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Ali Husnain approaches his job as Sustainability Coordinator for St. John’s, Newfoundland, with a sense of urgency he learned growing up in Pakistan, where air pollution frequently shuts down whole cities.
Ali Husnain is an electrical engineer by training. Growing up in Pakistan, he frequently moved as his father pursued his own work as an engineer. The young Husnain became acutely aware of the dangerous air pollution levels across his country that regularly shut down businesses, roads, and schools. At the same time, he saw a nation during an energy crisis frantically working to upgrade an electricity grid that suffered rolling blackouts. After graduating, Husnain worked on renewable energy solutions for a non-profit organization in Pakistan. When he came to Memorial University in Newfoundland to further research renewable energy solutions for his home country, he discovered a Canadian city in need of similar transitions. He decided to stay, and now, it’s his green job to coordinate the sustainable retrofit of St. John’s.
Darcy Rhyno: Describe your job as Sustainability Coordinator.
Ali Husnain: My job is to support all municipal departments and the community on the pathway to achieve our climate change target — net zero by 2050.
DR: How are you working to achieve that goal?
AH: Retrofitting 17 city facilities — admin buildings, community centre, water and wastewater treatment plants. We’re retrofitting 101 of 476 affordable housing units [and another 65 more soon]. We build a prefabricated panel [a wall reinforcement for increasing the building’s insulation] and slap it on the outside of the house. We’re also air sealing and switching baseboard heaters with high efficiency heat pumps. We’re targeting over 50 percent energy and greenhouse gas reductions.
DR: Do the tenants pay anything toward the retrofits?
AH: No. Tenants pay the utility bill in 75 out of 101 units. In that case, they will yield benefits. In 26 of the units, the city pays the bill, and we’ll see our operational costs go down.
DR: What do you think is important about working locally on specific projects like this to tackle global climate change?
AH: My answer to that is, how else would you do it? The infrastructure is located in towns and cities, so there is no other way to achieve our climate change targets. I understand the urge to do it on a bigger scale, but even starting with one unit could prove to people that this is doable. Homeowners, developers, real estate companies would follow suit, hopefully.
DR: In your job, beyond reducing the impact of buildings, what issues intersect with climate?
AH: We have prioritized transportation as number one, then buildings number two. Our team is electrifying the public transit fleet and studying the electrification of our municipal fleet. On the community side, we put in 26 EV chargers, and we’re en route for 26 more.
DR: Are you aware of other municipal jobs in cities around the world similar to yours? For example, places like Athens, Melbourne, and Miami have heat officers responsible for mitigating the effects of climate change driven heat waves.
AH: Absolutely. ICLEI Canada [International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives] put together a cohort of municipalities. People working on climate change come together to seek solutions for common problems. I see cities as an inspiration, more so than one person in their job. Vancouver is doing a great job. Halifax is leaps ahead of us. I'm in electrical engineering by trade. There’s stuff that someone like me would never understand — retrofits, transportation, planning. Organizations like ICLEI allow us to still undertake that work while not having specific people in our team.
People working on climate change come together to seek solutions for common problems. I see cities as an inspiration, more so than one person in their job.
– Ali Husnain, Sustainability Coordinator for St. John’s, Newfoundland
DR: It seems you’re a quick study and doing a great job. Perhaps that’s why Corporate Knights named you one of the top 30 Canadians under 30 leading green initiatives. How does that feel?
AH: I have mixed feelings. I think one of them is a policy advisor for [Canadian Prime Minister] Justin Trudeau. So, I felt maybe I don’t deserve to be there. But then there were not a lot of people doing things locally, taking concrete climate change action. There needs to be more of that. Policy work is absolutely essential, but I also think people need to get into the nitty-gritty of climate change work.
DR: Your experience growing up in Pakistan seems to add urgency to your work.
AH: Living every day with temperatures of 42°C (nearly 108℉) was the reality. People in Canada and the US cannot fathom shutting down the whole economy. I definitely see Canada as a leader, but we are already heading down that path. In Atlantic Canada, coastal communities were flooded, sea level is rising. Cities like Toronto have a ton of traffic. People here are driving big diesel guzzlers just to get to work. If they went to Pakistan or a country where climate change impacts are more real, they could see that reality a lot clearer. So, I think it’s people like me who have these perspectives who could drive this change with more enthusiasm.
DR: You’ve summarized your approach to tackling climate change in a beautiful phrase — “drop by drop makes the ocean,” meaning lots of individuals working on green programs at the local level.
AH: I think it needs to be done in every community, every municipality, and I see myself playing that role.
