Lewis Lix got a job on the oil rigs in Alberta the same way many young people do.

“I had a friend working the rigs. He talked to his tool push [someone who supervises an oil or natural gas drilling rig site], and I got a call, did an interview over the phone, and then a few days later, I was driving out to a drilling rig,” says Lewis.

Prior to this, Lewis had other plans. “When I got out of high school, I wanted to be a pilot. And that’s why I went to the drilling rigs. I figured I could make the money to get that done.”

Lewis made the money he needed, got his pilot’s licence and flew for a few years, but he no longer had sufficient time to dedicate to becoming a commercial pilot.

The rigs became his lifestyle.

“I met some of the most interesting, smart, hard working people I've ever met when I worked rigs,” he says.

But throughout his career on the rigs, Lewis dealt with shutdown after shutdown and, in time, started to regret the time spent away from his growing family.

“I just started racking my brain about something else I could do. It started out with a lot of long, exhaustive conversations with my family about what I can do with my future, and where's oil and gas going to be in the next 10 years.”

What About Alternative Energy?

Lewis had heard about a new Alternative Energy Program at NAIT and, in 2012, “I'd pulled up to NAIT to talk to somebody about how to get into this thing, and I talked myself out of it. I thought, I don't have the money. I can't support myself through school. And I threw my Prelude into reverse, and I drove away.”

Ten years later, Lewis returned to NAIT, this time to enroll. “I had enough money put away that I knew I could pay my mortgage and still eat, still feed my kids with my saved money, and pay my tuition.”

Lewis could tell renewable energy was going to be a big part of the future of energy.

“I couldn't ignore driving through residential neighbourhoods, seeing solar modules on the roof, watching the news and just hearing everything about the future of renewables.”

What About Climate Change?

“When you're an oil man, you defend oil. So I was, I wouldn't say anti-climate change—I just thought that maybe some numbers were being exaggerated,” says Lewis.

“But once you hear some really basic science and actually listen to it and pay attention, you realize, yes, we are causing climate change and something needs to be done about it,” says Lewis.

We caught up with Lewis just as he was graduating from the two-year NAIT Alternative Energy program. It’s a challenging program in which students learn about solar, wind, and the many other forms of renewable energy, plus microgrids, energy efficiency, hydrogen, and deep energy retrofits.

About 200 students have graduated from the program since it began ten years ago and they are being snapped up in a job market hungry for their expertise.

Forbes says clean energy jobs are booming and 3.1 million total energy sector jobs are aligned with net-zero aligned industries. According to the International Renewable Energy Agency there are 12.7 million jobs in renewable energy with solar being the biggest job producing and fastest growing sector.

A Drilling Rig is a Drilling Rig

During his first summer break at NAIT, Lewis got a job with a local geothermal company in Edmonton installing geoexchange systems at homes in both Edmonton and rural Alberta. People often refer to this kind of heating as geothermal, but geothermal actually refers to deep, high temperature operations that generate energy; there are only a few pilot projects in Canada.

Geoexchange is a replacement for your furnace, says Lewis. But instead of burning fossil fuels, geoexchange pulls heat out of the Earth and uses heat pumps to heat and cool homes three to four times more efficiently.

It seemed a natural fit for Lewis. Geoexchange uses drilling rigs to drill vertical holes for heat exchangers in urban yards and backhoes to dig long horizontal trenches—ideal for use in rural Alberta.

A key benefit of geoexchange and geothermal systems is that they provide heating and cooling. This is what inspired Darcy and Darren Crichton to install geothermal in their Edmonton home after temperatures reached almost 40°C in the heat dome of 2021.

We met up with Lewis on a farm near Vegreville, shortly after his graduation. He was in a long, narrow trench installing horizontal pipes for a geothermal system. His long-term goal is to design renewable energy and energy efficiency systems.

“I switched to this career in renewables because it's something that's really moving forward quickly. And it's something that I can be proud of, something that my kids can be proud of me for doing. And besides, renewables are a freight train that's not going to be stopped and I wanted to get on board.”

Changing For Climate is a series featuring everyday Edmontonians, businesses and organizations who are actively Changing for Climate—and getting us closer to our goal of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

For more information, visit edmonton.ca/ChangingForClimateSeries.