The United Nations defines sustainable development as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs,” with development referring to growth in many aspects of human civilization. Sustainable development, as the UN sees it, requires efforts toward building an inclusive and resilient future for all.

The organization also believes that sustainable development requires three specific elements to be considered: Economic growth, social inclusion, and environmental protection. All three are both interconnected and of utmost importance, but it is in the particulars that international efforts have differed in both approach and result.

Setting the goals
Sustainability goals worldwide have been spurred on by the UN over the past several decades. Most recently, the organization adopted its Sustainable Development Goals in 2015, which exist as universal calls to action to end poverty, protect the planet, and generally improve the lives of humanity.

All 193 UN member states adopted these 17 goals in 2015 as part of the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, a 15-year plan to achieve global advancement on each goal. These include ending poverty and hunger, affording all people clean water and sanitation, and promoting well-being through health, education, equality, peace, responsible consumption / production, and climate action (among others).

The efforts are part of what the UN calls its Decade of Action, a time in which sustainable solutions must be accelerated to meet these myriad challenges. In September 2019, UN Secretary-General António Guterres announced that action must come from three worldwide levels: Global action including greater resources and solutions for the Sustainable Development Goals; local action through various governmental frameworks and authorities; and action through individuals, which includes the media, academia, private sectors, and more to push for change through movements.

Many countries have begun enacting similar versions of the UN’s plans, albeit with specified and varied targets. For example, Global Affairs Canada announced its 2020-2023 Departmental Sustainable Development Strategy, a means by which the country will work with various partners to work toward eliminating poverty and inequality.

As it relates to sustainability, this strategy outlines several goals to be met by at least 2030: To reduce greenhouse gas emissions from federal government facilities and fleets by 40 percent below 2005 levels, and 80 percent below 2005 targets by 2050 en route to carbon neutrality; to divert 75 percent (by weight) of both plastic and non-hazardous operation waste from landfills; to convert its administrative fleet to at least 80 percent zero-emission vehicles; and to reduce the country’s total greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent.

Doubled investment
As of 2022, several federal departments have developed measures to reduce climate change risks to assets, services, and operations, and plans are in place over the remaining eight years until 2030 to double federal government investments in clean energy and technology research, development, and demonstrations.

The SDG (Sustainable Development Goals) USA initiative, with support from various foundations, released its own briefing on its take on the UN’s goals titled “America’s Goals for 2030.” The vision is “designed to support citizens, businesses, policymakers, universities and politicians in meeting goals to promote sustainable development in the U.S.”

These goals adopt the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, with a particular focus on building a national understanding around the goals (especially on a political level), intended to be accomplished through partnership with individuals and organizations and promoting education and expertise through training, workshops, and more.

SDG USA has specific targets within the broader scope as well, such as encouraging employers to act ethically and provide at least $20 per hour take-home pay for all working people, as well as extending leave (i.e. sick, parental, vacation) to all. The organization believes that meeting needs like these will carry America forward into eradicating poverty.

The EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) is also hard at work encouraging American organizations to use renewable energy resources employing sustainability and health initiatives. These include the SunShot Initiative, which aims to make solar power more affordable, and the Better Buildings Challenge, which encourages businesses and organizations to reduce energy consumption.

America’s approach to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals involves a specificity that could bear fruit toward the more generalized objectives most countries have adopted. Elsewhere, the EU (European Union) Sustainable Development Strategy is meant to identify and develop actions to enable all countries in the union to achieve long-term improvement of quality of life through the creation of sustainable communities.

These communities will be able to tap into ecological and social innovation inherent in the EU economy through effective resource management and, as such, enable greater environmental protection and social cohesion. The strategy outlined seven key environmental challenges for a period ending in 2010, which included sustainable energy, transportation, consumption, production, and resource conservation and management.

Biggest hurdles
In 2021, the Europe Sustainable Development Report showed that Europe’s biggest current hurdles are in the sustainability of food, as well as in climate and biodiversity.

Northern European countries like Finland, Sweden, and Denmark seem to be at the top of SDG goals as Europe itself leads these goals on a worldwide scale, but more work must be done for the EU and other countries in the area to accomplish their proposed landmarks from several years ago.

