Location:  Comfort Inn & Conference Centre Victoria, 3020 Blanshard Street. 

Vehicle Parking: free (in their parking lot – no registration of license plate number necessary)

Bicycle Parking: Racks provided outside the hotel entrance

Time: 12:00 to 1:30

Tickets:  $20.00 per person

Sponsorship Tickets: $150.00 – Sponsorship includes a 5-minute presentation prior to the lunch and logo on the event page

Speaker:  Dr. Chris Kennedy, Ph.D., P.Eng.,  FCAE, Professor and Chair, Department of Civil Engineering, University of Victoria

Title:  Transportation Infrastructure for a Low-carbon Planet

Summary:  The presentation considers the global transportation infrastructure that will be required for railways, ports, airports and roads under deep decarbonisation. Physical and financial interactions between infrastructures that support a virtuous cycle of low carbon growth are discussed. The infrastructure system that potentially produces low carbon growth has three interactions at its core: i) increased generation of low carbon electricity technically enables greening of buildings, transportation vehicles and industry; ii) decreased demand for fossil fuels reduces the capital requirements for new infrastructure in these sectors; iii) this capital is alternatively invested in greening of the electricity sector, which decreases demands for coal. The cost savings that make the cycle potentially economically viable occur with marine ports and railways sectors, where freed-up capacity is used to support growing global trade in components of green infrastructure.  Partial calculations are presented at the global scale.

Bio:  Chris Kennedy is Chair of the new ‘green’ Civil Engineering Department at the University of Victoria. He conducts research on sustainable cities, urban metabolism, and the industrial ecology of sustainable global infrastructure systems. Holding qualifications in civil engineering, economics and business, Chris has conducted consulting work on sustainable infrastructure & cities for several national governments, as well as the World Bank, Ontario Ministry of Finance and others. In 2011-12, he was seconded to the OECD in Paris, to work on Cities, Green Growth and Policies for Encouraging Investment in Low Carbon Infrastructure. Chris has been a visiting professor at Oxford University and ETH Zürich. He is a former President of the International Society for Industrial Ecology; and author of The Evolution of Great World Cities: Urban Wealth and Economic Growth.