Biography
Normand Mousseau is professor of physics at Université Montréal and Academic Director of the Trottier Energy Institute at Polytechnique Montréal. World-renowned researcher in complex materials and biophysics, with more than 160 scientific articles, he is also following closely the energy and natural resources questions having published a number of general public books on these topics, including « Au bout du pétrole, tout ce que vous devez savoir sur la crise énergétique» in 2008, «La révolution des gaz de schiste» in 2010 and « Le défi des ressources minières » in 2012. In 2013, he co-chaired Québec’s Commission on Energy Issues, whose report, «Mastering our energy future» was released in February 2014. Member of the Sustainable Canada Dialogues (SCD), he has contributed to the Climate Action Plan proposed by this group in 2015 and was one of the lead authors for SCD’s report “Re-energizing Canada: Pathways to a low-carbon future” commissioned by by Natural Resources Canada in 2017. Since September 2011, Mousseau produces and hosts the popular science radio show «La Grande Équation» at Radio VM. His most recent book, « Gagner la bataille du climat », was published in 2017 by Éditions du Boréal.
Title
“Pathways to a low-carbon future: the need to support innovation that goes beyond energy sources”
Abstract
The transition to a low-carbon economy offers a remarquable leverage for innovation as it imposes a profund change in our relation to energy that will require considerable public and private investments. For most societies, considerable GHG reduction can be had by changing the energy source, to less carbon emitting solution. As for the rest of Quebec, this simple avenue is of limited interest to the Montreal-Longueuil ecosystem such a simple avenue: its 100 % renewable electricity is already used for heating most buildings, leaving transportation as the major source of GHG. This forces the ecosystem to place this sectort at the core of its transformation, to rethink transport as a service, a golden opportunity for a region with one of the strongest operational research, information technology and artificial intelligence community in the world.