Other continents are continuing to enact differing interpretations of sustainable action. Asian governments are concerned about various aspects of sustainability as well, even around areas like currency and finance. Market-building efforts are underway to invest in ideas like green bonds (funds specifically to contribute to environmental protection) and ESG (environmental, social, and governance) investing, which evaluates financial spending opportunities based on how they contribute to sustainability.

Elsewhere, in Africa, leaders are asking the international communities to support the development of environmentally sound waste management. Many have also endorsed a 10-year program on sustainable consumption and production to enhance energy resource efficiency. Already, many African countries have committed to banning leaded gasoline, and some uranium deposits in the continent are moving toward safer management thanks to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Charting many courses
All these variations demonstrate that sustainability looks very different when one compares the preferred approaches of different countries and even continents.

So it follows, in a policy brief in the OECD Observer (a publication by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development), that the organization outlines how individual countries should approach sustainable development: along varying paths, with no “one size fits all” approach to sustainable development.

“Each country must chart its own course, in line with its culture, history, social and economic priorities, and prevailing institutions and political structures. The environmental challenges faced by different countries, which reflect geographical, ecological and climatic factors, are also very diverse and translate into highly differentiated constraints, opportunities and priorities. This is why there are many interpretations of sustainable development.”

As helpful as edicts like the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals have been toward getting countries to take sustainability more seriously, it will take further renewal and recommitment to these individual approaches to see lasting change toward building a greener future, as the clock keeps ticking toward the UN’s vaunted year of 2030.

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As a leading supplier for emergency response and standby protection for upstream and midstream oil and gas operations in Western Canada and the territories, Trojan Safety Services proudly embraces its role in supporting a variety of industries in the energy sector. At all levels, Trojan Safety strives to ensure that organizations meet health and safety compliance regulations and that above all, workers are always protected on job sites.

Guided by values
Trojan Safety was founded in 1994 in Fort St. John, BC by Al Kirschner, and grew from a single Mobile Decontamination Shower Unit to providing a full suite of industrial safety services. Today, with the day-to-day operations being run by one of Al’s two sons, Jeff, as General Manager, the company remains in the family and remains true to those values that have guided its success.

These values, says the company, are “non-negotiable,” and include: ‘Show you care,’ with a team that takes pride in going the extra mile; ‘Keep learning,’ by remaining curious and seeking innovative solutions; ‘Always on time,’ which emphasizes an approach of respect for your workplace, clients, and co-workers; ‘Dependable,’ being part of a team that can be counted on; and ‘It’s all about relationships,’ which speaks to the heart of the company’s commitment to the safety of its employees and the communities in which it works.

“It’s our family business, but it’s more than just our direct family,” Jeff Kirschner shares. “It’s the people who have been part of it with us. They’re part of the family; they’ve been here forever,” he says.

“Most of the people within our Fort St. John office are people who started working at the company around the same time I did; we all just grew together. We’re incredibly fortunate that in an industry where turnover is typically high, we have people who have been with us for as long as I have, coming up on 18 years.”

Key services
Today, the company’s offerings today include industrial firefighting, first aid & paramedic services, H2S (Hydrogen sulphide) safety services, blowout & well control, portable & standalone gas monitoring, mobile air quality monitoring (AQM), infrared gas detection, decontamination shower units, and a training division located at the head office in Fort St. John offering industry standard courses to the public.

One of Trojan Safety’s core service lines is provided by the H2S Safety Supervisor, whose primary responsibility is the safety of all personnel on site. Crew safety is supported during the threat of H2S gas by utilizing state-of-the-art equipment such as air trailers containing compressed breathing air, electronic gas monitoring, and personal gas monitoring equipment. Pack training and Man-down Drills are conducted on a regular basis to ensure that all crew members know the proper procedures and the roles they will play in the event of an emergency.

In addition, Trojan Safety has also been growing further into performing plant turnarounds. “We’ve been slowly growing our plant turnaround business and growing our expertise in it,” Kirschner says. “We’ve been extremely successful in that [area] through exceptional management of our safety personnel on site.”

