Edmonton mayor hopeful city can catch 'wave of green jobs'
Don Iveson says he's talking with business leaders ready to 'scale up', to consider Edmonton
Mayor Don Iveson says he's making connections at the UN climate change conference in Morocco that could see Edmonton become the home to some new green businesses.
The conversations are happening with Canadian companies that are ready to expand now that carbon pricing is making new innovations more economically viable, Don Iveson told reporters in a conference call from Marrakech on Thursday.
"Some of these technologies, bio-fuels technologies for example, are looking for places to actually manufacture their stuff," said Iveson.
The business leaders are part of the Canadian delegation that accompanied federal Environment Minister Catherine McKenna to the conference, he said.
"We have skilled labour, we have the capacity and we have an absolute culture of innovation in everything from energy to manufacturing in Edmonton," Iveson said.
There are machine shops and fabricators, and people who build modular oil and gas equipment already in the city, and those skills and functions are transferable, he said.
Edmonton is ready
"We have the capacity already, we have the lay-down yards in Nisku to build these at massive scale, as well and the opportunity then to install these things around Canada or export them to the world," said Iveson.
The downturn in the economy and low dollar have made Alberta more cost-competitive again, he said.
"Connecting people with the capacity that we have and the companies that are looking for new things to do very, very aggressively right now, I think is the opportunity," the mayor said.
Iveson, who attended the conference in his role as chair of the big city mayors' caucus, plans to talk further with those business leaders and connect them with the Edmonton Economic Development Corporation and the Alberta government, to see if they can bring some of what he called a "wave of green jobs" to the city and province.
"To buffer us against the continuing commodity down cycle and the big de-carbonization transition that is going to happen over the next generation," he said.