Smearing environmental groups won’t help oilsands
The oilsands is a complex issue - to say that you're either for it or against it....fails to address the middle ground where solutions can be found.
Author Ed Whittingham
Ed Whittingham is the Executive Director of the Pembina Institute, Canada’s leading energy and environment research organization. Pembina aims to advance sustainable energy solutions through research, advocacy and consulting, through 55 staff in seven offices across Canada working on a $5 million annual budget. In September 2011 Ed was named to Canada’s 2012 Clean50 list, which honours 50 outstanding contributors to sustainable development and clean capitalism in Canada.
From 2005 to 2010 Ed directed Pembina’s consulting program, through which he has led a variety of stakeholder, policy and technical analysis projects around sustainable energy production and consumption. These projects have been for provincial and federal government departments and corporate clients in energy, energy services, utilities, pipelines, financial services, pulp and paper and real property. He also regularly assists Pembina’s policy research projects in areas around sustainable transportation policies, clean electricity, carbon capture and storage and heavy oil extraction.
Through his work Ed has served in an advisory capacity to companies, industry associations, government bodies and research networks on sustainable energy solutions. He regularly speaks to Canadian and American audiences on climate change, corporate sustainability, energy strategy and oil sands issues. Ed is also a faculty member of Leadership Development at The Banff Centre, a board member of Carbon Management Canada, an advisory board member of the Network for Business Sustainability, and an advisory council member of the Centre of Excellence in Responsible Business at the Schulich School of Business.
Ed holds an International MBA from York University’s Schulich School of Business, where he specialized in corporate sustainability and international business. His interest in international issues began when he spent a year in Japan as part of the Rotary International Youth Exchange Program. During his graduate studies he was a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada scholar, an Export Development Canada scholar and a visiting researcher at the United Nations Environment Programme’s Japan branch. At York Ed also co-founded Canada’s first graduate student-led and independently-owned sustainability consultancy, the York Sustainable Enterprise Consultants. From 2007-2008 he served as an Alcoa Foundation Conservation and Sustainability Practitioner Fellow for his research into the U.S. Climate Action Partnership.
An avid outdoorsman who enjoys hiking, paddling, hunting, backcountry skiing and both playing and coaching hockey, Ed, his wife Yuka, and children Beck and Alice live happily in Banff.