Our Approach to Research
The research within ERDELab is problem-driven and policy-focused. The aim is to develop the tools and evidence-base needed for decision-makers at multiple levels (from households to national governments and international organizations) to make informed decisions on key issues spanning energy, resources, and development. To do this we work with three interrelated approaches:
Household and Community Level Decisions and Impacts: We use both primary surveys as well as secondary data to analyze household and community level decisions on energy systems, as well as, the impact of those decisions on both human and environmental welfare.
Techno-Economic-Environmental Modeling and Analysis: Using a variety of statistical tools and models we analyze larger-scale dynamics around energy systems. This includes open-source models of electrification and multi-sector land-use sustainability pathways for Canada.
Institutions, Policies, Regulations, and Markets: We use mixed-methods to understand how energy and resource decisions are made in the context of policies and regulations that create incentives or disincentives for certain actions, as well as institutions (both formal and informal) that shape decision-making. We explore how markets influence the achievement of public policy goals and the role of the public vs. private sector in meeting those goals
Primary Research Areas
Sustainable Pathways (FABLE): Coordinating Globally Consistent Pathways Towards Sustainable Food, and Land-Use Systems
Canada has made international commitments through the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and objectives of the Paris Agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, conserve and restore biodiversity, sustainably manage natural resources, promote healthy diets, improve livelihoods, and adapt to climate change. Attainment of these ambitious goals requires a transformation of national food, and land and water use systems. While long-term transformation pathways can guide countries’ shorter-term national policies, it is not clear what potential issues arise when working to achieve multiple sustainable development goals under limited land availability, or how national policies, set individually, can collectively meet multiple global goals.
Our lab comprises part of the national team that represents Canada within the FABLE Consortium, convened as part of the Food and Land Use Coalition (FOLU) to address these complicated issues. Within the consortium, our team works alongside over 20 other country and regional teams to develop robust tools and globally integrative strategies to respond to these challenges and meet key international and national targets.
Our team models mid-century pathways for Canada’s energy, food, trade, and land and water-use systems. These different pathways represent potential outcomes arising from varying levels of ambition in re-aligning these national systems with FABLE targets. Integrating our work with other members of the consortium, we are then able to evaluate the trade-offs that exist when considering the achievement of sustainable development goals on a global scale while incorporating constraints to balance supply and demand at national and global levels.
Our research is summarized in national chapter reports prepared for the consortium. Links to the 2019 Canada report, as well as the full annual FABLE report, are below. The 2020 report is forthcoming.
Link to 2019 Fable Report (Full)
Energy Justice
Our Energy Justice research seeks to support equitable and just energy production, and distribution by focusing on the distributional, procedural, and recognition justice issues within our current energy system and those raised by transitioning to new energy systems. We do this across a range of energy systems and socio-economic contexts. This research stems from the fact that: nearly 1 billion people globally lack access to electricity and over 2 billion lacking access to clean cooking, primarily in low and middle-income countries; one in three households in the United States struggles to meet its energy needs due to the cost of energy and must choose between paying rent, energy bills, buying food and medicine, and purchasing other necessities; and millions of jobs in traditional fossil fuel sectors will have to be replaced if global sustainable development targets are to be met. Our work in this area includes theoretical work on the nature of energy justice, modeling work on just subsidy policies for energy access, spatial and temporal assessment of job implications of a shift from renewables, and impacts of energy expenditures on household welfare for low-income and communities of colour in high-income countries.
Household Energy as a Socio-Ecological System
One-third of the global population relies on burning biomass (agricultural residues, wood, and charcoal) to meet their basic cooking and heating needs. Furthermore, up to 80-90% of all forest extraction in some countries is for energy use. These realities have far-ranging impacts with one estimate that the combined economic losses from health, environmental, and social consequences of this biomass dependence are $123 billion per year.
Understanding how energy choices made at the household and community level can impact the ecological conditions of local forests and agricultural lands is important for the development of sustainable resource management policy. However, it must also be understood how policy choices surrounding local resource access can influence the energy options available to households and impact household welfare. Our lab has formed research partnerships with Duke University, University of Michigan, University of Edinburgh, the Autonomous University of Mexico, Stockholm Environment Institute, and the Instituto Forestal in Chile to understand these complicated socio-ecological relationships between local environments and household energy access.
Energy Transitions
ERDELab research on Energy Transitions is done in the context of two major energy challenges: climate change and global energy poverty and inequities. Our research examines both the dynamics of the energy transition itself as well as the potential implications of energy transitions. We look at multiple scales of energy transitions, from the household and community to the regional or national to the global. At the one end of the scale, we research household-level decision-making surrounding the uptake of new technologies and fuels (e.g. clean cooking fuels) and seek to understand the adoption and use-decisions of households and communities. We also use models to better understand strategic decision making at the regional and national scale, for example, in the potential for distributed energy technologies to meet universal electrification goals and how distributed systems interact with dominant centralized systems. At the global level, we examine the implications of large-scale shifts of energy systems in response to climate change policy, particularly on jobs and on local communities.