Watch out, energy company executives.

David Layzell is ready to bend your ears. He wants to stretch your research and development scope, too.

"(Canada) should be the leaders in sustainable-energy systems on a global basis," says Layzell, newly appointed executive director of the Institute for Sustainable Energy Environment and Economy at the University of Calgary (ISEEE).

ISEEE partners with industries, governments, universities and other research organizations to find and develop sustainable and economically viable energy sources and technologies, along with solutions to environmental problems.

Harrison Smith, Business Edge
University of Calgary ISEEE executive director David Layzell believes environmentally sustainable systems should also be economically viable.

Layzell founded and led BIOCAP Canada, a foundation that spearheaded a slew of cross-Canada research into bioenergy research and greenhouse-gas emission offsets with the forestry and agricultural industries. But BIOCAP will shut down in March after years of struggling to secure adequate government funding.

"I was looking for the next opportunity to build something," says Layzell. "The opportunity at ISEEE came up. It was a great fit to my interests."

He wants to further the work that he started with energy companies while at BIOCAP. The oil and gas industry, he says, has more incentive - and ability - than other industries to motivate governments to generate economic forces that will reduce global warming and develop a carbon-trading market.

At ISEEE, he plans to show how Canada's energy security - and environmental and economic well-being - can be enhanced through a new bioeconomy.

1. How did your interest in science develop?

"I'm from smalltown Ontario. I was brought up in a religious background - fundamentalist - and I suppose choosing a science career was something which was an unusual choice. I've always been interested in trying to understand how things work. That's been a real drive. I often think about my choices in university, whether it evolved as a fear of God - not as a fear of God quite that one might normally think. But it was, I guess, an 'exit-stage-left' approach on things. I was very interested in understanding how the world worked, in a way that made sense and was sensible. I felt I could find those answers better in the science than in the religious (life). My choices were to follow my scientific career."

2. What did your parents do?

"My father is a chartered accountant. He's still alive and in his mid-80s. By the late 1960s, he became president and CEO of a metal products company in Preston. They made auto parts and I used to work there a couple times in the summer. I remember one time stamping out housings for Westinghouse compressors or control arms for automobiles. Sitting in an assembly line and running a big press for a few weeks convinced me that I was going back to university. I didn't think I could handle it for the rest of my life. It was a useful exercise. It convinced me to work harder when I went back to school. My mother was a stay-at-home mom. She died (of an apparent stroke while travelling in Africa) when I was rather young (21)."

3. Who were some of your early mentors?

"One of the individuals that really got me interested in plant science was a guy named Dutch Dumbroff, a professor at the University of Waterloo. He's retired now. He was really interested in trees and forestry, and that sort of thing. His interest in that area was infectious and was pretty instrumental in me deciding that plant science was an interesting career. My masters supervisor at Guelph was a guy named Roger Horton, who had really creative ideas. Roger would always take a problem and he would take a different interpretation of it. That's what I learned from him - you don't need to look at an issue or data or a problem from the same perspective as everybody else. I spent three really good years (at the University of Western Australia while completing a doctorate) with a guy named John Pate (one of Australia's top scientists). His systems-thinking approach was one of the ones that defined, mostly, the strategy that I've used in the last 30 years."

4. Why were you so set on working at a university?

"I became interested in following science as a career. I was not a strong student in high school. I almost didn't get into a university when I finished. "I was never much of one for memorizing, and I still have a hard time remembering my name sometimes. Once I understood something - really understood it - I could replay it. When I got into university, it was much more about understanding things and creating things than memorizing facts, especially as you get into the upper years of your undergraduate years and into graduate school ... I've always wanted to see the science applied.

"I always wanted to see if I could find value in it. Doing science for the sake of science isn't as rewarding for me as actually finding something that's going to be useful."

5. What are your other passions?

"I love to sail. I have a small sailboat, and I like working with my hands and building things. I'm not as handy as I should be. I hammer things together. I've always had an interest in electronics."

6. How are you involved with Qubit Systems?

"I don't work at all in the day-to-day operations, but I sit on the board and I'm a shareholder."

7. When did you begin to specialize in energy?

"In the mid-1990s, I was asked to chair a national committee that was doing a review of plant biology and food science and identify the vision for the future of development of that discipline. The (federal) government was cutting back funding to science and had said there would be no more increases in research funding. It was a very interesting exercise, but actually quite depressing. As plant biologists, we were providing the insights in science to support agriculture and to support forestry. The companies ... had no real value for plant biology and food science. They were only interested in whether they'd make payroll at the end of the next quarter, essentially. To try to get them to look at the long-term future of the discipline was very discouraging, especially when we were seeing the electronics industry, the chemical industry and others all had a long-term view. At that time, I became convinced that the future of plant science was less about food production and fibre production and more about ... environmental issues and energy issues."

