2022 Clean50 Nominee Spotlights: Consultants
The Clean50 received a record-breaking number of phenomenal submissions for the Consultants & Enablers category for the 2022 Clean50 awards. We were amazed by both the number of individuals who responded to their nominations and by the quality of the incredibly innovative and impactful work they have accomplished over the last two years.
In the context of Canada’s Clean50 Awards, the Consultants & Enablers category can include anyone who advises others or supports communities on sustainability, CSR or ecological issues. We recognize their impacts on their clients as well as outreach and/or leadership activities. In addition, lobbyists and lawyers are included here for their work on behalf of clients.
We are highlighting ten exceptional nominees who have submitted their responses in this category. Unfortunately, due to space restrictions, we cannot recognize each of these individuals on this year’s Clean50 list. However, each is worthy of recognition and accomplishing amazing things that truly inspired us; therefore, we felt it was important to amplify their work below.
Nominees are presented in alphabetical order by surname:
Ryan Duffy
Blackstone Energy Services Inc. – Toronto, Ontario
Ryan Duffy is the founder of Blackstone Energy Services. The organization focuses on providing its clients viable solutions to reduce their carbon emissions by developing affordable and timely carbon-reduction infrastructure improvements. Over the past two and a half years, Ryan and his team have implemented over $30 million in carbon reduction projects resulting in a 265,000-tonne reduction in carbon emissions. During this time, their energy efficiency and carbon reduction team also avoided a further $3.6M in expenses and 2100 tonnes in emissions for their clients.
Ryan ensured that Blackstone follows their own lead by eliminating its corporate historical scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions and forecasted emissions out to 2030. They accomplished this by being the first non-sovereign nation to retire UN-verified REDD+ Results Units™ (RRUs) deforestation credits.
Karen Farbridge
Karen Farbridge & Associates – Guelph, Ontario
Since founding Karen Farbridge and Associates, Karen, with her network of colleagues, has helped municipalities develop community energy plans to reduce energy consumption, emissions, and costs. The past two years have seen her complete three community energy plans identifying pathways for those communities to collectively realize >7M metric tonnes per year of greenhouse gas reductions.
Karen’s focus has recently transitioned to implementation with several innovations in governance, retrofit business models, and municipal secondary planning. Karen has also led a 3-day professional development course for professional planners in community energy planning. The course is offered through York University, has trained over 40 Ontario planners, and will be offered virtually in New Brunswick in October 2021.
Paula McGarrigle
Solas Energy Consulting Inc. – Calgary, Alberta
Paula has dedicated her career to accelerating renewable energy deployment in Canada. She has advised industry, government, and environmental groups to develop an educational curriculum for K-12. Her most popular lesson plan, “What is Climate Change,” has been widely downloaded. Paula is also the Founder of W3 – Women – Wind – Wine, which fosters a 200+ women’s networking community.
As co-founder of Solas Energy Consulting, she supported the EAs for over 3700 MW of renewable energy in Canada (~ 5 million tonnes of CO2e reductions), 86 projects across Canada for 49 different clients, and commoditized over 1.2 million tonnes of CO2 offsets. Her work was pivotal in developing the first Alberta Wind Vision Technical report, Alberta Solar Value Chain study, and greenhouse gas quantification for energy storage. Paula was a Canadian advisor on the North American Renewable Integration Study and led a Canadian electric vehicle fleet model. The model is a template of bylaws for solar power facilities to assist Albertan municipalities in establishing reasonable standards to facilitate the development of ground-mounted solar energy systems.
Gregorio Oberti
PricewaterhouseCoopers – Calgary, Alberta
Over the past few years, Gregorio has worked with senior colleagues across Canada and globally developing a cross-disciplinary approach to climate change in multiple sectors. His efforts have led to a cohesive, firm wide focus to support clients tackling not only climate change, but also energy transition, sustainability, governance, and social engagement. His work is mostly focused on helping clients finance and thereby bring clean technologies & sustainable infrastructure projects to market. The success of this approach, coupled with PwC’s purpose of building trust, solving important problems and achieving sustained outcomes, has led to the significant growth of PwC’s cross-disciplinary ESG team in Canada over the past four years.
Gregorio’s leadership and experience in this sphere is evidenced by his role as a lecturer at both McGill and University of Calgary. This, in addition to his developing a framework for assisting clients in raising capital in the cleantech/energy transition space resulted in his being asked to train Canadian civil servants from across Global Affairs Canada and the Canadian Commercial Corporation (CCC).
