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Our Mission

EMH's mission is to support timely & evidence-based policymaking toward a net zero economy by bringing together public policy and energy modelling communities as maintaining and providing access to a comprehensive suite of robust and open-source resources and modelling tools. 

EMH will be an independent modelling, data centre of reference and a dynamic community of practices helping Canadian energy policymakers chart an effective pathway to a decarbonised energy system.

Our Vision

Our Values and Core Principles

Policy Relevance

We support policy development and help translate insight from the results of Canadian electricity system models into actionable advice. Our goal is also to help the community of modellers in providing timely communication of insights on the implications of energy transition planning to all levels of government and other stakeholders and to create sustained linkages between modellers and policymakers. 

Collaboration and co-creation 

We share ideas, elevate work, and seek peer contributions and co-creation via online platforms and open-source energy models.  We are also putting Canadian data and modelling expertise at the forefront of the national energy system planning discourse and enabling the interconnection of models to obtain the most comprehensive, cross-sector, techno-economic analysis possible.  

Transparency, inclusivity, and objectivity 

We publish data, models, and results that are approachable, accessible and transparent and involve all stakeholders in the dialogue. We are a source of non-partisan evidence and insight on the electricity system and the net-zero energy transition. 

Our Origin

The EMH follows on from the Energy Modelling Initiative.

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The EMH was initiated by Natural Resources Canada which announced, on May 25th 2022, an investment of nearly $5 million for the Institut de l’énergie Trottier at Polytechnique Montréal and the partner organizations, the Institute for Integrated Energy Systems at University of Victoria and the School of Public Policy at University of Calgary, to establish the Energy Modelling Hub to help realize a decarbonized energy system for Canada.

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Our Team

Executive Committee Members

Edouard Clement

Executive director - 

Energy Modelling Hub

An engineer by training, Edouard Clement holds both a Bachelor’s and Master’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering and Aeronautics from Polytechnique Montréal. Formerly a Research Associate at the ETS, he also worked for the hydro division of General Electric, before joining, in 2005, Ecole Polytechnique research centre on Life Cycle Assessment (CIRAIG), where he participated and managed hundred of LCA projects. Edouard has nearly 20 years’ experience in management of organizations, as well as in data-driven strategic social and environmental responsibility consulting. He co-founded in 2009 the Canadian branch of the life cycle assessment consultancy Quantis and served as vice-president of corporate responsibility services at Groupe AGÉCO. He was also an entrepreneur-in-residence and the director of the innovation hubs at an impact start-up accelerator before cofounding in 2019 Novisto, an ESG data management software developer. He is a recognized expert in the field of life cycle assessment, GHG accounting, ESG data management and ecodesign.

Louis Beaumier

Executive director - 

Institut de l'énergie Trottier

Louis Beaumier is the Executive Director of the Institut de l’énergie Trottier (IET) at Polytechnique Montréal since its inception. An electrical engineer by training, he worked for almost two decades in the software industry where he has been involved in various application domains, ranging from distributed immersive simulation systems to speech recognition interfaces. The experience he has acquired over the years in his various positions – from developer to R&D director – lead him to see that a misunderstood problem, like a poorly presented solution, is often the main source of difficulties in a project. After many years in product management, where he acted on both understanding the need and presenting the solution, came the opportunity to join the IET at his alma mater, adding the sense of engagement that was missing from his previous duties. He has since been actively involved at expanding IET’s dissemination of knowledge mission stream, by organizing workshops and conferences, writing reports, or fostering partnership and collaboration. 

Madeleine Mc Pherson

Assistant professor - University of Victoria

Madeleine McPherson is an Assistant Professor in the department of Civil Engineering at the University of Victoria and the principal investigator of the Sustainable Energy Systems Integration & Transitions (SESIT) Group. McPherson and her team is developing an integrated modelling framework to explore electrification and energy systems integration for deep decarbonization. As Executive Member of the Energy Modelling Initiative, she co-led efforts to convene a national dialog between modelers and stakeholders around decarbonizing Canada’s energy system. Prior to joining the University of Victoria, she was a postdoctoral researcher at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) where she published numerous papers on topics related to energy systems modelling, including variable renewable energy integration, storage remuneration and policy, and demand response implementation. 