Turnarounds are scheduled events that involve an industrial plant’s whole process unit—such as a refinery, petrochemical plant, power plant, pulp and paper mill, et cetera—being taken offline for an extended length of time for renovation and/or renewal. These events could involve inspection and testing, debottlenecking projects, revamps, and catalyst regeneration projects, along with shutdowns and outages. Turnarounds are expensive both in lost production while the process unit is offline and in terms of direct costs for the labour, tools, heavy equipment, and materials used to execute the project. They typically represent a significant portion of a plant’s yearly maintenance budget and can affect a company’s bottom line if mismanaged.

As such, “working with clients during preplanning to ensure the proper amount of personnel and equipment is available for each phase of the progress is essential to ensuring a successful operation,” says Kirschner.

Challenging perceptions
Along with its many successes, the company has also faced its share of challenges over the years, but has always done what’s necessary to remain productive and successful. Now, the team is focused on getting back to growth.

“We’ve faced the same challenges as the rest of the people in the industry for the last eight years,” Kirschner says. “It’s really just now that the industry is coming back online, but we continue to face challenges with governments that seem to be anti-oil and gas.

“Now let me be clear,” he says, “I believe that regardless of anything, as a species capable of doing so, we should be striving toward zero impact. That’s across all areas, whether air, water, or land. I believe we’ll get there, but we have to accept that just like trying to get a plant to grow, you can only water it so much, and after that, time does the rest.” To this end, while Kirschner is a supporter of Oil & Gas, he is also in support of all realistic energy projects including renewables.

Building a labour force for the future
Certainly, growth can be a challenge in an industry that is facing a growing spotlight on its practices, practices that are subject to a slew of misconceptions, says Kirschner.

“There seems to be a lot of misinformation about the oil and gas industry, which is really unfortunate, especially considering Canada has the very best practices in the world when it comes to Oil & Gas development. Everything from the way we extract to our human rights and environmental protection is the best of the best, and yet you see our own government creating policies that restrict our ability to extract these resources, and somehow support getting them from other nations. When you understand that Oil & Gas is necessary not just for Canada to survive and thrive, but for every nation in the world to do the same, you must realize that it’s not going anywhere any time soon,” he says.

The ongoing stigma surrounding oil and gas has also led to struggles finding labourers within the industry, he says, coupled with how schools haven’t made students aware of the potential for growth and employment in the industry, particularly for those living in large, urban areas.

“I think about these people living outside of oil and gas cities who probably have no idea about the industry,” Kirschner says. “They have this misconception of it. They don’t realize they could come out to an industry that’s not what they think, and change their lives for the better… They could come to a resource town and purchase a [home] for probably less than $300,000, while making over $100,000 per year in a career they can enjoy for the long term. How many young people in the city can claim a six-figure salary?”

He does recognize that it is a labour-intensive industry. “There’s certainly a sacrifice that people will make to be here, but it’s a sacrifice in order to better your life and get ahead and have an opportunity to do more.”

Reaching people with this message is his goal, he adds, in an effort to help them understand the potential possibilities and opportunities available in different areas of the country, particularly those looking for a change and younger people looking to enter a career they may never have considered before.

“You can come to the oil patch, make great money, and live a good life and get started from there,” as part of the Trojan Safety family,” says Kirschner. “If you do a good job and want to be out there and want to be part of the team, you create unlimited opportunities for yourself. Trojan is a company that provides opportunities for people, and people create their own destiny.”

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After years of patient research and development in its Dayton, Ohio headquarters, Aeroseal is helping to create hyper-efficient ducts to help home and building owners live and work more cheaply and environmentally responsibly. With proper implementation of its technology, the company hopes to reduce building carbon emissions by one gigaton each year.

Its flagship product is an aerosolized, water-based, non-toxic formula which is injected into duct networks. The formula is then naturally drawn to any cracks, leaks or incomplete seals in the network, over which it then forms completely airtight seals guaranteed for at least ten years, and has been stress-tested for a potential forty-year lifespan.

The process can range from several hours to as short as sixty minutes, depending on the size of the house in question, and patented sensors provide real-time air efficiency updates. Upon treatment completion, customers receive a printed certificate of air quality and efficiency, as part of Aeroseal’s guarantee of quality.

The company also offers commercial duct sealing, helping raise the energy efficiency and air quality of hospitals, office buildings, high-rise apartments, university dormitories, and military complexes. As an example, the company recently completed a major overhaul of Riyadh’s King Abdullah Financial District (KAFD), performing duct-sealing work on two high-rise towers. Aeroseal was able to reduce air loss from over 15,000 cubic feet per minute (CFM) to 257, an average leakage reduction of 98.3 percent.