Sarah Riley
R&G Strategic – Halifax, Nova Scotia
A member of Nova Scotia’s Round Table on Environment and Sustainable Prosperity, Sarah is an accomplished storyteller, brand strategist, and digital platform specialist focused on leading change. She has designed and implemented over 25 successful purpose-led branding campaigns since Co-Founding R&G. These span cleantech, social enterprise and sustainable products and services organizations, along with apps, campaigns, and initiatives to drive awareness. For example, Sarah designed and branded the “Next Ride” awareness campaign, Nova Scotia’s EV adoption initiative with Clean Foundation, which has hosted 450+ test drives and was seen by 31,000+ people. (and won a 2021 Clean50 Top Project Award!)
Sarah also envisioned and realized solarassist.ca, an interactive tool used by almost 12,000 Nova Scotians to date to discover their home’s solar potential. She’s also a Founding Board Member of the Circularity Forum, an ideas-sharing network connecting 500+ regional sustainability professionals and entrepreneurs.
Sabina Russell
Zen and the Art of Clean Energy Solutions Inc. – Vancouver, British Columbia
Sabina has been a leader in the hydrogen sector for 24 years and advocates for hydrogen’s role in decarbonizing global energy systems. Since co-founding Zen Clean Energy Solutions in 2015, Sabina has authored impactful hydrogen policy papers in North America that span the entire hydrogen value chain. She made a significant contribution to the Hydrogen Strategy for Canada on NRCan’s behalf, released in December 2020. Sabina also led Zen’s work on regional hydrogen studies in six provinces.
Sabina and the Zen team have helped clients access over $120 million in funding for clean energy projects and have managed eight major hydrogen deployment projects over the past two years. In March 2021, she managed the completion of a 4-year project to construct the largest on-site renewable hydrogen production station at a transit agency in North America that serves a fleet of 16 fuel cell buses. Leading by example, Sabina drives a Nexo fuel cell vehicle.
Paul Shorthouse
The Delphi Group – Ottawa, Ontario
Paul is one of Canada’s leading experts in the emerging circular economy, providing solutions and engaging leaders working at the intersection of business innovation, public policy, economic development, and sustainability. Paul was directly responsible for leading / managing approximately 15 projects for different clients in 2020, equivalent to roughly $500,000 in revenues that year, including the launch of the Circular Economy Solutions Series, that over the past year has reached 1,500 businesses and other stakeholders through its research and convening, including 5 curated webinars and 4 interactive virtual workshops across Canada and globally.
In addition, Paul is currently championing a major effort to launch a national circular economy innovation network and 5-year strategic plan to develop a coordinated circular economy innovation ecosystem for Canada. The project is working, with more than a dozen partners from all sectors and regions across Canada – essentially a circular economy supercluster for Canada.
Bruce Taylor
Enviro-Stewards Inc. – Elmira, Ontario
As the president and founder of Enviro-Stewards Inc., Bruce Taylor has provided direct leadership to the work achieved by his certified B Corp organization. Over the last two years, his efforts have helped Maple Leaf Foods become the worlds’ first major carbon-neutral food company and the organization assisted 50 Canadian food & beverage processors to save literally tons of food. Taylor and his team have also helped eight different organizations win a Clean50 Top Project award!
Teanne Von der Porten
Sustainalystics – Toronto, Ontario
As Director, Engagement Services at Sustainalytics, Teanne engages in constructive dialogue with high ESG risk rating North American companies, suggesting improvements on material ESG risks based on best practices, investor expectations and industry trends. Management teams value the objective feedback and support in a landscape of increasing investor ESG disclosure demands. Teanne achieved the highest number of company engagements globally in the first quarter of 2021 at Sustainalytics.
Before this, Teanne surpassed a 10 GWh savings target and managed the delivery of ~$9M in electricity savings in 2019 for one of Canada’s most extensive telco real estate portfolios, increasing their energy efficiency in buildings across Canada, addressing climate change by reducing environmental footprints.
Bronwynne Wilton
Wilton Consulting Group – Fergus, Ontario
In 2017, Bronwynne saw the need for a fresh approach to study sustainability in the Canadian agriculture and agri-food sector. In response, she launched Wilton Consulting Group with the goal of focusing on sustainability, innovation, and systems thinking in order to optimize this opportunity for one of Canada’s most important economic sectors. They specialize in supporting the emerging need to improve, measure, and communicate sustainability outcomes throughout the agri-food value chain, using a collaborative approach that combines economic, social, and environmental knowledge and information.
To date, the organization has completed 12 national and 38 regional projects related to sustainability in the agricultural industry and regional agri-food strategies for 40 clients. Bronwynne has played a key role in bringing Canada’s first whole-farm, whole-value-chain sustainability to development through securing federal funding and pan-Canadian industry collaboration in 2019. This small but growing company has already made a significant impact in this critical sector.