8. How was BIOCAP formed?

"In 1996-97, I started to spend much more of my time around using our biological systems to address environmental systems and energy security issues, and our future energy supply. Then in December 1997, Canada signed Kyoto (protocol). I became convinced that this was a major opportunity for the biological sciences and their systems. I came back from sabbatical (in early 1998) after four months in Australia and the vice-principal of Queen's arranged for me to go to Calgary and meet some of the senior executives of some of the energy companies. Suncor, TransAlta and Shell Canada all came in (financially) and in 1999, I had 300,000 bucks and a mandate to set up a national organization that would find biological solutions to climate change and energy issues."

9. Why did you decide to take the position at ISEEE?

"The position was very exciting because, in some ways, it's about looking at the way things work on the systems side. In the name ISEEE - Institute for Sustainable Energy Environment and Economy - the one that's most important to me is economy. It's looking at that interface between the energy systems that we need and the fact that they need to be environmentally sustainable and they also have to be economically viable. In some ways, we haven't done that when we developed our energy systems. We haven't worried about longer-term sustainability - especially climate change, but also in water use and other areas - and how we not only produce energy but how we use it."

10. Do you see yourself as an entrepreneur?

"I like building things. In the process of building Qubit in the early 1990s, I (also) built a building here at Queen's. Not singlehandedly, but I chaired the committee to put in a $30-million biosciences complex. I found that very creative and worked very closely with the architects and the researchers and the users of the building. There were many parts of that building that I had a major influence on. I see myself as an entrepreneur, I suppose, but it's not only as an entrepreneur to make money. I'm more interested in creating something of value. It's a creative value, not economic. I find that rewarding."

11. What's your vision for the bioeconomy?

"What I call a sustainable bioeconomy is really focused on the energy and climate change solutions, because they're the really big sustainability issues. The sustainability of our energy systems in the 21st century is going to rely more and more on biological systems as a source of fuels - not only liquid fuels that we hear about for driving cars, but also solid fuels that can be used to complement or supplement our coal use. And also gaseous fuels, like using biomass to create a form of, say, renewable natural gas that could use our existing infrastructure. There is huge potential in Canada, which could, within reason, provide up to 20 per cent or more of its total energy needs through biological systems within the next 25 years. Developing the science and the technologies and the policy options for these targets is, I think, the key element of a sustainable environment. There's an opportunity for biological systems to provide offsets for energy companies and other greenhouse-gas emitters. Overall, there are some very significant opportunities for a sustainable bioeconomy to help societies move to a world where we can meet our energy needs, but there's less of an environmental footprint."

12. You mentioned offsets. What is the potential of the carbon-trading market?

"We've been talking in Canada for seven or eight years about it. The (federal) government keeps saying it's going to introduce a carbon-trading policy or mechanism - and we still don't have one. It's absolutely necessary. If we're really serious about meeting climate change issues, we've got to put a value on carbon and on keeping carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere. It can be a carbon tax or carbon trading or a combination of both. That provides an entire market for the technologies and the management practices that we need to implement. Right now, there is not a strong disincentive to pollute."

13. Why is a carbon tax necessary?

David Layzell

"Carbon dioxide from our greenhouse gas emissions, energy use, agricultural and other systems is another form of waste stream (like municipal garbage collection and landfills). It's been harming the health and environment of Canadians - and we have to start paying for it. That's the only way we're going to get it under control."

14. The B.C. government will likely introduce a carbon tax. Do you see that as being a forerunner of others to come?

"I think so. Quebec has one now, I understand. One of the challenges is what happens in the American election next November and eventually what happens in the (new) administration when they take over. If the United States decides to move in and start putting carbon taxes and carbon-trading systems in place, it will force other countries (to follow)."

15. About a year ago, Barry Appleton, a lawyer based in Washington, D.C., told the Vancouver Board of Trade that demand for cellulose-based ethanol will easily surpass demand for food-based ethanol that's in use now. Where do you see that cellulose-based ethanol market going?

"I would say a bio-based ethanol is a 19th-century fuel in the 21st century. It just happens that we have the technologies that we can implement quickly. People have been making alcohol from biomass for thousands of years. What are the systems that we can use to get the volume of biofuel we need? Grain crops are not the way to do that, they are not productive enough per hectare.

As a result, you don't get enough kilometres (of driving) per hectare. The kilometre-per-hectare question is one of the issues that's going to be very important as we move to higher prices for oil and alternatives. A number of studies in Europe and one that we've done here suggests that you can get two to five times more kilometres per hectare by taking biomass and gasifying it into liquids. Many of the major oil and chemical companies are exploring biomass gasification technology as a second-generation biofuel technology.