As well as improving ductwork in existing construction, the company offers full building envelope sealing of ongoing construction projects through its AeroBarrier technology. Using a single crew, Aeroseal can provide complete air sealing in one-third of the time needed for manual sealing, with the entire process taking between sixty and ninety minutes.

The result is a fully sealed and pressurized building envelope guaranteed to meet any ENERGY STAR®, LEED, Passive House, or Net Zero requirement. The technology can be applied pre- or post-drywall (sheetrock), and will adhere to various building materials, including drywall, treated or untreated lumber, metal, and oriented strand board (OSB). AeroBarrier can help contractors save money, time, and infrastructure, making it the ideal building envelope sealant.

As an example, Aeroseal was contracted to provide sealing to a Seattle area townhouse complex. The developer’s stated goal was to provide energy efficiency of twenty percent over code cost-effectively. Using AeroBarrier helped drop the townhouses’ ACH50 air loss from an average of 9.28 to 1.49, helping the development earn a five-star Green Built rating. An ACH50 rating indicates the number of times that the air volume changes per hour at fifty pascals pressure differential and shows the energy efficiency of a building.

The company estimates that ninety-five percent of all American homes have leaky ducts and that an average of thirty percent of heating costs pay for wasted air, adding up to $25 billion in annual waste in the USA alone. The United States Department of Energy (DOE) states that the typical home loses between twenty-five percent and forty percent of its conditioned air due to leaky ducts, forcing heaters and air conditioning units to work harder, wear out sooner, and consume more energy. Aeroseal’s products can help homes and businesses operate at maximum efficiency, saving money, infrastructure, and irreplaceable natural resources.

Additionally, sealed ducts mean higher air quality through dust reduction. Particularly in older homes and offices with equally old ductwork, Aeroseal can help block dust, allergens, and other pollutants from entering. The clean air is also low-humidity, preventing mold build-up in largely unreachable duct networks. Finally, sealed ducts provide greater comfort through superior air flow and even temperatures, as poorly sealed homes may be warmer and stuffier on upper floors and colder below. Aeroseal provides comfortable living and peace of mind in homes and offices of any size.

The company’s story begins in 1993 with Dr. Mark Modera, an engineering professor at the DOE’s Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory and the University of California, Davis, who today serves as Aeroseal’s Scientific Advisor. While working at the national laboratory energy efficiency projects, Dr. Modera discovered massive energy inefficiency in plain sight. “He learned there was an enormous problem with leaky ductwork and the role that plays in inefficient homes and buildings,” says Peter Eberly, Senior Director of Marketing.

Dr. Modera’s new product was well-received, but he found it difficult to balance his projects with his academic career and sold the technology to heating, ventilation, and air conditioning giant Carrier. From there, it landed on the desk of Amit Gupta, at the time a product manager at Carrier but now Aeroseal’s Chief Executive Officer. Gupta had developed a reputation for embracing unconventional projects, so Dr. Modera’s work intrigued him.

“As he learned more and more about the duct-sealing technology… he realized that it had enormous potential, from a market and ‘fit’ standpoint,” Eberly says. More specifically, the product had a fundamentally positive potential for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Amit recognized that at a big company like Carrier, this was “not even a rounding error,” but he had the opportunity to go private. With the help of some friends and family, Amit worked to acquire the technology from Carrier, and Aeroseal as a company was born twelve years ago.

From such humble beginnings, today Aeroseal has serviced over 200,000 homes and earned awards from the likes of Popular Science and the United States Department of Energy’s ‘Energy 100’ award. Eberly and his colleagues see it as a ‘right place, right time’ business. While growth has been steady, this spiked last year as the company approached outside investment groups including Breakthrough Energy Ventures, the Bill Gates-led energy investment fund, to accelerate the company’s technologies, advance its mission, and become the default in duct and building envelope-sealing solutions.

The funding is being invested into Aeroseal’s research and development (R&D), all of which is done in-house. “We have an extensive engineering and R&D team,” Eberly remarks. “We’re constantly looking to make the equipment faster and more efficient.”

