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COSIA is raising the bar on solving complex issues around climate change

Two tales of Canada’s energy future are being spun across the country.

One is realistic and recognizes oil and natural gas will remain important components in the global economy. The other vision is one where fossil fuels are no longer used, renewable power turns on our lights and powers our cars and access to tidewater is unnecessary.

Those opposed to the continued use of hydrocarbons would have been well-served to view the annual update of the Canadian Oil Sands Innovation Alliance (COSIA) on Tuesday.

The four-year old consortium has a mandate to develop ways to improve environmental performance in the oilsands. Its 13 member companies and a wide array of associate members is effectively turning the innovation model in Canada on its head.

Henri Rothschild, Canada’s former chief scientific officer and current head of the CanadaIsrael Research and Development Foundation, an associate member of COSIA, says it is an excellent example of institutional innovation.

“In a few short years, COSIA was able to take this concept and make progress and provide a powerful message to the federal and provincial governments of what should be a different approach to an innovation strategy for the country and how we are dealing with one of the most important issues … of our country and the world, which is climate change,” said Rothschild.

The collaborative COSIA model can be applied to other sectors and challenges, said Rothschild, including cybersecurity.

By bringing together rival energy companies, in addition to 39 associate members that include multi-nationals like GE, Caterpillar and IBM, along with government and researchfocused academic institutions, COSIA is raising the bar on how collaboration can tackle perplexing problems.

“COSIA is globally starting to lead the way on new ways of approaching this,” said Dr. Paul Bunje, who leads Energy & Environment prizes at the XPRIZE Foundation. Bunje was the keynote speaker at this week’s COSIA event.

It means bringing together many different resources, including the ‘crowdsourcing’ of problem solving, which is essentially what the XPRIZE is all about.

Last year, COSIA, with the XPRIZE Foundation, announced the NRG COSIA Carbon XPRIZE worth $20 million, which challenges entrants to find ways of converting carbon emissions into tangible products.

This week, it was announced 27 companies had viable proposals and would advance to the second round of the competition.

There is plenty of promise in what COSIA and its members are doing to decrease carbon emissions, reduce water use, increase recycling, improve the management of tailings generated and decrease the physical footprint of the oilsands.

But is it happening fast enough, and is COSIA is communicating effectively about its research and achievements?

The short answer is No on both fronts.

When it comes to the pace of innovation, no one will set a deadline for when a discovery will occur.

But at a time of looming carbon pricing, the sense of urgency for a breakthrough that not only decreases the carbon footprint and cost of extraction, but also increases productivity, grows by the day.

“We always want it to go faster, but it is always important to look at it in context, not only the cultural and behavioural change but over that period of time more than 900 technologies and more than $1 billion worth of value of cost and research has been shared,” Imperial Oil president and CEO Rich Kruger said of COSIA’s achievements.

“I think we would all like more, faster, but when we look at our list of what we have contributed versus what we have gained as Imperial, I am very, very pleased and impressed with it.

“I think the rate of change will just accelerate within this collaborative model.”

Research and innovation are also an iterative process, where failure ultimately informs future success.

But the notion of failure — worn as a metaphorical badge in places like Silicon Valley and Israel — is not something Canadians are generally comfortable with. Canadians are very risk averse, at both the business and government levels.

Failure tends to be seen as — well — failure.

But Bunje says it’s important, if not critical, to look at failure differently.

“Failure is not the opposite of success. Failure determines the parameters for success. They are one and the same. We need both ... failure is part of the journey to success,” he said Tuesday.

COSIA has the opportunity to educate the public with evidencebased research that would counter the negative perception of the oilsands, but chooses not to.

When COSIA was formed in 2012, its mandate was clearly focused on science and innovation, and not advocacy.

That philosophy continues, but times have changed.

It could be argued COSIA’s research should be applied to the advocacy messages of organizations like the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers. These days, it’s not enough to lobby and advocate. There also needs to be strong evidence to support positions put forward.

It’s also not enough for COSIA to stick its head out of the foxhole once a year to update the world on what it’s been doing.

It should be part of the Canadian innovation narrative that regularly includes organizations like MaRS, the not-for-profit incubator in Toronto. Its mission is to commercialize new technologies developed through research processes across the scientific spectrum.

There are two distinct narratives in Canada right now: one where renewable energy will replace the use of fossil fuels and that anything involving a hydrocarbon is bad.

The other — mostly in energyproducing regions — sees the challenges associated with producing and using hydrocarbons as a problem that can ultimately be solved.

It calls to mind a reference to George Orwell’s Animal Farm: Four legs good — renewables, and two legs bad — hydrocarbons.

In 2015, the crude oil market was worth $1.7 trillion in terms of oil demand. It’s not going away any time soon for many reasons, including energy density.

That’s why COSIA and its research, which will ultimately be applied to other aspects of energy production and use, is critical to the future of Canada’s oilsands and the energy sector in aggregate.

It’s time to change the tone of the energy dialogue in Canada and COSIA is positioned to make that happen.

All Canadians need to hear about its achievements, its plans and the important role it’s playing in shaping this country’s innovation ecosystem.