Jun 16, 2016
Calgary mayor envisions city as clean tech hub 'when we grow up'
Fossil fuels mean far less to the Calgary economy than in decades past and the mayor of Canada’s energy capital sees the recent crude oil price collapse as the perfect opportunity to accelerate that trend.
“There is a very common bumper sticker that pops up in Calgary during every downturn: ‘Please God grant me another oil boom, I promise not to – ahem – urinate it away this time,” Naheed Nenshi joked in an interview with BNN during a visit to Toronto on Thursday. “The real issue here is while we are going through this downturn, we cannot afford to, shall we say, urinate this downturn away.”
“We cannot just sit on our hands and wait for the price of oil to go back up, we have to be continually innovating, reinventing, thinking of ourselves as who we want to be when we grow up in 50 years from now and this is exactly our chance to do it,” Nenshi said.
“Sometimes an edge of hunger actually gives you real clarity and I think that is what we are seeing in Calgary now.”
Oil and gas companies contribute slightly less than one third of Calgary’s entire gross domestic product. While that is an indisputably massive figure, Nenshi noted as recently as 20 years ago petroleum comprised more than half of GDP in the southern Alberta city.
“We have been diversifying without anybody noticing,” he said, before mentioning a “shocking number” he just learned. “The capital decline in one year in Canadian energy - $40 billion - that is like taking 75 per cent of the auto manufacturing sector and wiping it out in one year.”
One way Calgary can be economically smarter, Nenshi said, is by ensuring the city plays a central role in the transition to a low-carbon economy.
“There is no reason that Calgary should not be the centre of clean tech [since] we remain one of the best-educated places on Earth; so if we cannot figure this out, nobody can figure it out.”
While Bank of Canada Governor Stephen Poloz told an audience in Whitehorse this week that the recent rebound in crude oil prices towards the US$50 per barrel level is unlikely to spawn a rebound in spending among Calgary-based oil and gas producers, Nenshi argued his city does not need to wait for a price-based recovery.
“Traditionally we just say when is the investment coming back, oh when oil hits US$70 or US$75 -- that is our key indicator,” Nenshi said. “But something different and more creative and more interesting is happening in Calgary now, because the money is still there and it is finding new opportunities for investment.”