While the products are simple and easily applied, Eberly says the company is working to upscale production to meet growing demand. “The key for us, from an R&D perspective, is to make a seal faster, less expensive, and more efficient for our dealer partners who do this work.”

The technology, at its core, has stayed the same over time. What has unmistakably changed, however, is the growing importance of improving building efficiency, which Eberly says tends to be overlooked as a carbon contributor. “Folks think of cars. Folks think of manufacturing,” he says. “They don’t think of their houses or buildings that they’re living in as greenhouse gas contributors.” He elaborates that, in traditional thinking, leaky ductwork was seen as an inescapable construction reality.

Fortunately, Aeroseal’s primary advantage in combating climate change is its ability to provide consumers with a largely passive solution. “It doesn’t require them to make a contribution or a difference, doesn’t require them to change their lifestyle,” Eberly says, adding that a single afternoon duct-sealing appointment can solve a building’s efficiency problems for years, if not for its entire lifespan.

Legislation such as the U.S.’s Inflation Reduction Act provides significant tax incentives for consumers to patronize companies like Aeroseal. The technology is one of several highlighted as an energy improvement measure. At the more local level, the company has dealers in all fifty states and in twenty-seven countries, overwhelmingly through solar and HVAC contractors and providers.

Eberly notes that, in addition to government incentives, changes in local building codes have spurred the company’s expansion. “Adoption of our technologies often comes in bursts geographically,” he remarks. “Our technologies make it easier… to ensure that code is met.” As Aeroseal continues to grow, new management roles in policy management and international business development will continue to help the company navigate domestic and global building codes and business opportunities.

Aeroseal is rapidly moving beyond its initial start-up phase and, as such, has been developing its own unique culture. This is particularly a passion project of CEO Amit Gupta, who realizes it must exemplify next-generation business.

“Company culture isn’t just an enabler—it is vital to becoming a great company, to meeting our business objectives, and hitting our lofty ambitions,” Eberly says. “It is fuel for our business success and the lynchpin to ensuring we have the right team in place to tackle our big goals.” To this end, Gupta takes a personal stake in ensuring new hires are well-acquainted with the company’s core values, and that veterans reacquaint themselves regularly as well.

As Aeroseal’s growth continues unabated, Eberly and his colleagues are confident that more consumers will see the simplicity and effectiveness of the company’s offerings. It has built solid stockpiles of materials and parts to keep costs manageable and lead times low and is regularly testing secondary materials to serve as alternates. This ensures that it suffers very little downtime, as more consumers realize that the problem of leaky ductwork—once thought to be part of the cost of living—can be solved quite easily.

Moreover, Aeroseal acknowledges that climate change solutions must be global. “This is not just a North American challenge,” Eberly says, “and there’s appetite for these solutions at all corners of the globe.”

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Founded by hemp business owners and activists in Scottsdale, Arizona back in 1994, the HIA is a strong membership-based, non-profit trade association. Based on shared goals and the desire to establish standards for hemp-based products and the legalizing of hemp in the United States, the HIA continues to advance its mission: educating the market and advancing the hemp economy for the benefit of its members, the public, and the planet.

Despite being a valuable crop with many uses for centuries, the hemp story remains mired in misunderstandings.

Also referred to as industrial hemp, it grows much faster than most other crops and can utilize much less water. Yielding much more fiber than commercially grown cotton—which requires lots of synthetic pesticides—the hemp plant typically needs fewer, if any, herbicides. And the durability of hemp outshines many other natural fibers. With wicking and anti-bacterial properties, it’s terrific for clothing and other sustainable fabrics.

“Culturally, it was a super-useful crop, and that’s why it was such a big part of the U.S. economy,” says Jody McGinness, Executive Director. “For more than 100 years, you could pay your taxes in hemp in the United States. It was a commoditized crop that was a staple of the early American economy.”

Today, hemp applications are virtually limitless, since it can be made into healthy and environmentally friendly building materials like hempcrete building blocks and hemp insulation, as well as cosmetics, vegan dairy products, animal feed, and biodegradable and compostable hemp plastic, to name a few of its talents.

