Balancing Climate Research, Advocacy, And Funding With Chris Severson-Baker, Executive Director, Pembina Institute

In the complex, high-stakes arena of environmental action, how do leaders sustain momentum when public attention shifts and funding remains a challenge? We sat down with Chris Severson-Baker, Executive Director of the Pembina Institute, a leading Canadian clean energy think tank, to explore the critical tension between deep, foundational research and the sustained, repetitive advocacy needed to drive policy change.

For decades, Pembina has shaped Canada’s energy landscape, moving from proving the viability of clean tech to actively dismantling the barriers to a net-zero economy. Chris shares his candid insights on navigating the political headwinds, the necessity of integrated fundraising—especially in a competitive philanthropic space—and the surprising discipline required to repeat a message until it finally sticks.

Whether you’re a non-profit leader, an advocate for change, or simply interested in how big-picture environmental goals translate into real-world progress, this conversation offers invaluable lessons on strategy, focus, and the art of leading with both science and conviction.

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Listen to the podcast here

 

Balancing Climate Research, Advocacy, And Funding With Chris Severson-Baker, Executive Director, Pembina Institute

We are joined by Chris Severson-Baker, Executive Director of the Pembina Institute. Chris has spent decades leading the Pembina Institute through growth, innovation, and critical environmental work. After an initial twenty-year tenure at the Institute, he took on a leadership role at the Alberta Energy Regulator before returning to lead the Institute’s industrial decarbonization efforts as Senior Director and then stepping into the role of Executive Director.

Under his leadership, the Institute continues to shape energy policy, advance sustainable solutions, and guide teams tackling some of Canada’s most complex environmental challenges. In our episode, he talks about the competitive and challenging philanthropic environment for charities in the environmental space, balancing the vital role of research and advocacy in the organization, and how to tell the difference when it is time for more research or to repeat your message over and over again. Chris is a thoughtful leader who has done exceptionally well. I am thrilled to share this conversation with you. Please enjoy my conversation with Chris Severson-Baker.

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Welcome to the show, Chris.

Thanks for having me. Glad to be here.

Defining The Pembina Institute & Its Mission

The Pembina Institute is an organization that people may remember from headlines. People may think they know what it means. I am really pleased to have you on the show to talk about the great work that you and your colleagues do. For some of our audience who may not be fully familiar, Chris, what is the Pembina Institute, and who do you serve?

The Pembina Institute is a national clean energy think tank today. Sometimes I have a hard time talking about Pembina because I have been with the organization for a very long time and have seen it go through a bunch of different stages of evolution. We are an organization of about 60 staff. We have offices in Edmonton and Calgary, Vancouver, Ottawa, and Toronto. We are primarily focused on trying to tackle the issue of climate change and support governments across Canada in their transition to a net-zero economy.

 

Essentially, as the economy grows, so do emissions. How do we get to a place where we are growing the economy, we are prospering as a nation, and emissions are not going up? In fact, they are actually going down. We are addressing climate change. We focus on the big sectors of the economy that have big emissions. The oil and gas sector, the electricity sector, other heavy industries, cement, and that sort of thing. Also, how we are using energy in our day-to-day lives. Transportation, buildings, and electrifying various activities in our lives today.

Shifting Public Attention & Climate Economics

It is a very broad scope in an area that has at times been top of the urgency list for Canadians. In recent months, other things may have snuck to the top. The headlines are about something else. How do you, as the leader of the organization, think about that shift in public attention around climate change, environmental causes being really important? I think people understand that. The urgency does not go away just because of social media posts by the president of the South. How do you think about sustaining that energy and that focus?

As an organization that has been around for 40 years, we have seen the focus on the environment and then climate change ebb and flow as time goes on. Oftentimes, what happens is that the economic concerns, more like pressing concerns in people’s day-to-day lives, pop up to the top of the priority list and push down other issues like climate change. Climate change will make its way back up into the top. It has not dropped very far right now.

People are still concerned about the climate. They are scared about what is happening from a climate perspective, but they feel like there are some other things that are really much more immediate for them right now that are really focused on their attention. The good news from the climate movement’s perspective and from the Pembina Institute’s perspective is that we have actually, during this period of time when people were really focused on climate, we had a very active federal government constantly talking about climate change.

