Annual Workshop

Ontario’s Green Energy and Green Economy Act (GEA) was passed in early 2009.  The consequences of the GEA and other initiatives to move the province toward a low-carbon future have been as widespread as they have been controversial.   Ten years on, a recently elected conservative government has moved to repeal the GEA, pull the province out of the cap-and-trade market it had participated in alongside Quebec and California, and scrap a funding program that subsidized energy efficiency and low-carbon technologies for consumers and businesses.  The transition to a low-carbon future in Ontario thus appears to be at a critical juncture – where will we go from here?

This question will form the basis for the 10th Annual Workshop of the Ontario Network for Sustainable Energy Policy (ONSEP), a multi-disciplinary network of researchers based at Ontario universities and focused on the promotion of sustainable energy policy.  ONSEP’s 10th anniversary marks an opportune occasion to reflect on 10 years of change in Ontario, to identify the lessons to be learned from the province’s experience in this area for current policy-makers in Ontario and other jurisdictions, and to assess the significance and potential impact of developments set in motion during this period for realizing a low-carbon transition in Ontario. 

The Ontario Network for Sustainable Energy Policy (ONSEP) brings scholars together from a variety of disciplinary and methodological perspectives for its annual workshop focused on energy policy. This is the eighth workshop of ONSEP, dedicated to developing a greater understanding of the policies, technologies and strategies surrounding sustainable energy.  

The workshop welcomes unpublished working papers that focus on analysis and evaluation of energy policies, with an aim of promoting understanding and discussion of effective approaches to reducing the environmental burden of the energy system. Although we especially welcome papers with a focus on Ontario, we also welcome papers that focus on the application of energy policies in other jurisdictions.

We are receptive to a wide range of perspectives and methods including but not limited to empirical research, theory development, formal theoretical modeling, law, sociology, planning, and experimental methods. Papers presented at our previous workshops have come from a variety of disciplines including political science, economics, management, law, geography, environmental studies, and engineering. Papers spanning multiple disciplines are especially encouraged.