The hemp seed, long utilized for food and personal care products, is a nutritional powerhouse containing all of the essential fatty acids required for a healthy diet. Its health-promoting fats and density of minerals and vitamins have an exceptional iron and fiber content while remaining 100 percent gluten- and allergen-free. A diet including hemp has been shown to promote heart health, lower blood pressure, and have other health benefits.

Industry diversity
The membership of the Hemp Industries Association is practically as diverse as the industry itself. Over 50 percent of members today are retailers, extractors, laboratories, and farmers involved in CBD and other cannabinoids derived from the hemp flower.

Some members are involved in food and natural products derived from hemp oil that’s extracted from hemp seeds grown for grain. Others include ancillary service providers and businesses focusing on hemp, like supply chain solution companies, credit card processing, farmers, and others in the agricultural space.

“A lot of our current members have joined for the first time in the last year,” says McGinness. “Part of that is new businesses getting started, and some of it is because of what HIA is focusing on, issues that are current and pressing to hemp, like the regulation of cannabinoids.”

Extending well beyond the United States, the HIA has members in over 15 countries, including a strong Canadian contingent, and strategic partnerships with hemp associations in New Zealand, Canada, South America, and Europe.

“International contacts and support were always a part of HIA’s meetings because what we were looking for in many cases was expertise, or the ability to understand how things are being done elsewhere, where growing hemp was legal, in order to find a path for legal hemp in the U.S.,” McGinness says.

Until around 2015/2016, there was effectively no national U.S. hemp association other than HIA. It was only with the start of legal hemp with the 2014 Farm Bill, which authorized states to begin growing hemp for research purposes, that other groups began to pop up.

For members of the Hemp Industries Association, one of the greatest benefits is that their involvement is welcomed—even essential to how the association functions. As a part of the HIA, members can connect to the network of decision-makers setting regulations for hemp, and thereby help shape the future of the industry.

“We are dealing with a state-by-state regulatory regime for hemp,” comments McGinness. “There’s a pressing need to stay ahead of developments to make business decisions with some sort of backup in mind.”

As a service to the industry, the HIA publishes Hemp Industry SmartBrief. A weekly hemp industry news digest, it covers industry developments impacting hemp seed, fiber, flower, and grain, along with the latest national and state policy and regulatory developments.

HIA Members receive a personalized Weekly Hemp News Digest, an algorithmically generated unique newsletter, which means every member receives stories of interest to them individually, in addition to updates to policies, HIA news, and discounts on live and virtual events.

Before COVID, in-person events were a part of the HIA’s revenue stream. The Association is planning its return to live events next year, and will be hosting its annual conference HIACon in Austin, Texas in September of 2023.

Passion for the industry
Executive Director at The Hemp Industries Association for the past two years, Jody McGinness’ background in non-profit membership organizations goes back over two decades, first as a fundraiser, later as an executive.

Along with working in public broadcasting, arts, and academia, he moved into the policy space when he took a job running fundraising for the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP). Responsible for most state legalization campaigns, the MPP is the top U.S. organization dedicated to legalizing cannabis, initiating 14 medical cannabis laws to date. “It was a great opportunity to learn the policy space of the non-profit world,” he says.

Much of McGinness’ passion for the industry originates with a family member whose life was impacted by the injustice of the war on drugs. But what most excites him is the opportunity to be involved in re-establishing this remarkable crop in the United States, and the tremendous potential for good that can be accomplished in vital areas of human development like rural investment, nutrition, food security, and sustainability.

Fighting the battle
Before the HIA’s founding, there was the Business Alliance in Commerce and Hemp (BACH), founded by activist and author Chris Conrad, who later became the first President of the HIA.

In 1989, Conrad and his wife co-founded the American Hemp Council to educate the public on the many benefits and uses of industrial hemp and the onerous laws against the crop in the U.S.

Conrad came up with a three-step plan to achieve the legalization of hemp nationally. “Step one was to get hemp legalized,” states McGinness. “Step two was to get medical marijuana legalized nationally, and step three was full legalization. By 2014 and 2018 with legalization, activism was saying, ‘this isn’t about cannabis, but about industrial hemp.’” One of the slogans used was, “Hemp can’t get you high, it’s rope not dope.”

Describing it as a “David and Goliath moment,” the HIA took on the DEA in 2001 when it tried to schedule hemp seed and hemp oil food products even though they were without any amounts of trace THC. In March 2003, the HIA, along with the Organic Consumers Association and some hemp food and body-care businesses, “filed an urgent motion for stay in the 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals to stop this.”

