Addressing climate change with the Waterloo Climate Institute

No matter where you call home, climate change is an issue that affects everyone. But even with individual and organizational efforts to reduce our carbon footprints, tackling the causes of climate change can sometimes seem like a Sisyphean effort.

The issues causing the climate crisis aren’t restricted to individuals or industries. Solving them takes a unified approach that brings individuals, businesses, organizations, and governments together to ensure we leave a liveable planet for future generations.

Working together to accelerate the transition to a just, equitable, inclusive low-carbon future is the vision of the Waterloo Climate Institute at the University of Waterloo. The institute brings researchers and students from all of the University’s faculties, as well as scientists from partner institutions and government agencies, together in an interdisciplinary approach to research and education that will empower people to respond effectively to the climate crisis.

Sarah Burch, a professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Management at the University and the institute’s executive director, said that the framing of climate change has evolved from a technical focus on the environment to a distinctly human problem with human and political solutions.

“Climate change is a human and technical challenge and that can make the issue even more complex. You need different skill sets brought to bear to understand what the problem even is.”

Sarah Burch

“Climate change is a human and technical challenge and that can make the issue even more complex. You need different skill sets brought to bear to understand what the problem even is. Is the problem that we don’t use energy efficiently or is the problem that our culture drives us to consume too much? Different people would have different answers to those questions,” Burch said.

Understanding the problems and their root causes is critical to developing the right solutions, which is a core focus at the institute. The institute has over 120 members who work under three main banners—deep decarbonization and sustainability transition, climate change impacts including risks, resilience and adaptation, and climate change science such as modelling and observation. Burch said understanding and reframing how we look at climate change is critical to meeting national and international commitments, including the Government of Canada’s goal of achieving net-zero emissions by 2050.

Deep decarbonization is the issue of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and enhancing carbon sinks and includes work on new energy technologies and energy policies at the government level. The second core focus is on understanding the impacts of climate change, such as flooding, fires, and other extreme events, focusing on how to make our communities more resilient to or adapt to these impacts. The third focuses on the underlying science of climate change, including understanding what’s happening in the atmosphere. Together, their work contributes to local to global impact.

As an example, Burch is one of the lead authors of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which has spent the last several years assessing the state of climate science and social science. The latest IPCC assessment was published in April 2022. Burch said one of the key findings was changing how we view the impact of individual behaviours on international goals like the Paris Agreement and Kyoto Protocol.

“Reducing our demand for energy could be responsible for 40% to 70% of the emissions reductions that we need to constrain warming as much as we’d like to. But the way to change that behaviour is not to say individuals need to make better choices. The problem is individuals just don’t have options,”

Sarah Burch

“Reducing our demand for energy could be responsible for 40% to 70% of the emissions reductions that we need to constrain warming as much as we’d like to. But the way to change that behaviour is not to say individuals need to make better choices. The problem is individuals just don’t have options,” Burch said.

The IPCC reported that meeting climate change goals will take a combination of individual actions supported by infrastructure and policies to enable those actions. Addressing how to deliver on these is part of the work that researchers at the Waterloo Climate Institute are working on, including advancements in electrical vehicle (EV) technologies and the associated policies to make them more affordable and available to consumers and businesses.

“If you want to get out of your car because you know that burning gas is part of the climate change problem, what are you going to get into instead? Is it safe to cycle? Is it convenient to walk? Do you have the public transit infrastructure that allows you to drink that cup of coffee and read the newspaper on the way to work instead of commuting for two hours,” Burch said.

Members of  the Waterloo Climate Institute are putting this reframing into action through the work they do in research, education, and policy planning. Burch is part of a team working with the Federal government on its first National Adaptation Strategy, a set of policies to help protect communities from the impacts of climate change.

“The strategy is not focused on reducing greenhouse gases. Instead, it’s focused on the fact that the climate is already changing. We have these floods, fires and other impacts—how do we protect our communities and economy from that,” Burch said.

Waterloo Climate Institute members are also working on projects that look at what an efficient low-carbon transportation system could look like and how nature-based solutions can be woven into cities to help protect them.

“These folks are coming up with really amazing insights into what strategies we have available to us to deal with climate change. In many cases, these approaches are getting taken up by decision makers at all levels,” Burch said.

The Waterloo Climate Institute is located within Evolv1 at the David Johnston Research+Technology Park. The building is Canada’s first zero-carbon facility and is also home to other climate-focused organizations like Sustainable Waterloo Region.

“The building is a perfect home. We know that an enormous proportion of greenhouse gas emissions come from buildings, so buildings like Evolv1 are absolutely part of the solution. It changes the way we work because we’re able to live out many of the values that we hold.”

Sarah Burch

Check out what’s available in evolv1!

“The building is a perfect home. We know that an enormous proportion of greenhouse gas emissions come from buildings, so buildings like Evolv1 are absolutely part of the solution. It changes the way we work because we’re able to live out many of the values that we hold.”

To learn more about the work of the Waterloo Climate Institute, visit uwaterloo.ca/climate-institute.