Huron County is working towards a goal of reducing emissions.
The Founder and President of Carlsun Energy Solutions, Jason Van Geel, said he believes there are four obvious targets for reducing emissions.
“Cement production, steel production, nitrogen fertilizer production and the heavy duty trucking and freight associated primarily with those products," said Van Geel. "That's a 20 plus, some would say upwards of 25, per cent of global emissions come from those four cornerstones.”
Van Geel was one of the panelists for a discussion on the Path to Net Zero in Huron County. The event was hosted by the Chamber of Commerce for Goderich, Central Huron, and North Huron.
He said de-carbonizing and producing nitrogen fertilizer locally could be a significant climate solution right in our back yard.
Another step towards addressing the problem would be producing more items here instead of importing them. That's something they've been working with local stake holders on since 2016.
“The idea and the opportunity, it's almost painfully obvious to use night time off-peak electricity, I'll call it spare electricity, in Ontario to make products that are otherwise being largely imported from places like Russia and China,” he said.
Van Geel added we import a number of things that we could producing here. An example he mentioned was fertilizer. He said if we produced that, it would create jobs and reduce emissions, but it would also bring security to supply and long term pricing.
