March 2007 ISSUE
President’s Notebook
Vote Yes to a New Era
In Technologist Regulation
BY DAVID CHALCROFT, P.ENG.
APEGGA President
Unless you’ve been on vacation on Mars for the past six months, you know that you will be asked to vote on a resolution to create the one Act, two Associations regulatory model in Alberta. The principles of the model, which I’ll call 1A2A for short, are laid out in a memorandum of understanding approved unanimously by your APEGGA Council and ASET Council on Jan. 25.
The essence of the proposal is simple. Technologists whose capabilities lie in the engineering and geoscience fields will be brought into a regulatory framework, the one professional engineers, geologists and geophysicists now enjoy. They’ll adhere to a Code of Ethics, a discipline process, and continuing competency requirements like ours.
A new category, called Professional Technologist, will be created. It will be jointly regulated by APEGGA and ASET, which will entitle those granted the P.Tech. designation to practice independently and take responsibility for their work, providing it is within the routine application of recognized codes and standards. The Alberta public will be much better protected under the 1A2A model because these technologists will be required to adopt public protection as their personal mantra.
As a member of the Discussion Team that reached the 1A2A memorandum of understanding, I believe the model proposed is an excellent solution to a long-standing issue, and that the time is now to vote yes.
Adapting To a Changing Climate
During my President’s Visits to our branches, I have been asked what APEGGA’s
position is on climate change and are we doing anything about it. While I had
some idea about the topic, my limited knowledge caused me to do some research.
I am still far from an expert, but I will share with you what I’ve learned.
Fortunately, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued its Fourth Assessment Report on Feb. 7, which gave me a ready source of current scientific opinion on the subject. I read the IPCC report’s Summary for Policy Makers, hoping I would be able to navigate the scientific jargon and come up with a general understanding of the principal findings. Here goes.
“Warming of the climate system is unequivocal,” says the IPCC. Eleven of the last 12 years rank among the 12 warmest years since 1850. And the total temperature increase from 1859 to 2005 is 0.76 degrees C.
The report notes that the global average sea level has risen by some 200 millimetres since 1850, due in part to thermal expansion of sea water caused by warming of the upper 3,000-metre zone, and in part due to melting of glaciers and ice caps.
The IPCC concludes that “most of the observed increase in ... temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic (man-made) greenhouse gas concentrations [italics mine].”
Carbon dioxide, the report says, is the most important anthropogenic greenhouse gas. The global atmospheric concentration of it has increased from a pre-industrial value of about 280 parts per million to 379 ppm in 2005. It now “exceeds by far the natural range over the last 650,000 years (180 to 300 ppm) as determined from ice cores.”
What of the Future?
The IPCC has modeled scenarios that project further temperature rises by 2100.
These range from a low of 0.6 C to a high of 4 C. Projections of further sea
level increases range from a low of 180 mm to a high of 590 mm. The lowest values
assume greenhouse gas emissions held constant at year 2000 levels.
In addition to warming of global averages, the IPCC report predicts that “it is very likely that hot extremes, heat waves, and heavy precipitation events will continue to become more frequent” and that “increases in the amount of precipitation are very likely in high-latitudes, while decreases are likely in most subtropical regions.”
The Canadian Record
Environment Canada reports that in 2004 Canada contributed about 758 megatonnes
of carbon dioxide equivalent of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, or about
2.9 per cent of the world’s total carbon dioxide emissions of 26.4 gigatonnes.
Given that Canada’s population is only 0.5 per cent of the world’s total, our emission rate is far higher than the global per capita average. Since 1990, Canada’s emissions have increased by about 27 per cent over the baseline of 599 megatonnes.
Environment Canada reports the breakdown of emissions by province in Canada. Alberta contributes about 225 megatonnes or 30 per cent of Canada’s total. Our principal sources of emissions are our coal-fired generating plants and oil sands production.
What Is APEGGA Doing About It?
I think you’ll be surprised to learn that APEGGA is indeed doing something
about this, through our national body, the Canadian Council of Professional Engineers.
The CCPE has launched an initiative called the National Engineering Assessment
of the Vulnerability of Public Infrastructure to Climate Change.
To carry out the initiative, CCPE established the Public Infrastructure Engineering Vulnerability Committee. This will be of major interest to the engineering profession, since the uncertainty caused by changing climatic conditions may be undermining the meteorological data used to design infrastructure.
In order to determine how to best tackle this large and complex assessment, the committee is executing scoping and pilot studies to develop methodologies and protocols. These can then be applied generally to infrastructure vulnerability analyses across the country.
The vulnerability committee’s first initiative will be to evaluate four key infrastructures. These are:
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Buildings
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Roads and Associated Structures
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Stormwater and Wastewater
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Water Resources.
The final step of the scoping studies will be to develop draft assessment protocols that can be used for a Canada-wide assessment for each infrastructure area.
The Public Infrastructure Engineering Vulnerability Committee is a steering committee comprising senior level representatives from CCPE, Environment Canada, Infrastructure Canada, Transport Canada, Alberta Infrastructure and Transportation, the City of Calgary, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, and the Institute of Catastrophic Loss Reduction, among others. The CCPE staff member looking after the committee’s program is David Lapp, P.Eng.
Success Stories
It’s worthwhile to note that a number of our corporate citizens are taking
up the challenge to reduce our greenhouse gas footprint. Take the City of Calgary,
for example.
As noted by APEGGA member Chris Wade, P.Eng., who sits on the APEGGA Environment Committee, the City of Calgary is well on its way to achieving its corporate target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 50 per cent below1990 levels by 2012.
The city has set out a six-pronged strategy to get there.
1. Increase use of green power
2. Capture methane from landfills for energy use
3. Green the vehicle fleet
4. Improve the energy efficiency of buildings and facilities
5. Conserve water and energy in facilities
6. Adopt new and innovative technologies and practices.
Specifically, the City of Calgary (through ENMAX) has decided to build about 80 MW of wind power generation, and is considering implementing a district heating system in downtown Calgary. See story page 7.
Calgary as a corporation had, as of 2006, already reduced its emissions to four per cent below 1990 levels, even though the city’s population grew 50 per cent in the period.
For full details on the program, visit the City of Calgary website, www.calgary.ca.
Technological Innovation
Perhaps the greatest hope for the future reduction of greenhouse gas emissions
lies in the development of new technological breakthroughs. Sir Richard Branson
captured the importance of this in the global battle against climate change,
when he announced a $25-million prize for the first person to develop an economical
process to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
That should cause the creative juices to flow!
APEGGA Education Foundation
My President’s Notebook wouldn’t be complete without an update of
my personal appeal to members to contribute to the APEGGA Education Foundation.
Since my first column in December, contributions are up and we have started our
march towards an endowment fund that can support a $500,000-per-year scholarship
program.
If every APEGGA member were to make a $50 to $100 donation, we would achieve this goal quickly. Please consider doing your part!
Please check out page 20 of this month’s PEGG for a foundation column (click here to view online) and a mail-in form for donating. As always, I appreciate receiving your feedback at president@apegga.org.