This led to a three-year-long battle which, in February 2004, saw the Ninth Circuit issue a unanimous decision in favor of the HIA. In the decision, Judge Betty Fletcher wrote: “[The DEA] cannot regulate naturally occurring THC not contained within or derived from marijuana; non-psychoactive hemp is not included in Schedule I. The DEA has no authority to regulate drugs that are not scheduled, and it has not followed procedures required to schedule a substance. The DEA’s definition of ‘THC’ contravenes the unambiguously expressed intent of Congress in the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) and cannot be upheld.”

Making headlines across the country, the victory established the HIA and its reputation. “So it was obviously an organization that was a little bit more than your standard trade association,” says McGinness.

True believers, who thought federal policies were irrational regarding hemp, came forward.

Four years ago, the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018 (2018 Farm Bill) “authorized the production of hemp and removed hemp from the Drug Enforcement Administration’s schedule of Controlled Substances,” according to the USDA. “It also directed the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to issue regulations and guidance to implement a program to create a consistent regulatory framework around the production of hemp throughout the United States. The establishment of hemp as a regulated commodity also paves the way for U.S. hemp farmers to participate in other USDA farm programs.”

Interest in CBD grew, and the industry soon experienced a rapid boom and bust through oversupply.

The board of the HIA truly believed in the Association and spoke to McGinness about the opportunities in the market, realizing that this was the onset of a new national industry re-introducing the first new cash crop to America in decades.

“The choices we as an industry make now have the potential to benefit people for generations,” he says. “So it was that shared sense of wanting to use this opportunity to do good, implementing a sustainable and equitable hemp industry. I guess it’s human nature to think about an organization as sort of a static thing, but by virtue of what we do for the industry we serve, it’s constantly evolving and changing,” says McGinness when asked about the HIA’s direction in coming years.

“The mission now is to educate the market and advance the hemp economy for the benefit of our members, the public, and the planet. People are also often under the misconception that we’re monolithic because the things that happened 10 years ago are still in people’s minds. But it’s a constantly shifting cast of members who have joined, and in the hemp industry in the U.S., especially pre-2018, businesses have come and gone.”

As time passes, more and more uses for hemp are emerging, many sustainable. These include biofuels, and cellulose versions of hemp designed to replace plastic cellulose as a filler, and as plugging for leaks in oil and gas drilling. And because hemp is absorbent and hypoallergenic, it is gaining ground as a feminine hygiene product.

One of the biggest uses in the coming years will be in the food industry. Extremely nutritious, hemp is bursting with essential amino acids and vitamins and has more protein than chicken, beef, or fish. Owing to its moisture-retaining properties, it is likely hemp will become a staple of vegan burgers and other plant-based food products.

“The HIA has been the beating heart of the hemp industry for 30 years, and we welcome any questions to help people better understand this remarkable plant and its potential, so we invite anyone interested to reach out.”

The post The Hemp Industry has a Heart – and This is It<p class="company">The Hemp Industries Association</p> appeared first on Resource In Focus.

Speaking at a recent conference in Norway, Musk called for more oil and gas exploration and drilling, not less.

“Realistically, I think we need to use oil and gas in the short term because otherwise civilization will crumble,” he said. “One of the biggest challenges the world has ever faced is the transition to sustainable energy and a sustainable economy. That will take some decades to complete.”

Almost half a century after the energy crisis of 1973 when Arabic oil producers under OPEC halted sales of crude oil to the United States, and a second one in ‘79 due to reduced oil production during the Iranian Revolution, the world is again at an energy crossroads.

In 2022, an unhappy confluence of factors—notably major oil producer Russia invading Ukraine in February and threatening to cut off supply along with sluggish post-COVID economic recovery and worker shortages—echoes the dark days of the seventies.

Add to the equation the global push toward reducing 2005-level greenhouse gas emissions by 50 to 52 percent by 2030, and the world is likely in for energy shortages, high fuel prices, and rolling blackouts once again.

