Chris Turner – Sustainability & Global Cleantech Expert

Topical keynote Speakers & Experts -

How to be a Climate Optimist

Tracking the Global Energy Transition

Taking the Leap: Embracing the Sustainable Economy

Chris Turner is one of Canada’s leading voices on climate solutions and the global energy transition. His latest book is How To Be A Climate Optimist, a survey of the first two decades of progress on solving the climate crisis.

His previous books on climate, energy and technology include multiple bestsellers and winners of the National Business Book Award, the W.O. Mitchell Book Prize, and the Writers’ Union of Canada’s Freedom to Read Award.

His essays and features on energy, climate and technology have appeared in The New Yorker, The Guardian, The Globe & Mail, Maclean’s, and many other publications, and won 10 National Magazine Awards.

Speaker Biography

Chris Turner is one of Canada’s leading voices on climate change solutions and the global energy transition, drawing on his reporting on the state of the art in renewable energy, cleantech and urban design to paint a vivid portrait of a new, sustainable world order that will allow individuals and businesses alike not only to survive but to thrive in the twenty-first century economy.

Turner’s latest book is How To Be A Climate Optimist: Blueprints for a Better World, published this spring by Random House Canada.

His 2017 bestseller The Patch: The People, Pipelines and Politics of the Oil Sands, won the National Business Book Award, and his previous books on climate solutions, The Leap and The Geography of Hope, were both National Business Book Award finalists.

His 2014 book, How to Breathe Underwater, a collection of his award-winning essays and feature writing, won the City of Calgary W.O. Mitchell Book Prize.

Turner’s essays and features on energy, climate and technology have appeared in The New Yorker, The Guardian, The Globe & Mail, Maclean’s, and many other publications, and won 10 National Magazine Awards, among other distinctions.

As a speaker and communications strategist, Turner’s recent clients have included the Canadian Climate Institute, Natural Resources Canada, TD Bank, Compugen, Shaw Industries, the Canadian Institute of Planners, and Siemens Energy.

He was a 2019 media fellow at the Berlin Energy Transition Dialogue, a 2013 writer-in-residence at the Berton House in Dawson City, Yukon, and a 2010 Paul D. Fleck Fellow at the Banff Centre.

Chris provided a thought-provoking and stimulating presentation on the need for a change in the way we live. His passion for the subject matter certainly came through in his detailed and energetic presentation. He left us with a renewed sense of the need for (and benefits of) sustainability as a core principle in transportation planning and city-building.

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