Paul Renaud:
Paul Renaud is a distinguished member the International Maple Syrup Institute (IMSI), member of the Ontario Maple Syrup Producers Association (OMSPA), and the Ontario Woodlot Association (OWA). Mr. Renaud has a BSc (Honours First Class) from Queen’s University and a Certificate in Circular Economy & Sustainability Strategies from Cambridge University. He is also certified in the application of ISO 14064-1 for GHG Inventory and Carbon Footprint by the Canadian Standards Association.
Paul has hands-on experience in sustainable agriculture as North America’s first provably carbon neutral maple syrup producer. He is active in assisting other maple syrup producers achieve the same via measurement and modelling of their carbon footprint. He was the first to establish whether a maple syrup producer was provably sustainable by applying ISO 14064 conformant practices for all 3 scopes of emissions based on producer activity data and established emission factors. and then deducting carbon removals based on assessing and estimating the annual growth of the biomass and contribution to soil carbon within the maple forest stand.
Currently, over 60,000 maple taps in Ontario are provably climate neutral, or better, as the result of his industry engagement, knowledge sharing, measurement, and modelling activities.
Mr. Renaud has extended his pioneering work in maple syrup into other agricultural sectors, including both crop & livestock producing systems: Leading the carbon footprint calculation and modelling for the OWA’s agroforestry initiative (a $2.8 M funded project by Agriculture and Agrifood Canada -AFFC), he provided top-down modelling of the sequestration benefits of agroforestry best practices. These were peer reviewed and accepted by the University of Guelph, University of Toronto, and by AAFC scientists.
He was the first to conduct bottom-up whole-farm carbon footprint assessment & modelling for Canadian farms, encompassing both CO2 emissions and removals due to crop & livestock production (based on IPCC compliant Tier 2 calculations for CO2 / CH4 / N2O emissions) and including all 3 Scopes of whole-farm activity emissions both within and crossing the farm gate boundary (direct and indirect fuel and energy consumption, upstream agrochemicals, feed production, farm product transportation to market, etc.).
Paul's farm-level research revealed substantial disconnects between verifiable actual on-farm practices versus gross assumptions regarding the sustainability of Canadian agriculture by the Canadian departments of Agriculture & Agrifood and of Environment & Climate Change — triggering improvement in the uncertainties in national GHG accounting practices. He has been invited to work with the Canadian Agrifood Policy Initiative to help resolve those disconnects, and to improve the quality of national benchmarking for the sustainability of agriculture in Canada.
Paul is currently authoring a paper in conjunction with Guelph University’s agroforestry department on the value delivered by insitu agroforestry in Canadian agriculture.
Sustainability of Maple Syrup Production:
Paul is the climate advisor on the IMSI’s Climate Change and Environment Committee. As Chair of the OMSPA Climate Change committee, he developed the science-based strategic plan for climate adaptation and mitigation for Ontario’s maple syrup industry. As a member of OMSPA’s Government Relations Committee focusing on climate-related government policy development, he is currently working to help implement that strategic plan.
He is an advisor to the Centre de Recherche ACER’s climate research project in Quebec, the largest maple syrup producing region in the world. He is also advising on climate-related matters with Cornell University’s maple research forests as well as the Proctor Maple Research Lab at the University of Vermont. He is also a guest lecturer on the climate impact on maple syrup at University of New Brunswick’s forestry department.
Paul has led outreach discussions with maple syrup producers about climate change in person, and online, across the maple syrup producing regions of Ontario, Quebec, New York, and Vermont. His articles on climate neutral maple syrup production have been published in the OWA Woodlander, New York Forest Owner, and in the North American Maple Syrup Digest. He is also widely quoted in the Canadian media on how climate change is impacting the maple syrup industry.
Experience Working in Complex Environments:
Prior to his activities in food sustainability, Mr. Renaud was an executive in the high technology industry working for 20 years as an executive advisor on mission-critical digital transformation for major corporations in Canada, USA, UK, Gulf States, and Bermuda spanning the telecommunications, software products, banking, transportation, e-commerce sectors. This included leading a $2.5 Billion digital transformation on-time and on-budget against an immovable regulatory deadline in the US rail transportation sector. In that capacity he reported to the firm’s executive committee as well as the Board of Directors.
As VP Product R&D for 10 years in the telecommunications (Bell Northern Research) and the enterprise software industry (Cognos / IBM). His products generated over $1 Billion in value to those firms.
He was Chief Architect leading complex system integration projects, each valued at over $100 M in Canada, USA, UK, and Switzerland.
Mr. Renaud holds 3 patents in computer modelling and is currently writing a book on sustainable transition. He previously authored a textbook in the use of distributed computing that was translated in 4 languages and widely used as a textbook in China, Europe, and North America.