Other countries in the world were doing the same thing. We were able to achieve some breakthroughs that we needed to achieve. Renewable energy went from being just a tiny fraction of energy production, and now it is growing rapidly. It is the fastest-growing source of energy. More than $2 trillion was invested in clean energy last year compared to $1 trillion in fossil fuels.

We have really started to see the trajectory towards non-emitting sources of energy in the economy that we need to see in order to actually have emissions peak and then start to decline. Now that renewable energy has become more economic, battery storage has become more economic, and electric vehicles have become more economic than their counterparts that burn fossil fuels, we can focus on addressing people’s economic concerns directly while reducing emissions.

It is about letting us have more EVs in Canada because they are cheaper to own and operate for Canadians. Let us address that mobility concern. Renewable energy lowers the cost of electricity on the grid, as long as you design the grid to maximize the amount of renewable energy that you can bring on.

Some of the other things that are coming next, like electrifying your house, so you are no longer burning natural gas when it comes time to replace your furnace, but you are using heat pumps, which heat and cool your house. These are things that are going to be addressed over the longer term, some of the affordability concerns that people are having while we are reducing emissions. Now it is a matter of removing a lot of the barriers to enabling those types of technologies to infiltrate our everyday lives in Canada.

There is a lot that I want to ask you about there in that answer, Chris. First of all, the importance and the urgency of action related to climate change are existential. Do you ever get frustrated with needing to couch the existential crisis of climate change with, “This is going to help you a little bit in your pocketbook?”

I feel like sometimes if we just think about it for a little bit, the costs of climate change are horrendous. We are already starting to experience it in our day-to-day lives, even in Canada, with higher insurance rates and fire season. Things that we were having to spend money on that we did not have to spend money on before. It is sending communities against floods and things like that, and then having to clean up afterwards when severe weather occurs, and that sort of thing.

It is really obvious that not acting on climate and allowing those types of impacts to continue to grow is just far too costly. That is going to really impact our ability to be a prosperous country, to have affordability. Another big concern in the world is, of course, geopolitical stability. There are so many people on this planet who are barely making it.

Not acting on climate change and allowing those impacts to keep growing is far too costly. It will significantly affect our ability to remain a prosperous and affordable country. Share on X

They are barely able to feed their families, to access drinking water, avoid disease, and so on. They are just barely making it, and layering on these climate impacts is going to make it impossible for them to survive where they are. They are going to get up and move. That is going to create a lot of instability in the world, and that imposes a huge cost on us as well.

When we are wringing our hands over our relatively small cost to such a rich country, it is a bit frustrating. The reality is people are, some of the things that are really up in their face are rising energy bills and other types of things. It is a valid concern that we absolutely must address and can. I think we have missed the significance of that a little bit over the last several years, and it is coming back to haunt us right now.

The Evolution Of Pembina’s Strategy: From Proving Feasibility To Removing Barriers

One of the other things you said that I think is a really important perspective shift and relevant to leaders across the social profit sector is that, rather than raising the alarm or raising the flag, you describe the work of you and your colleagues as helping to remove the barriers to the energy transition.

Can you talk a little bit about that shift in thinking, rather than saying, “Here is something we need to do that you may not know about,” which is energy transition, your organization, Rick Smith at the Climate Institute, also talking very much about the inevitability of this transition. What was it like to shift in perspective to being, instead of trying to sell it, just being focused on removing the barriers to accelerate progress?

It feels fairly recent. As an organization, initially, we were focused on trying, we are one of the first organizations in Canada to identify climate change as something that we work on, dedicating our staff resources to tackling. There was no climate policy, and there was no awareness, really, of the problem early on. You had to come at it indirectly. We were reducing air emissions and, in the process, reducing a bunch of the greenhouse gas emissions that were also going up.

Trying to address the overall footprint of some activities, like the oil and gas industry, which would also have the impact of reducing the carbon footprint of that industry. We moved into a phase of having to just prove that we were not, fossil fuels were literally involved in every aspect of our life, and still are to a large degree. Any kind of economic growth resulted in more emissions. How do you start to just prove that you can generate electricity with wind power in Alberta, or you can prove that solar panels actually make sense?

Solar is something that is going to be a part of the energy mix in the future and so on. That electric vehicles will have a role to play, and so on. We had to just sort of prove that these ideas actually made sense in the Canadian context and overcame a lot of resistance to those ideas. We had to prove that it could be done economically.

