I am a seasoned public speaker on science, the environment, and journalism, adept at presenting complex issues with colourful yet balanced prose. I have appeared on dozens of live television and radio broadcasts as well as online podcasts and webinars, spoken and moderator panels for professional, business and academic audiences, and taught environmental journalism at the University of Victoria as well as high school biology, physics and chemistry.
TELEVISION
When cable news network France24 dedicated two segments of The Debate to the year ahead in energy, I joined fellow panelists Agnès Michel, a Green Party economist, French petroleum lobbyist Jean-Louis Schilansky, and Rajendra Shende, a former director of the UN Environment Programme for a pair of live sessions. Part One focuses on the what, why and why nots of fracking to produce shale gas and oil. Part Two backs out to consider the fate of nuclear and renewable energy in a ‘fracked’ world awash in cheap oil and gas.
Additional video experiences include:
> Webinars for GLG Insights business audiences on Bitcoin Energy Use and 100% Renewable Energy
> Expert panelist for Fueling the Future, CBC Newsworld’s 2003 hybrid of news and reality TV
RADIO and PODCASTS
PRI’s The World called for local perspective on a controversial oil pipeline designed to export crude from the Alberta tarsands. Not the Keystone XL project that was then complicating President Obama’s agenda, but two more pipelines proposed to pump diluted bitumen through the Canadian wilderness to the Port of Vancouver. The broadcast explored the politics, the environmental implications and the economic imperative — escaping U.S. petroleum refiners’ market power over Canadian oil producers.
More audio (selected):
KUOW The Record, 2020: Grid improvements blocked by Trump appointees
The Interchange, 2020: Why Trump’s Energy Dept Quashed a Supergrid Report
WBUR Here and Now, 2011: Can Human Activity Cause Earthquakes?
WBEZ Worldview, 2018: A World Without Adequate Energy for Computing
SPEAKING
In the aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear meltdowns and the subsequent wholesale shutdown of Japan’s nuclear power plants, the island nation experienced a severe power supply gap. One month after the disaster began I was at the University of Pittsburgh’s Swanson School of Engineering, explaining the challenges posed by Japan’s balkanized power grid along with Gregory Reed, Director of PITT’s Power & Energy Initiative, and Mitsubishi Electric executive engineer Dan Sullivan.
More speaking (selected):
Moderator on Open Energy Planning, Stanford’s OpenMod meets USA 2023
Speaker on NextGen Clean Energy at SEJ’s 2023 Annual Conference
Speaker on the History of Solar Energy, Unity College 2015
Speaker on Nuclear Reprocessing
in France, University of Victoria 2007
Speaker on Fuel cell technology, Peters & Co Annual Energy Conference 2001
Peter Fairley 