AEE World 2023 – Day 1 – AEE Canada East

Written by: Andrew Penner, Chapter President and AEE Regional VP for Canada

Following Day 0 which was focused on business meetings, the formal conference commenced on Day 1. As with each iteration of the world conference, the 2023 event kicked off with an inspiring opening keynote. In past years, we’ve seen the likes of President George W. Bush, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, President Bill Clinton, and Felipe Calderon to name a few. This year, the AEE welcomed former US Vice President, Al Gore!

It would be next to impossible to sum up the mood and emotion of this morning’s opening session. The room was full. Bill spoke about our drive and mission to contribute to a clean energy future which is reliable and resilient. After the opening and welcoming remarks from Bill Kent, the Executive Director of AEE, Al Gore took the stage.

His talk started slow. Pulling ideas and themes from “An Inconvenient Truth” and other works he’s authored since leaving office. The single slide he shared was a picture of the earth from the vantage point of the international space station. He reminded us just how thin our atmosphere was – so thin that if you drove a car at highway speeds straight up that you’d reach space in some 5-7 minutes. But society treats it like an open sewer for carbon, he said. Some in the room – confirmed through numerous conversations with attendees over the past few days – thought that perhaps there wasn’t a need to start with the facts that most the room already knew. We as a group are universally aware of the mechanism driving warming and climate change.

As the talk went on, he became increasingly passionate. He tapped into his vast experience as a statesman often drifting to relatable anecdotes but always drawing the audience back to the focus of this conference and our collective mission – addressing the climate imperative through energy efficiency and renewable energy with an eye on decarbonization.

I wish I could have recorded the session to go back and list and reflect further on his words. Some of the one-liners and punch lines I was able to gather and take note of included:

The oceans are not supposed to be as hot as a hot tub.

Denial is not only a river in Egypt.

Despair is not only a tire in the trunk of your car.

But perhaps the most interesting things I took away from this session was that a warming climate brings with it many implications – some less directly obvious to the typical energy engineer working in the trenches. This is where the insights of a statesman come in handy. An exasperating consequence of warming – beyond extreme weather, water scarcity, and a loss of biodiversity – is mass migration of people. For this his passion took hold. Years of experience and the intimate knowledge bubbles to the surface.

“I’m sorry, I pressed my own button. That is a risk.”
Al Gore

When speaking about the connection between climate change and warming with migration and the tendency for authoritarian populism, he caught himself remarking that “I’m sorry, I pressed my own button. That is a risk.”

Following the formal address, Eric Woodroof sad down for a candid, fire-side chat. Eric is very good at these. We learned that working the farm (the same farm he grew up on as a child) is his hobby. He was on the field all day the day before his address. For the past 10 years he’s been actively converting the farm to regenerative agriculture…. for him it is a research project. We also learned that when he was young there was no difference for him between working hard and fun. In fact, it was fun to work hard – a work ethic that obviously served him well throughout the years.

“The antidote to climate despair is climate action.”
Al Gore

Sessions

This year the conference featured technical sessions across 12 tracks. In some ways there is simply too much. Each year, conference participants are faced with difficult decisions when multiple sessions of interest land at the same time. The 12 tracks included:

Track A FED Energy
Track B Energy Management
Track C Alternative and Renewable Energy
Track D Industrial Energy Management
Track E Better Plants Program
Track F Building Performance
Track G Decarbonization
Track H Resiliency and Reliability
Track I Corporate Sustainability and Initiatives
Track J Energy Basics
Track K Energy Data, Analytics, and Tracking
Track L Accelerating Community Pathways to Net Zero

Regardless of which track you choose, you’re certain to find some nugget of value – either from the speakers’ presentation, the audience questions and ensuing discussion, or the connections you make with your neighbors in the audience.

Opening Night Reception

Opportunity for networking with snacks and drinks. Lively and fun.

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Opening the conference with this networking reception is a great way to get a head start with building connections and for many, doing business.

International Awards

International awards represent the cream on top. Applicants from all corners of the globe are considered on the merit of their nomination. It has been said times that competition is fierce speaking to the depth of the AEE’s membership. This year, four of the International Awards were issued to Canadian nominees. Congrats to all of this years award winners, but particularly those from Canada!