How do we create the right policy environment to attract a certain amount of investment so that you can actually demonstrate that this is a real thing, so that you can start to attract other investment into that? Fairly quickly now, we are in a stage, and this is largely because of what’s happening elsewhere in the world. China and other countries have actually made it a focus of their whole economic strategy to win on so-called clean technologies.

Through their efforts, they really driven down the cost of these technologies. We have proven it in Canada, and the cost is coming down. Just in the last couple of years, now it is deployment, now it is scaling, it is eliminating barriers. It is kind of fun work. That nerdy work where you have to go deep into the problem to really understand it.

You work with people in industry and government at a technical level on understanding these problems and identifying solutions, but they are all over the place. The grid was established in a way that was very conservative. It was based on the very predictable growth of demand over time. It did not anticipate a massive overhaul.

It replaced a bunch of sources with new sources or even the amount of electrification that is happening, where all of a sudden things like cars and buildings and things that the system never contemplated would be using electricity are suddenly coming onto the grid very quickly. That is a huge barrier.

There are all these other barriers around public acceptance and new things that are happening in their communities on adjacent land, and so on. There is resistance from the incumbent sectors. There are some very diplomatic ways of saying that. There are a lot of well-established industries that are making significant profits. They have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo, and they are not quiet about it.

They are spending money to lobby all different levels of government across the country to put out advertising campaigns and show up in people’s social media, and that sort of thing. That is a significant barrier as well. Meanwhile, the so-called clean economy players that are coming in are not doing that. They do not have those resources. They do not even think that way yet.

Balancing Deep Research With Consistent Advocacy Messaging

There is a lot of work in identifying these barriers and then systematically approaching the research and the advocacy to remove those barriers. I want to put that together with something else you said about who works at Pembina. You said nerdy. I will say the brainiacs that work there, the collection of the smartest kids in class that you have at the Pembina Institute. As the leader, how do you balance the need to go deep to understand with the necessary simplicity of a message that relates to advocates to advocate for that work? How do you show up? Is it Tuesday is research, Wednesday is advocacy, or is there another way you think about it?

For some of our staff, of course, it feels like Wednesday was for research, and then this thing happened in the news, and now we react with media, and we are changing our plans for the rest of the quarter because we did not see that coming. There is definitely an hour-by-hour, day-to-day tension that happens within the organization. The way I think about it is that our advocacy work is informed by some fairly deep research and also an understanding of industry and how the system works.

We look for ways that we can build that base in a particular area that we want to be an advocate in at the beginning of the process of entering into that space. We call that the foundational piece of the project or whatever it is that we feel is necessary for us to really understand that area, and then sort of step into that area. We do a lot of that when we are at the stage of feeling like we just really need to define the problem before we can really talk about solutions or get any real traction with solutions.

We need to define the problem before we can truly talk about solutions or gain any real traction with them. Share on X

It is sort of natural for us to focus more on research, relationship building, and building a bit of a network of people that we think we want to work with in a particular area before we get into really identifying what the solutions to that problem might be that we are researching. It is an iterative process of starting to persuade decision makers that the problem is something that they need to address, that there are ways that they can address it in a realistic way, things that are going to meet their goals and not totally clash with their political agendas.

It is a fine balance of trying to maintain the ratio between chasing different ideas that we would like to research. Like, “Would it not be great if we had a model that could predict what is going to happen if this policy gets implemented or that policy gets implemented?” What is happening in the rest of the world? Can we get a whole bunch of data on this sort of thing and sort of do a jurisdictional analysis?

There are always all these ideas that keep coming up when we try to figure out what we really need, plus that foundational research that we did at the outset, to keep making the case for the solutions or to keep strengthening the argument around those solutions. Frankly, we are trying to get better at it. We are constantly getting feedback from folks in governments. Like, “We just need you to keep saying the same stuff over and over and over again, rather than doing a whole bunch of new research.”

We always have to remind ourselves, it is like, yeah, there are always people in government moving in and out of those roles and ministers’ offices and even within the departments as well who have not seen the last report or the various media stories over the last six months. We have to keep recycling that and keep reusing that as we go along, as well as peppering in new stuff that addresses the concerns or the questions that are coming up.

That is intuitive when you say that. If you are leading organizational change or societal change as you and your colleagues are doing, if you are the leaders of that change, you are going to be really tired of the messages long before the people you are trying to influence start to repeat them back to you.