Normand Mousseau

Professor - University of Montréal

Normand Mousseau is Professor of physics at Université de Montréal and, since 2016, Scientific director of the Institut de l’énergie Trottier (IET) at Polytechnique Montréal. Over the years, he has created a number of organisations that play a major role in science and evidence-based action. Between 2010 and 2013, Normand Mousseau has led the creation of Calcul Québec, which operates the supercomputing services and facilities for most universities in Québec as part of Compute Canada. In 2013-2014, he served as co-chair of Québec’s touring Commission sur les enjeux énergétiques du Québec that prepared the ground for Québec’s energy policy. He was co-proposer of the winning proposal that created the Canadian Institute for Climate Choice and he is a board member of this institute. He is co-founder of the Transition Accelerator and has co-led the Energy modelling initiative. These evidence-based organisations focus on engaging a wide-range of stakeholders and interested parties to advance various issues. 

Blake Shaffer

Assistant professor - University of Calgary

Blake Shaffer is an Assistant Professor in the department of economics and School of Public Policy at the University of Calgary where he teaches courses on electricity markets and policy, energy transitions, and strategic environmental planning for energy organizations. Prior to academia, he had a 15 year career in energy trading, holding senior positions at Powerex (BC Hydro), Lehman Brothers, Barclays Capital, and Transalta Corporation. He has advised several provincial governments and federal agencies in matters related to energy policy. His research has been published in the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Public Policy, Energy Economics, and the Energy Journal. He is a frequent contributor to public discourse, with his popular writing appearing in the Globe and Mail, CBC, Maclean’s, The Conversation, and other media outlets. 

Team Members

Jacob Monroe, Ph.D.

Research Analyst - Energy Modelling Hub

Jacob completed his B.Sc. in Environmental Engineering and Ph.D. in Civil Engineering at North Carolina State University in the United States in 2016 and 2020, respectively. His Ph.D. dissertation was on simulating evolution of low-voltage electric grids with distributed energy technology adoption using agent-based modelling techniques. His dissertation was funded by the United States National Science Foundation through the Graduate Research Fellowship Program.

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Jacob’s research applies sociotechnical modelling techniques to simulate water and energy networks as complex adaptive systems. His work has developed an array of agent-based modelling frameworks to analyze critical infrastructure protection, ecotourism, solar PV technology diffusion, decentralized water systems, and peer-to-peer energy markets. He is currently a Research Analyst at the Institute and performs energy system modelling and optimization research to analyze electrification and decarbonization pathways for the Canadian economy.

Josée Provençal, Ph.D.

Mobilisation & Liaison Coordinator - Energy Modelling Hub

Josée Provençal holds a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Ottawa, specialising in energy. She was a post-doctoral fellow at the Montreal Climate Lab of the Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique (INRS), working with the City of Montreal and the Ouranos research consortium on urban adaptation to climate change. She has more than ten years of experience in the energy industry in Canada and internationally. She established a knowledge management platform at the Quebec Association for Energy Efficiency (AQME), advised international clients on their strategic positioning at her company AETOS Energy, Environment, and influenced public decision-makers to accelerate the energy transition as a senior analyst at the Quebec Association for the Production of Renewable Energy (AQPER). 

She is active in two research groups, Polémos, an independent research group on degrowth, and the Observatoire de la post-croissance et la décroissance (OPCD), where she researches the political economy of energy, energy sufficiency, and the social relations that structure our energy consumption.

Advisory Board

The EMH can count on a dedicated Advisory Board, composed of high-level stakeholders from academia, governmental agencies and the private sector. The Advisory Board defines the strategic position of EMH, establishes its general direction, and adopts consequent yearly work plans to be executed by the EMH staff. 

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