May 07, 2010
By Shawn Jeffords, www.theobserver.ca The Observer
Sarnia will play an important role in making Canada an energy superpower.
So says Sarnian Dr. Clem Bowman, an internationally renowned oil sands scientist and former head of researcher at Imperial Oil in Sarnia. Bowman delivered the keynote address during a graduate symposium at the University of Western Ontario Research Park Thursday, telling engineering grad students that Canada will only meet its potential if communities like Sarnia-Lambton rise to meet the challenge.
“Sarnia can lead this by putting together the plans of what the energy industry should look like in about 10, 20 or 30 years,” he said. “It can put together the company clusters and partnerships that will be needed to do that.”
By focusing on both renewable and non-renewable fuel sources Sarnia is positioning itself well. But Canada needs to embark on a great national project, building an integrated energy grid from coast to coast, Bowman said.
“We can get a human being across the country but we can’t get an electron across the country.”
The energy sector is in the same place the forestry sector was decades ago, with plenty of potential but no plan to move forward.
“We had all of these great trees but we didn’t manufacture chainsaws,” he said.
Sarnia has pipelines, available land, access to water, connectivity to the U.S. and other assets. What it needs is a leader, a figure like visionary politician C.D. Howe, to forge partnerships between industry and all levels of government to build the sector, he said.
“If there could be a person who had the support of the companies in the area, and lead the thinking forward, a braintrust to see how to take this forward, that would be wonderful.”
Sarnia has already shown the capacity to create such a partnership. Between 1942 and 1945, six Chemical Valley companies banded together to produce 75,000 tonnes of rubber for the war effort.
Working with Katherine Albion, a commercialization and research engineer at the research park, Bowman is examining Canada’s energy progress. Their report, identifying areas in which Canada has the opportunity to become an energy superpower, is to be released in the next two weeks.
Bowman, 79, said he’s preparing to hand off his work to a future generation of researchers and engineers. The young Ph.D. students gathered at the research park seem ready and eager to take up the challenge, he said.
“It would be an excellent idea if we could find some people here who got excited and wanted to join this kind of team,” he said.
Observer Article ID# 2567527
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