It can be a challenge to stick to the message on a consistent basis. I would imagine it is even more challenging in an environment of, again, those smartest kids, those people who are really good at building that model and asking that question and pulling that data together to go deeper, to prove the point even more than it is.

You came to the executive director role from the organization. You know that instinct that your colleagues may have. How do you think about when we know enough, it is time to go, or it is time to just keep repeating this, or as much as we want to evolve the messaging, we need to repeat it again? How do you sustain or maintain that discipline?

Frankly, the latest way that I have been doing that as the executive director has been reporting back from the field. Going out to various other stakeholders and partners that we are working with, but mostly focusing on the government, and relaying back what their questions are and what their needs are. Oftentimes it is, we need more of the repetition. We need more reinforcement of this messaging over a sustained period of time. People genuinely feel ill if they are repeating themselves. “We have already done that. We have already said that.” What is new about this statement that we are putting out on this blog that we are writing?

Nothing is new. It is the same thing. We are repeating ourselves. That is the goal.

We are instilling this idea within the organization over time, that is the way. That foundational research is important, keeping it current and relevant to what is happening in the world today is important, and repetition is important. Maybe that one new twist on that piece of work that we have done is really important. That is the research part of this thing that we are doing.

Really, it is the repetition and being attentive to the feedback that we are getting that we really need to focus more on. If we ever lose our foundation of actually doing something about the topic that we are talking about, and we are not actually staying in touch with folks in the industry, the actual folks that are impacted by that policy or the regulations or what we are proposing, we will lose that thing that makes Pembina Institute a valuable advisor to government.

It is such a challenging space. There is the research, there is the advocacy, which pulls you into fundamentally political conversations. The research is what keeps you from being just a simple political actor in that. You are advocating from a position of science and the work that you are doing. How do you think about staying above, out of the political fray, because you are dealing with issues that are often highly politicized?

We recognize that we often remind ourselves that we are trying to be very strategic. We are trying to be really laser-focused on every hour of our days or every dollar that we are spending going towards our mission or achieving the goals that we have laid out in our strategic plan for the year. Unlike other entities in society, we have very little power over what actually happens. You cannot just steamroll to the finish line.

A big government agency at the federal level or at a provincial level can say, “Here is our strategy,” and we are just going to power through all the things that come up and achieve that goal. Same thing with a major corporation. The Pembina Institute is like this little tiny watercraft bouncing around in the choppy waters. We’ve got to keep reacting to all the changes in the weather, the wind, and the waves, and everything.

 

We figure out day to day how to chart our course towards that. That is always top of mind. When we were designing our strategies and our tactics, we were always thinking about how we remain flexible to changes that we cannot anticipate. Oftentimes, that change is political change. You end up with maybe the party changes direction with its major focus, or you have an election, and one government is out, and another one is coming in, and all of a sudden, the things that you are working on are part of that election and therefore part of a new mandate.

We want to make sure that we are able to work with everybody in the political spectrum. We are making connections and relationships. More and more these days, we are talking about how to make policy, especially climate policy, durable. That has been one of the biggest challenges in Canada, especially.

We do not see this in every other country in the world, thankfully, but in Canada, the climate has become one of those things that really differentiates one party from another. We are seeing wholesale changes being proposed or actually carried out when there is an election, which is devastating for our economy, our international reputation around issues like climate change, and our ability to address some of those key climate and environment issues.

Funding Model & Financial Diversity

I want to pivot the conversation a little bit because one of the things that we have not touched on is that Pembina is a charity. You raise money. Through our work here at The Discovery Group, we work with a lot of organizations that are seeking to raise more money, whether it is for a particular campaign or just to raise more money for their work on an ongoing basis. One of the truisms of raising money in the environmental space is that it is a really hard place to raise money.

Canadians have not yet found the generosity button to any significant degree when it comes to environmental work and environmental charities. You have a very distinct role in that spectrum of environmental organizations in the country. How do you approach the idea of raising money to sustain and validate the work that you and your colleagues are doing?

One of the things that is important to point out when answering that question is that the organization started off 40-odd years ago without some kind of a big injection of money from a foundation, a wealthy individual, or some government grant that got it going. It started off as a group of citizens who were reacting to a major industrial accident that happened in their area. This was an oil town called Drayton Valley.

