In today’s world, it’s not uncommon to overhear guests at a dinner party toss around words like energy transition. It’s a hot topic, especially in a province like Alberta where the economy is driven and, in many ways, defined by its energy sector. The untold story is how Albertan innovators have been working tirelessly to develop solutions that will create new opportunities to diversify the economy and address global climate change. 

Many of these innovators also recognize the benefits of leveraging the province’s legacy assets in the oil and gas industry, while working towards a sustainable future. One of the Energy Futures Lab’s 68 Fellows, Sean Collins, is the president of Terrapin Geothermics. For years, Sean has been exploring opportunities to expand Alberta’s geothermal industry, including by repurposing old oil and gas wells, and to turn waste heat from industrial facilities into valuable power. His work is a perfect example of how innovators who are able to adapt to changes occurring within the energy system are more likely to find opportunities and solutions. 

COVID-19 has swooped in on the global economy like a tsunami, and the ripples can still be felt across Canada’s energy sector. There’s no doubt the road towards recovery will be long and challenging. Our best bet will be having the ability to adapt. 

The untold story is how Albertan innovators have been working tirelessly to develop solutions that will create new opportunities to diversify the economy and address global climate change. 

On March 18th, I was supposed to be at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity with 100 others for the annual gathering of the extended network of partners, Fellows, advisors, and guests of the Alberta-based social innovation lab called the Energy Futures Lab (EFL). We were going to be exploring future scenarios for Canada’s energy system through an interactive strategic foresight process that would explore trends, drivers and critical uncertainties, and ultimately produce stories of possible futures generated with support from Alberta-based fiction writers. 

Instead, we found ourselves in a hastily convened Zoom meeting, talking about how the global pandemic was affecting each of us. Critical uncertainties, it seems, are not hypothetical — we were living a possible future that only weeks earlier would have seemed one of the more far-fetched scenarios in our foresight exercise. 

For a group that has made a big part of its mark through the magic of well-designed in-person engagements, physical distancing has major implications for the EFL. Once it became evident that our summit was not going ahead as intended, the team immediately got to work considering how we could best be of service to the community and system we serve. The two-day workshop was redesigned into a series of four virtual meetings through the spring. More importantly, though, we realized that what our community needed from us most was human connection. People needed to relate to each other as people, not as stakeholders. And so the virtual gatherings have been designed with that in mind, capturing a little bit of the magic in a new form.

The summit was not the only pivot required by the COVID-19 crisis for the EFL. That same week in March we were also planning to launch a national communications campaign to engage Canadians with what we hoped would be a unifying set of messages on energy and climate change. Several major media engagements were cancelled, and the framing for our communications campaign suddenly seemed irrelevant. Again, the team pivoted rapidly to a new strategy, where the campaign was put on hold and our broader outreach effort was framed in relation to the COVID-19 context. This article and a related virtual conference on the topic attracted a much bigger public audience online than we’d ever imagined for the original campaign.

This wasn’t the first time the EFL has had to adapt to unforeseen developments over five years. Oil price collapses, surprising election results with wide swings in related government policy priorities, and three different instances of disrupted events due to forest fires including a major three-day event planned in Fort McMurray in the first week of May 2016 (that week!) — all of these have tested this team greatly, but also honed its capabilities for tactical and strategic adaptability.

Here are three strategies that have worked well for our team during this crisis, and through disruptions we faced before. 

Have an adaptability mindset.

So here we are again, experiencing varied levels of displacement, watching communities pull together in extraordinary ways and acclimating to new realities. On the surface we’re learning about the importance of things like social connection and financial responsibility, but what we’re really learning is that adaptability is a foundational component of resilience. This realization has helped shape the EFL into what it is today. At its core, the lab relies on learning, experimentation, and collaboration to create interventions in the energy system. These organizational adaptation tools aren’t unique to the EFL, and it seems they are becoming all the more important. 

What we’re really learning is that adaptability is a foundational component of resilience.

COVID-19 has hit each of us a little differently, but there’s no doubt we’re all sharing in the uncertainty of it. As we settle into these new times, it can feel like there’s no way forward. How can we proceed if we’re not able to see what’s directly in front of us? 

Sense and gather feedback continuously.

In the context of the EFL, our energy future remains uncertain, but this doesn’t mean we sit back and relax until the path becomes clear. Instead, we have embedded into our culture and workflows an approach called Development Evaluation, which aims to support innovators working in complex or uncertain environments. 

In this approach, innovators are supported in continuously sensing the energy system, gathering feedback, and adapting strategy accordingly. The lab does so by harnessing diverse perspectives from its Fellows and creatively engaging with one another in a space some call “the radical middle.” It’s a space anyone can enter if they’re willing to ask difficult questions and consider new perspectives. Creatively engaging with new ideas isn’t always easy, but it’s easier if you’re convinced that the best ideas to address systemic barriers to change are unlikely to come from talking to people you already agree with. Truly opening up to different points of view helps build the adaptability muscle.

Try out backcasting.

The rate of change is a little overwhelming these days, so I’ve found it useful to ground myself in a familiar process called backcasting. Backcasting is about beginning with the end in mind — using clear success principles to guide near-term decision-making, even in the face of uncertainty. Think about a game of chess. Every time you sit down at a chess board, you’re adopting the practice of backcasting. You can imagine the ideal endgame: checkmate. The success principle is clear, even if the picture of the successful outcome is not. You can’t predict what will happen, but you can make strategic choices along the way as the game unfolds. That’s what we all need to be doing as we navigate both this pandemic and the challenges of energy transition. With the EFL, we use scientific principles of sustainability to guide the collective work. 

During these times of crisis and uncertainty, let’s start by making space for creativity, innovation, and learning in social impact organizations. Let’s acknowledge changing patterns and ask even more challenging questions. And let’s be bold and brave in describing and building the future we want. We’ll surprise ourselves by how resilient we can be. 

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