NSB Logo Chris Turner Chris Turner

Chris Turner

Speaker

Calgary, Alberta, Canada

Energy Transition, Climate Solutions & Global Cleantech Expert

Chris Turner is one of Canada’s leading voices on climate solutions and the global energy transition. His latest book is How To Be A Climate Optimist, a survey of the first two decades of progress on solving the climate crisis. His previous books on climate, energy and technology include multiple bestsellers and winners of the National Business Book Award, the W.O. Mitchell Book Prize, and the Writers’ Union of Canada’s Freedom to Read Award. His essays and features on energy, climate and technology have appeared in The New Yorker, The Guardian, The Globe & Mail, Maclean’s, and many other publications, and won 10 National Magazine Awards. 

Keynote Speeches

How to be a Climate Optimist

In this presentation, based on his most recent bestselling book, Chris Turner distills 20 years on the climate solutions beat worldwide into a powerful case for optimism in the face of the challenge of climate change. Turner has been reporting on clean energy, sustainable business, and smart green design the world over since long before any of these were mainstream interests, and he draws on the full breadth of his extensive reporting to paint a vivid portrait of a global energy transition already tackling the climate crisis and pointing the way to a much brighter future.

How to be a Climate Optimist has garnered multiple awards including the Writers’ Trust’s Shaugnessy Cohen Prize, the National Business Book Award, and was named a finalist for the GG (Governor General’s) Award. 

Tracking the Global Energy Transition

The global economy is undergoing the greatest transformation since the dawn of the industrial age as it shifts from an energy regime built on fossil fuels to one run by clean, renewable power. Award-winning author and sustainability strategist Chris Turner has been documenting this energy transition for more than a decade, and his presentation combines insights from his bestselling books on the cleantech revolution, The Leap and The Geography of Hope, as well as analysis of the transition’s impact on the conventional energy economy drawn from his most recent book, The Patch. Turner explains where the energy transition leads, what our energy future looks like, and what it means for the strategic decisions businesses and organizations need to make to survive and thrive in the new energy economy.

Taking the Leap: Embracing the Sustainable Economy

Chris Turner is one of the world’s leading voices on climate change solutions and the global energy transition, who draws on recent breakthroughs in state-of-the-art renewable energy and urban design to paint a vivid portrait of a new, sustainable world order that will allow individuals and businesses alike not only to survive but to thrive in the twenty-first century economy. Come and hear Mr. Turner as he speaks about ways that we can embrace the challenge of climate change and develop a more sustainable local economy.

The Leap in the City

We are living in the first truly urban century, and the way we build cities today will determine whether we survive and thrive in the sustainable economy. “The Urban Leap” shows how the Copenhagen and other cutting-edge urban models of livable urban design can help us build our brightest possible future and how “tactical urbanism” provides the quick and inexpensive toolkit of to get started. The Urban Leap surveys the state of the art in urban sustainability from Melbourne to Montreal and Dallas to Dawson City.

Why Canadian History Isn’t as Boring as You Think

We are the stories we tell each other about who we are, and for too long Canadians have believed their collective story to be a nice but boring one. Why? In large part because the myth of the polite, helpful, law-abiding Canadian became the default Canadian story through images of the North-West Mounted Police in the Klondike gold rush, disseminated through American popular culture. As American storytellers revisit the Klondike saga to film a Wire-style miniseries, it’s time for Canadians to reclaim the true, exciting stories of their past.

Platform Plus Presentations

Unique formats and ways to connect with audiences.
Workshop | Going Carbon Neutral
Chris Turner, author of The Geography of Hope, describes innovative and forward-looking projects from around the world — both grassroots and governmental.

Audience reviews:

  • Everything went great at our event! Chris’ keynote was very well received and our President was very pleased with everything. - Senior Advisor, Internal Communications, Targay
  • Chris provided a thought-provoking and stimulating presentation on the need for a change in the way we live. His passion for the subject matter certainly came through in his detailed and energetic presentation. He left us with a renewed sense of the need for (and benefits of) sustainability as a core principle in transportation planning and city-building.

    - CITE Conference
  • Chris Turner's presentation was powerful and delivered with passion. It was exactly what we were looking to provide to our audience.

    - Better Buildings Conference
  • The War on Science is a tremendously important book and you owe it to your country to read it.

    - National Post Review 2013

Speaker Biography

Chris Turner is one of Canada’s leading voices on climate change solutions and the global energy transition, drawing on his reporting on the state of the art in renewable energy, cleantech and urban design to paint a vivid portrait of a new, sustainable world order that will allow individuals and businesses alike not only to survive but to thrive in the twenty-first century economy.

Turner’s latest book is How To Be A Climate Optimist: Blueprints for a Better World — published by Random House Canada — and has garnered multiple awards including the Writers’ Trust’s Shaugnessy Cohen Prize, the National Business Book Award, and was named a finalist for the GG (Governor General’s) Award.

His 2017 bestseller The Patch: The People, Pipelines and Politics of the Oil Sands, won the National Business Book Award, and his previous books on climate solutions, The Leap and The Geography of Hope, were both National Business Book Award finalists. His 2014 book, How to Breathe Underwater, a collection of his award-winning essays and feature writing, won the City of Calgary W.O. Mitchell Book Prize. Turner’s essays and features on energy, climate and technology have appeared in The New Yorker, The Guardian, The Globe & Mail, Maclean’s, and many other publications, and won 10 National Magazine Awards, among other distinctions.

As a speaker and communications strategist, Turner’s recent clients have included the Canadian Climate Institute, Natural Resources Canada, TD Bank, Compugen, Shaw Industries, the Canadian Institute of Planners, and Siemens Energy. He was a 2019 media fellow at the Berlin Energy Transition Dialogue, a 2013 writer-in-residence at the Berton House in Dawson City, Yukon, and a 2010 Paul D. Fleck Fellow at the Banff Centre. He lives in Calgary with his wife and two children.