By Rudy Haugeneder, courtesy of the Goldstream News Gazette

Power blackouts like those recently experienced on the West Shore are here to stay, says a top Ontario business leader. But future power blackouts won't be caused by windstorms, said Chris Henderson, chairman of the Ottawa-based Delphi Group.

Power grids are on shakey ground says energy expert Chris Henderson

Henderson expects blackouts to become common across North America within a half decade - the result of an energy crisis caused by government and industry's inability to jointly develop a continent-wide energy masterplan to tackle imminent oil shortages. Oil fuels power plants connected into the continent-wide electric grid.

Environmental, energy and security problems across the planet are all converging and will "collide in a perfect storm," said Henderson, considered one of Canada's industry leaders in the environment and clean energy sectors.

"Developing a vision for energy is, in a sense, the mother of all environmental issues," said Henderson, who helps business and governments develop creative ways to manage risk, while shifting operations to become environmentally sustainable.

Politicians and business leaders across North America must quickly set aside their self-interests to develop an enforceable continental energy masterplan that applies to everyone, said Henderson. Otherwise conditions will become "very frustrating in the next five years," he said.

"Reality can sometimes be stark, " Henderson said during a public lecture on navigating towards a sustainable energy future at Royal Roads University Feb. 28.
 
"Unless Canada and the world can plot a course towards a sustainable energy future, trying to address virtually every other environmental challenge will be futile," he said.

Henderson said the pending oil shortage may hit earlier, and be more severe, if foreign supply lines are cut in politically volatile countries like Nigeria, Venezuela and Iran - all major international producers where oil volume is already declining six per cent annually because there's "very little" new investment needed to update production facilities.

Delphi Group chair Chris Henderson warns blackouts will be the norm unless business and government address the imminent oil shortages

In Canada, existing energy-saving actions and technologies available to business, governments, and ordinary people "aren't working very well" because their use hasn't been "sold" properly, Henderson told School of Environment and Sustainability students.
 
He predicted Prime Minister Stephen Harper would call an election shortly after introducing a bill to establish a Canada-only carbon-trading market that would allow a company in one part of the country to invest in green projects somewhere else in the nation and be given credit for reducing its emissions.

The piece of legislation would give Harper the environmental edge the prime minister thinks he needs to win an election, said Henderson, who supports a national carbon-trading market that acts like a commodity exchange where products like lumber, ore and grain are bought and sold.

Henderson forecast the election a day before a Decima Research poll last week showed the Conservatives held 36 per cent support nationally compared to 27 per cent for the Liberals.

The Conservatives have ruled out an internationalácarbon trading market based on the Kyoto Protocol that allows countries to use a trading system to help meet the accord's goal of reducing the world's greenhouse gas emissions by an average 5.2 per cent relative to 1990 levels by 2012.

Under it, any country struggling to meet its targets may buy credits -- essentially the right to emit a certain amount of carbon dioxide -- from countries exceeding their reduction targets.

Henderson said the made-in-Canada carbon exchange is probably an election winning issue that will be difficult for other parties to condemn.