SFU environment prof named B.C.'s 'academic of the year'
COMMENT: Many people on this list came to know Mark Jaccard's name with an op-ed of his in 2001 in the Vancouver Sun calling the GSX Pipeline "Fast Ferries II". He later joined the campaign against the Duke Point gas-fired power plant in a couple of high-profile public events. At one time chair of the BC Utilities Commission, Jaccard was author of a 1997 report from the Task Force on Electricity Market Reform which recommended most of what the Liberal government has done with electricity markets and transmission in BC since 2001 - and went well beyond that with the proposal that a second unregulated electricity market be established in BC, operating in parallel and in competition with BC Hydro.
Jaccard's book, Sustainable Fossil Fuels, says that there are huge fossil fuel resources in the world, largely in coal, and that we're not likely to stop using them. Use them, he says, but put tight fiscal and environmental regulations around them so they don't pollute or emit atmospheric carbon.
I particularly like the idea of generating electricity in big box centralized facilities, where it's practical to implement the waste capture technologies, and run everything on electricity. But maybe I'm getting a bit off on a tangent.
Chantal Eustace
Vancouver Sun
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
CREDIT: Bill Keay/Vancouver Sun
Mark Jaccard, an SFU expert on energy and the environment.
VANCOUVER - A Simon Fraser University resource economist and climate-change expert has won an academic award for his work "challenging conventional wisdom" through environmentalism.
Mark Jaccard, a professor in the School of Resource and Environmental Management, will be honoured with the "academic of the year award" at a ceremony at the Law Courts Inn next week.
The Confederation of University Faculty Associations of B.C. award recognizes faculty members at public universities who use their research and scholarly work to make contributions to the wider community.
Jaccard "has invested an incredible amount of time helping politicians and the public to understand the consequences of failed government policies to combat climate change," the association's president, Chris Petter, said in a news release Wednesday.
Jaccard, a leading expert on environmental policy, is a member of the National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy and lead author on the Global Energy Assessment, due in 2010.
His 2006 book, Sustainable Fossil Fuels, won the Donner Prize for best policy book in Canada.
Elaine Gallagher of the University of Victoria's Centre on Aging will also be honoured at the March 26 dinner with a career achievement award, for work relating to senior citizens.