CIET Gets Inspired At the Globe Conference

The Globe Conference is one of the premier Sustainability conferences. For 30 years, it has been held every two years, and this year the 15th edition took place February 10-13. The conference attracted around 1,800 delegates and 400 exhibitors with different perspectives and approaches to Sustainability.

Along with CIET, the Energy Efficiency perspective was represented at the conference by several energy consulting firms, energy monitoring software companies, the commercial real estate industry, and institutional and regulatory participants from the NRC and NRCan.

Here are four key themes from this 15^th edition of the conference:

1.	An emphasis on the financing of sustainable projects
	Financing would allow the positive effects of sustainable projects to be scaled and accelerated. Energy Efficiency (EE) projects and retrofits certainly fall under this category and can be scaled up by ESCOs and Green Banks
2.	The introduction of the Globe Conference
	This new pre-conference session aims to pair cleantech, efficiency and sustainable solutions innovators and start-ups with investors and government representatives
3.	The circular economy as a chief buzzword
	The concept of the circular economy seemed to be ever-present at this edition of the conference. Underpinned by a transition to renewable energy sources, the circular models aim to build economic, natural and social capital based on waste and pollution reduction, product life cycles, and the regeneration of natural systems
4.	Attempt to put on a conference that was solutions-oriented
	With the conference participants and exhibitors largely in agreement about both the importance of sustainable initiatives and the urgency to execute them, many of the themes and discussions at Globe attempted to put forward solutions