How best to arrive at a low-carbon future together

Jul 22

*Lauretta Pearse speaking on the importance of women in energy leadership at the Global Energy Show in Calgary. Photo by Kanopi Creative*

By Patricia Lane and Lauretta Pearse

These in-their-own-words pieces are told to Patricia Lane and co-edited with input from the interviewee for the purpose of brevity.

Lauretta Pearse is depolarizing Canada’s energy conversation. As a Fellow at Alberta’s Energy Futures Lab (EFL), she is part of a diverse group searching to understand people’s perspectives on how best to arrive at the low-carbon future most want. She is Canada’s Clean50 Emerging Leader winner. This profile reflects some of her personal experience at the EFL and does not necessarily reflect the view of the lab or her employers.

Tell us about this project.

I am one of the Energy Futures Lab 2025 cohort of 50. We are Indigenous people and settlers with diverse interests and ages from industries and communities, spending two years together uncovering and testing pathways toward our shared goal of an affordable, sustainable and resilient energy future.

We have identified five key areas of tension in energy transition conversations across the country: Building investor confidence in our energy systems while protecting democracy, caring for subsurface spaces as humans extract and deposit materials, integrating Indigenous knowledge while moving at the speed that science tells us is necessary, balancing community value creation with energy developer profitability and reducing financial risk when markets and politics are volatile.

YCAA recipients

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