January 25, 2017

Ontario Climate Consortium announces Peter Love as new Chair

The Ontario Climate Consortium (OCC) is very excited to announce that Peter Love, a respected leader on environment and energy in the province, has started his term as the Chair of the OCC’s Governing Council as of January 2017.

Peter has decades of experience working in the environmental movement and in senior management of private companies with demonstrable results. He has been a senior executive in government, industry associations, and businesses that have benefited from his extensive knowledge and experience in the energy sector. In addition to this, Peter is very passionate about supporting the development of new organizations and the next generation of environmental leaders in the public and private sectors. Currently, Peter is the President of the Energy Services Association of Canada and Adjunct Professor in York University’s Faculty of Environmental Studies. He services various for profit and non profit boards and was recently appointed to the new Energy Efficiency Alberta board.

We asked Peter about his goals as Chair of the OCC Governing Council. We have included his thoughts below on how he sees his role over the next few years.

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I am very excited to be joining the OCC as Chair of the Governing Council over the next three years. For one, I and my family have deep connections with both of the OCC’s founding members, the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority (my brother David was President of TRCA’s Living City Foundation and son Colin is the Supervisor of Education, Training and Outreach) and York University, and I strongly respect each institution’s strength and focus on urban sustainability issues through policy and research.

I see the OCC as a natural outcome of the relationship between these two leading sustainability institutions. The OCC’s focus on connecting research to policy and practice, particularly at the local and regional scale in Southern Ontario, is vitally important to charting a path forward to address climate change from both a mitigation and adaptation perspective. Over my years of experience, I have seen all too often how policy-making can be derailed or fail to achieve desired objectives when not rooted in a solid evidence base to inform policy action and sway skeptics.

One of my core objectives in the role of Chair will be to support the OCC in moving forward with a refresh of its Strategic Plan to better reflect current operations, and future ambitions.  Originally developed in 2011 under a previous mandate, the OCC’s Strategic Plan reflects objectives that have since broadened to include mitigation research themes including municipal community energy planning as well as forest carbon sequestration and offsets. The OCC has also sharpened its focus within the adaptation realm and has built unique competencies in municipal vulnerability assessment through work with the Region of Peel, City of Vaughan, and City of Mississauga. I am excited to work with the talented OCC Secretariat team to update the strategic plan to guide the OCC’s next phase of organizational development.

I also look forward to helping the OCC broaden its reach and impact by leveraging my extensive network of senior level contacts in provincial and municipal governments, businesses, institutions and environmental organizations. By helping the OCC team find the right audience for its applied research, prospects for effective and responsive policy change are enhanced.

I am honoured to be taking on the Chair position in this organization. The OCC mobilizes the knowledge that exists within its academic network to support decision-makers at the municipal scale in adapting to and mitigating the effects of climate change. I am looking forward to the working with the OCC Secretariat and contributing to its future successes.