glencore’s Raglan Mine in the Arctic in partnership with Tugliq Energy and solar PV arrays in use by Teck Resources at Quebrada Blanca in Chile where they generate 30% of their power. These are just two examples of the many initiatives underway in a fast-paced and changing environment for renewable energy in mining operations.
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Arna Palsdottir
Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Green Chemistry, Catalysis, Inorganic Chemistry, Cornell University
Arna Pálsdóttir’s work in chemical engineering at the Cornell Energy Institute is at the interface of energy, water, minerals and the Earth. She is developing a process to extract lithium from geothermal brines in Iceland working with HS Orka HF, with possible applications to a wider variety of fluids. The idea is to use waste fluids to create a resource, by extracting metals from geothermal waters using supercritical fluids. If successfully commercialized, the process would provide a broader base of lithium supply, helping to support the rapid increases in demand for batteries.
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While Arna is completing her PhD, she is also on a six month-long commercialization fellowship, pursuing the economic viability of her technique. The path to chemical engineering, when described by Arna, seems fairly straightforward. Growing up in Iceland, students are exposed to geology and natural processes both in their local environment and at school. Combined with the likely influence of pharmacist parents, she was drawn to math and chemistry all through her school years, participating in Math Olympiads and also picking up 4 languages along the way. When it came time to deciding what to study at university, Arna took a methodical and very successful approach.
“I got the brochure from the university listing all the programs and then went through them crossing off everything that I didn’t want to do – at the end, I was left with math, chemistry, chemical engineering and linguistics. Math and chemistry seemed to present better career options, and chemical engineering combined them!”
After completing her undergraduate degree from the University of Iceland in 2013, Arna decided to continue her studies, coming to Cornell University where Dr. Jefferson Tester welcomed her with an open ticket, supporting her to design her own PhD. The natural landscape in the Ithaca, NY area helped too, with its abundant rocks, waterfalls, lakes and trees.
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Arna’s curiosity about the fluids and processes in the geothermal plant she had toured in Iceland led her to decide there were useful metals to be extracted from those waste fluids. The initial work was broad – to focus the effort on what might be of most interest and viable. The decision to work on lithium extraction, at a time when the price was much lower than today turns out prescient in the dynamic and rapidly changing world of renewable energy.
Now nearing the end of her PhD, Arna is currently completing her commercialization project, evaluating whether her technique can be applied as an economic process to extract lithium from a variety of brines. The upside is a brine extraction method that returns the water resource to the ground and potentially broadens the types of brines that can be processed in a clean and responsible way.
Arna’s view of the future is optimistic. - “We will figure it out - EV cars and electrification are the way of future. Recycling of lithium batteries is still a tough call, with no one battery type dominating the market. But we will achieve a balance of lithium supply with natural sources and recycling.”
Life outside engineering and science include cycling, running and being outdoors. When Arna isn’t in the lab or learning about business start-ups, you may well find her in Cascadilla Gorge, right next to her office building – sipping on a coffee and soaking up the sounds and sights of the cascading waterfalls and maybe thinking about the next energy challenge.
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TOP #RFG2018 INFLUENCERS
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Recommendations for good reads related to supplying Resources for Future Generations - books that inspire discussion, new ideas and solutions for a better world.
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Energy and Civilization: A History
by Vaclav Smil (2017)
“In this monumental history, Vaclav Smil provides a comprehensive account of how energy has shaped society, from pre-agricultural foraging societies through today's fossil fuel--driven civilization. Humans are the only species that can systematically harness energies outside their bodies, using the power of their intellect and an enormous variety of artifacts -- from the simplest tools to internal combustion engines and nuclear reactors. The epochal transition to fossil fuels affected everything: agriculture, industry, transportation, weapons, communication, economics, urbanization, quality of life, politics, and the environment. Smil describes humanity's energy eras in panoramic and interdisciplinary fashion, offering readers a magisterial overview. This book is an extensively updated and expanded version of Smil's Energy in World History(1994). Smil has incorporated an enormous amount of new material, reflecting the dramatic developments in energy studies over the last two decades and his own research over that time.” (Amazon)
Vaclav Smil is currently a Distinguished Professor in the Faculty of Environment at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada.
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Diamond Sponsor
The 2018 Resources for Future Generations conference will bring together global leaders to explore important topics related to the responsible development and use of resources. As Canada’s largest diversified resource company, Teck is committed to responsible resource development as we provide the products that are essential to building a better quality of life for people around the world now and for years to come. We are looking forward to joining the conversation at the conference.
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