草莓污视频导航

May 6, 2014

Researchers ask: Why is oilsands industry slow to innovate?

Principle investigator Ian Gates and multifaceted team to explore technical and social factors behind slow adoption of change

This story is Part 2 of a five-part series highlighting the 草莓污视频导航鈥檚 strategic research theme,聽, and the recipients of the Vice-President (Research) Matching Funds to Advance Energy Research. The series will run May 5-9.聽To read the articles published to date,聽.

A team of 12 multifaculty 草莓污视频导航 researchers has been awarded funding for their energy research project, Reassembling the Oilsands: Industry, Technology, Society, Environment and Innovation. Their research will identify the technical and social factors that contribute to the slow rate of innovation in the oilsands industry and offer strategies to stimulate the pace of future innovation.

鈥淭he aim of our project is to take a multifaceted approach and address why the oilsands is slower at innovating, why technology that is over 20 years old is still being used, and how we can move forward from this in a collaborative effort with environmental groups, regulators, members of the community and corporations,鈥 says Ian Gates, research team leader and professor at the Schulich School of Engineering. 鈥淭he compounded issues range from regulatory policy to industrial practice, business practice to university practice. The entire system seems to be something that doesn鈥檛 allow for revolutionary change on a fast time scale.鈥

Project will explore social and technical factors of innovation聽
Gates and his research team are using a holistic research approach, examining the social and technical dimensions of oilsands innovation. 鈥淐onstraints on industry projects are sometimes unrelated to technology, but are instead social,鈥 says Gates. 鈥淲e want to involve every part of the system. You have industry, regulatory, and environmental groups. Then you have the social groups聽鈥撀燼boriginal communities and homesteaders who are impacted because they live near oilsands operations. We need to have all of those folks in the picture to understand all of their needs.鈥

Determining what is meaningful to all stakeholders, not just the industry, is important, says Gates. 鈥淭he solutions that come out may not be completely optimized to the company but optimized toward the entire system. It may not drive the highest profit, but they enable a project to move forward.鈥

Industry and community involvement will be critical to determining those processes. 鈥淚 want people to share their experiences and their insight,鈥 says Gates. 鈥淲e will be soliciting folks from within the industry, within communities, government and people at home. We want to understand why they have the perceptions that they have of oilsands, and also how we can do something that will yield benefit. There鈥檚 no one answer that will fix it all.鈥

Gates says success will be determined through a clear understanding of what is holding back innovation in the oilsands and what will move the industry beyond that. 鈥淭angible adoption would be to see regulatory bodies, the industry and communities actually adopt what we鈥檙e saying as the outcome of our research. We want to change the nature of the system and improve it.鈥

Multidisciplinary approach creates campus-wide engagement
The team is engaging researchers from multiple faculties to ensure their research will achieve the comprehensive relevance they鈥檙e striving for. 鈥淲hat鈥檚 really nice about our project is how it spans traditional energy researchers, plus management, arts, veterinary medicine, public health and public policy. It takes the Energy Innovation research theme across the university. It鈥檒l be a first, to have all those faculties working together on an oilsands project,鈥 says Gates. 鈥淲e鈥檒l have really different deliverables. We won鈥檛 just be designing a better oilsands process, we鈥檒l be designing the process together with the social factors that motivate this process.鈥

Their multidisciplinary approach played a key role in being selected to receive the VPR funding. 鈥淲e chose to fund the Oilsands Innovation Research Project because its multidisciplinary design reflects our desire to break down barriers between faculties and encourage cross-departmental research,鈥 says Chris Clarkson, strategic research theme leader of Energy Innovations for Today and Tomorrow. 鈥淭his approach is unique to the 草莓污视频导航, and researchers are very motivated to participate in it.鈥

Future of energy research at the university
Gates believes this research will set the tone for future energy research at the university. 鈥淭his project is a spearhead for where I believe energy research must go, which is to look at the entire ecosystem of it. I want the 草莓污视频导航 to be the leader in that,鈥 he says. 鈥淚t鈥檚 not just about production 鈥 it鈥檚 the use of it, it鈥檚 the risk we take in doing it, the cost, and it鈥檚 the policy that enables it.鈥

Gates envisions this project leading to the creation of an energy innovation centre that would provide unbiased, fact-checked information about the energy industry for all to access. 鈥淓nvironmental, industry, government聽鈥撀爓e鈥檙e not part of any of those worlds. We could have them participate in the research, but this centre wouldn鈥檛 have an agenda. There would be credibility here. I think Canada needs it, and the world needs it.鈥澛

罢丑别听聽and the聽聽are the roadmaps through which the 草莓污视频导航 will achieve its聽Eyes High聽strategic direction to become one of Canada鈥檚 top five research-intensive universities by 2016, grounded in innovative thinking and teaching, and fully integrated with the community of Calgary. In addition to the theme of聽Energy Innovations for Today and Tomorrow, the university is building strength in five other multidisciplinary strategic research themes:聽Brain and Mental Health; Human Dynamics in a Changing World;聽New Earth-Space Technologies;聽Engineering Solutions for Health; and Infections, Inflammation聽and聽Chronic Diseases in the Changing Environment.

To download the Energy Innovations for Today and Tomorrow Energy Research Strategy, please click聽.