Decades ago, the push was on to conserve energy and cut skyrocketing fuel prices by buying smaller vehicles, lowering the thermostat in winter, and putting on sweaters to save on home heating costs. Trading in massive, 12-miles-per-gallon V8 Cadillacs for smaller AMC Gremlins, Volkswagen Beetles, or a moped or bicycle wasn’t unusual; today, it is battery-powered e-bicycles, scooters, and electric unicycles.

In his speech, Musk noted that while the world needs more oil and gas, we also need to move simultaneously toward “a sustainable energy economy,” one supported by bolstering battery storage technology, greater investments in wind, solar, and geothermal energy, and maintaining nuclear power plants. Considering what’s going on with the world’s energy supplies, he’s right.

Long dependent on Russian oil and gas, Germany—which earlier vowed to cut out the use of coal as a source of energy—did a recent about-face, pushing back the date of completely eliminating coal from 2030 to 2038.

Worldwide, utilities and governments are scrambling for power and running out of excuses. In the U.S., California is praised, and criticized, for its policies on sustainable energy. Recently, wind and solar proved inadequate to meet the needs of the state’s businesses and residents when brutal heat waves exacerbated the demand for air conditioning.

The New York Post recently called the state an example of what happens when a single political party tries to “impose a green-energy secular religion on their people. State officials have banned the sale of gas-powered cars by 2035, but a preview of the nightmare that could occur in the near future is happening now.” Californians are being instructed not to turn on their AC units until the temperature reaches at least 78 degrees, and forsake charging electric vehicles on Sunday afternoons and evenings.

Germany begrudgingly returning to coal (at least temporarily), California running out of sustainably generated electricity, and fears in England over a shattering 80 percent increase in household electricity bills this fall and winter—along with inflation raising prices of everything from bananas to bicycles—have many citizens less concerned about the future of green energy and 2030 carbon neutrality goals, and more concerned with sheer survival.

In Canada, comments from the government about exactly how much the carbon tax is costing the populace, and how beneficial these taxes are to the average citizen, are leading many to question if a federal election isn’t in order. Canadian citizens, normally tolerant, are showing that they too have limited tolerance for lectures, without hard data and actual answers, on how carbon taxes are the only solution to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

For centuries, mining, like oil and gas, has played a crucial role in power generation. Although coal is widely criticized as an energy source owing to its hazards to human health and the environment, it remains the second-largest fossil fuel energy source, positioned between natural gas and petroleum, in the United States.

Mined both on the surface and underground, coal remains the greatest energy source of electricity in the world, and the dominant source of per capita electricity in South Africa, India, Australia, Japan, China, and many other countries.

As the world slowly reduces its dependency on coal, the demand for other mined resources will keep increasing. Uranium, the primary fuel source in nuclear power plants, will continue to be mined, especially in top-producing Kazakhstan, Canada, and Australia.

With electric vehicles growing in popularity (with predictions of 150 million EVs on roads by 2030), the need for mining metals, such as lithium, used in rechargeable batteries, will increase. With rising demand and focus on this element, the United States Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy (EERE) was behind the National Blueprint for Lithium Batteries last year.

Developed by the Federal Consortium for Advanced Batteries, the EERE “will help guide investments to develop a domestic lithium-battery manufacturing value chain that creates equitable clean-energy manufacturing jobs in America while helping to mitigate climate change impacts.”

Goals mentioned in the blueprint include securing access to raw and refined materials, and simulating America’s “electrode cell, and pack manufacturing sectors.”

There is no doubt that moving toward cleaner, carbon-free, sustainable power is a good thing for the planet, but governments cannot continue to ignore the role mined resources like coal have played and are playing in powering the planet and most economies.

In Germany alone, major manufacturers have filed for insolvency, including toilet paper manufacturer Hakle and automotive supplier Dr. Schneider. These were not fledgling companies, but long-established businesses on the threshold of their centenaries. Dr. Schneider was founded in 1927, Hakle in 1928. The reason cited by both companies: unaffordable electricity prices.

Considering coal is a cheaper and more readily accessible fuel source than natural gas, and more predictable than wind or solar at present, Elon Musk’s remarks about the need for more oil and gas will likely only encourage mining in the months to come as the world struggles to meet its energy requirements.

The post At the Crossroads of Stability and Sustainability<p class="company">A Place for Coal in Today’s Energy Economy</p> appeared first on Resource In Focus.