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Competition Encourages Energy Literacy — and Creativity

By April 7, 2021 No Comments

Inspiring critical thinking about energy and encouraging energy literacy have always been top priorities for Energyphile. So Peter and Energyphile were honored to partner with Ivey Energy Policy and Management Centre for our second annual Energyphile story competition.

Open to all Ivey Business School students, the competition tasks students with writing a short story inspired by an Energyphile object. This year’s inspiration was the 1692 tallow chandlers’ petition to London politicians.

Michael Sawers is this year’s winner. Peter was particularly impressed with Michael’s ability to transport the reader to 17th-century England, noting, “His story’s point of view — a civic councillor having to make a tough societal decision about technological choice — is representative of the difficult policy decisions required by government officials today.”

For more information about the competition and winners, check out Ivey’s article 17th-century stories provide answer to today’s energy issues.

The subject of this year’s story competition was this 1692 petition from the Energyphile collection. With their livelihoods threatened by convex lenses and cleaner-burning whale oil, candlemakers argued “against setting up and establishing the Lamp-Lights of any sort in this City…” They were unsuccessful.

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