This will be done at (large industrial) scale. This is not going to be small plants on every street corner or in every little town."

16. What is your take on the potential of the hydrogen market?

"I think hydrogen fuel-cell technology is really coupled to the idea that there are no emissions tied to its use, from combustion or extraction. The challenge is that hydrogen is really a very poor energy carrier. It's hard to move around. It's hard to store. Its energy density on a cubic-metre basis is very low - and it's just a pain to deal with. I have a hard time envisioning a hydrogen economy the way it was talked about initially. I don't think in my lifetime that we'll be driving hydrogen cars other than just demonstration versions."

17. What do you think about using hydrogen for industrial purposes?

"The real issue in terms of environment is where the hydrogen comes from. Right now, most of the hydrogen commercially is made from natural gas, so you get a (carbon dioxide) emission just before you make the hydrogen. There's not a great environmental advantage.

This is a lot of what I'd like to explore through ISEEE. Where does it make the most sense? Where's the low-hanging fruit?" 18. What's your advice to companies that are looking to develop these alternative energy sources but may not have a chance to market them for several years?

"My advice is let's get a price on carbon. If we can get policy-makers to start putting the economic signals in place by putting a price on carbon and rewarding companies that develop more sustainable systems, that is going to stimulate innovation and entrepreneurial activity like we've never seen before."

19. What will be your priority at ISEEE?

"Initially, my priority is to get a more complete understanding of what's going on at the university, to really get down into the various departments and understand who's doing what. What are the visions of the researchers and the capacity?

And to talk to some of the companies that are interested in this area and understand what they see as their priorities."

20. If you weren't running ISEEE, what would you be doing?

"I think I'd be looking at how to start my own company. I think there's huge economic opportunities that are innovative in this space right now ... But as I've said before, what I'm interested in is building things that are of use. I'm very excited about what ISEEE offers.

I think it's exactly the type of organization that could make a contribution to society and to Canada."

David Layzell

* Title: President/CEO.

* Born/raised/age: Newmarket, Ont./Chatham, Ont., and Preston (Cambridge), Ont./ 55.

* Education: Layzell obtained a bachelor of science from the University of Waterloo, a masters in plant science from Guelph and a doctorate in plant physiology from the University of Western Australia. He did post-doctorate work at Cornell.

* Family: Layzell and his wife Katherine Wynne-Edwards have a 13-year-old son and 11-year-old daughter.

* Career: After completing his post-doctorate work at Cornell, Layzell joined the science faculty at Queen's University in 1984. While at Queen's, he launched a company, Qubit Systems Inc. The company commercialized technology that measures how a plant transports nitrogen and oxygen, and now sells its equipment globally. In 1998, he launched the BIOCAP Canada Foundation, based at Queen's, which co-ordinated and funded multi-disciplinary research on bioenergy and greenhouse-gas offset from agriculture and forestry. He supervised the efforts of 250 faculty researchers and 400 graduate students at universities across the country. He remained at the helm of BIOCAP, which is slated to disband because of funding issues in March, until accepting the ISEEE position.

* Honours: Layzell has garnered many awards, including election in 1998 as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, a group of approximately 1,800 scientists and scholars who are selected by their peers for outstanding contributions to natural and social sciences and their work in the humanities.

* Moonlighting: Layzell sits on the boards of several organizations, including the Green Crop Research Network, Eastern Lake Ontario Regional Innovation Network, Agricultural Biotechnology International Conference Foundation and Qubit Systems Inc.

ISEEE

* Full name: Institute for Sustainable Energy Environment and Economy * Brass: David Layzell, executive-director; Wayne Patton, program development director; Harvey Weingarten, chairman and president of the University of Calgary.

* Profile: Working with many U of C faculties, ISEEE partners with industries, governments, other universities and research organizations to promote and facilitate research and business development opportunities related to energy, the environment and the global economy. As part of its mission, ISEEE also provides impartial and scientifically sound information on energy and environment issues at the local, national and international levels.

* Structure: ISEEE is a non-profit organization that is funded through the U of C, industry, governments and other research organizations. It has a $260-million budget and will house 1,000 new student spaces, along with new chemistry and biology labs, in a new building that is due for completion around 2010.

* Stats: ISEEE's operating revenues are expected to be about $5.2 million for 2007-08. Most of this revenue (obtained from external donors and research sponsors), flows through ISEEE's accounts to the U of C's faculties and schools, including support to research chairs, fellows and programs for students.

* Website: www.iseee.ca * HQ: Room 222, 2500 University Dr. N.W. Calgary T2N 1N4 * Phone/Fax: (403) 220-6100/(403)220-2400.

(Monte Stewart can be reached at monte@businessedge.ca)