Forestry, agriculture, and mostly oil and gas. This industrial incident, called the Lodgepole blowout, where sour gas blew out of control for a couple of months, and a couple of workers were killed in the process of trying to suppress the well. It impacted such a big area, especially the local area. This group decided that there needed to be some kind of watchdog entity in this area to keep tabs on what was happening in order to make sure that things were being done safely and to protect human health and the environment.

The individuals who formed that organization happened to have some very big ambitions. They were interested in world peace, and they were interested soon after the organization started in tackling some of the biggest issues that were affecting the planet. Climate was one of those things that people did not know a lot about, but was clearly a major concern. Since they did not have access to a lot of resources to focus on those types of topics, they needed to do fee-for-service work in order to pay the bills.

They used the spare time that was left in the day after doing that fee-for-service work to do the policy advocacy type paperwork of the organization. We had some hardworking individuals who started the organization and worked there, where they worked long days cranking away on the consulting projects, and then working into the evening on the advocacy work. They built the foundation of the organization.

For many years, the organization did not really have access to contributions from major individual donors, charitable foundations, or government grants. Eventually, the organization learned how to make those appeals and track those sources of funding. It relies largely on charitable donations from other like-minded foundations and major donors. It also still has that ethic around the fee-for-service work. We do not have a consulting arm anymore, as we did for many years before we became a charity, but we have that approach, responding to RFPs and working on grants with the government that are more consulting-like than environmental charity-type grants.

It opens up another avenue. You have both avenues of funding, so you are not as reliant on a single one.

There is a lot of diversity in our funding. Every year, we have to make our budget from scratch. We do not have an endowment. We do not have anchor funding or operating grants or anything like that. What we do have is a track record of working with a lot of individual donors, charities, and others. We have put on a couple of well-liked events during the year. We have cobbled together the budget that way.

What percentage of your time do you spend thinking about or acting on that cobbling together, that bringing together all those sources of revenue?

Good question. In one way or another, it is at least a quarter of my time. The way we are thinking about our work is that we are constantly executing on the project for which we have funding. While we are doing that, we are always thinking about how we are communicating with the decision-maker who ultimately has the power to make the policy change that we are advocating for.

Sometimes it is just keeping them in the loop, sometimes it is actually asking for meetings to talk very specifically about what we would like them to do and why. As we are doing that, we are reflecting on how we are doing, what kind of impact we are having, and trying to communicate that back to our funders.

As much as possible, these activities overlap with each other. The communication with our funders is building support from our funders to continue to do the work that we are doing. It is a part of carrying out the work and communicating about what we are advocating for the government to do. It is all one big activity.

It is easier to keep it straight if it is integrated rather than sequential, I would imagine. Chris, I really appreciate the thoughtfulness and the care you have given to walking us through and helping explain the work of Pembina Institute and the really vital role that you and your colleagues play. What are you looking forward to?

There are a couple of things. I am really excited to see what happens this year in terms of some of the trends that we have been seeing in EV uptake in the world, renewable energy uptake in the world, and battery storage. I am excited to see some more awareness at the provincial level about how we can do similar types of things in Canada to achieve what provinces are trying to achieve in terms of growing the supply of electricity, attracting more investment to grow the economy, and addressing affordability concerns.

It is going to be really interesting to watch that play out. Of course, we want to be involved in helping to highlight that trend that is happening in Canada to those policymakers and help overcome the barriers that are in the way. That is one thing that I am really optimistic about. I am looking forward to seeing how Canada we are recording this podcast fairly soon after the big Davos speech that Arnie gave, and this idea of how the middle powers in this world can work together on their values and actually continue to make progress on things like climate change.

I am looking forward to working with others to make sure that addressing global climate change is one of the priorities that Canada and other middle powers elevate. Figure out what that actually means, working together? How do we actually express that value? When do we come to each other’s aid in continuing to make progress on climate? Ultimately, how do we make sure that the Canadian economy is prospering as we continue to make progress towards net zero?

Chris, I so appreciate you making time to be on the show to share some insights into the work of Pembina Institute. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much. You are right, that was fast. I had fun.

 

Important Links

• Chris Severson-Baker on LinkedIn
• Pembina Institute
• Pembina Institute on YouTube
• Pembina Institute on Facebook
• Climate Institute