[MUSIC] Many experts today refer to renewable energy technologies as disruptive. In the sense that they're radically different from conventional technologies, and are so much better for consumers and society, that they will very quickly disrupt current paradigms. >> Once a technology is ripe, they happen very quickly. And I think electric cars and solar energy and wind energy, they're ripe. A lot of people think they have these forecast for 2040. We're having just a bit more percentage of these. I think the transformation is going to happen so quickly that most of these forecasts are going to be quite short and quite off, because these are disruptive technologies. They're better technologies for the consumers, and we've crossed the price points where they make sense. So once that happens, it's basically a matter of awareness getting around, word of mouth, the understanding, the experience. And as that grows, it grows exponentially. And we're going to see a rapid I think a transformation, comparable to the industrial revolution or such. [MUSIC] >> So this is a solar energy installation here in Vancouver, British Columbia. In fact, when we first started 10 years ago people told us we couldn't do this, that it didn't make sense here. But we recognized that there were some people that wanted to install solar, that wanted to do something leading edge, that wanted to do something to reduce their environmental footprint. So we started with these panels, this system. Since then, the installation growth has been about 40% per year. So in fact it could be done here, there was a demand, people want to see more renewable energy installed locally. >> The research that we're doing is looking at the transportation sector, because that's a huge part of our green house gas emissions And about how we can connect our transportation system to renewables. And we're finding that really electric mobility is an essential part of meeting our deep green house gas emissions reduction. So to have a 80% reduction by 2050, we need to have a big fleet of electric vehicles really almost in every city around the world. And the research that we're doing finds that there's a lot of potential demand. There's a lot of consumers out there who would be willing to pay extra for some type of plug-in hybrid vehicle or pure electric vehicle. But currently, they can't do that because it's not available in the model they want, or in the variety, or color, or whatever it is that they want. And so we're finding that there are some areas that are showing us a good example of policy that can trigger that change. And California has the best example that we found. [MUSIC] >> California right now is leading the standards. They've said that 10% of the vehicles sold in California, have to be electric vehicles. They have committed to an 80% reduction in green house gases. If other states, Washington, Oregon, British Columbia, Ontario, Quebec, and none eastern states were to adopt that kind of California policy. We would create a demand for electric vehicles that would make them very common place. And we would get to the point where using the weight of states and the weight of cities, we could begin to transform our emissions. And that's where we need to go, because we cannot wait for national governments to take us there anymore. And once people understand that an electric vehicle is actually cheaper, it saves them money. All of a sudden, that will turn the market in a massive way. [MUSIC] >> Like transportation, housing is also a major challenge in the aim of creating sustainable cities. The Vancouver Convention Centre is a prime example of how buildings can be designed to minimize environmental impacts. We're here at the Vancouver Convention Centre's west building which opened in April 2009. And it's actually one of the greenest convention facilities in the world. And just to give you a few examples, we have really visible sustainable features such as our six acre living roof which is the largest in Canada. We have a very sophisticated black water recycling treatment plant in house. As well as we utilize sea water heating and cooling because we're right on the harbour. Here at the Vancouver Convention Centre's living roof, this is six acres and it's actually one of the ten largest green roofs in the world. So what makes this green roof really unique is the fact that we've chosen plants that all are indigenous to British Columbia. So we've actually planted over 400,000 plants and grasses on top of this area. It really connects to other green spaces here in downtown Vancouver. So, if you're looking at downtown Vancouver from an aerial perspective, you're going to see that this space connects to the park next door, and it connects to the Stanley Park. And it really was part of the vision of our architects. [MUSIC]
