Cascade Institute
 | The topic of this article may not meet Wikitia's general notability guideline. |
| Formation | April 2020 |
|---|---|
| Founder | Thomas Homer-Dixon |
| Type | Research institute |
| Headquarters | Royal Roads University, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada |
Director | Thomas Homer-Dixon |
| Affiliations | Royal Roads University |
| Website | cascadeinstitute |
The Cascade Institute is a Canadian research centre based at Royal Roads University in Victoria, British Columbia. It was founded in 2020 by the political scientist and author Thomas Homer-Dixon to study how humanity's converging environmental, economic, political, technological and health crises interact—a phenomenon its researchers describe as the "polycrisis".[1][2] The institute aims to identify "high-leverage intervention points" that could interrupt harmful cascades and trigger beneficial ones, and it runs research programs on the polycrisis and on ultradeep geothermal energy.[2][3]
History
The Cascade Institute was announced at Royal Roads University in April 2020 by the university's president, Philip Steenkamp, with Thomas Homer-Dixon as its director.[1] Homer-Dixon, who had previously held a research chair at the University of Waterloo, said the institute's purpose was "to find ways of reducing the impacts of harmful tipping events and create more positive tipping events that push us in the right direction in our society and globally."[1] The institute launched during the COVID-19 pandemic, which Homer-Dixon characterized as a global "tipping" moment.[1]At launch, Royal Roads said it planned to operate the institute for about a decade and to staff it with roughly 20 to 25 people across several research teams, drawing on post-doctoral researchers and graduate students.[4] The institute also established an advisory board of researchers specializing in complexity science.[1]
Research
Polycrisis
A central focus of the institute is the concept of the global polycrisis. In January 2024, an international team led by Cascade Institute researchers published the peer-reviewed paper "Global Polycrisis: The Causal Mechanisms of Crisis Entanglement" in the Cambridge University Press journal Global Sustainability.[5] The work, co-authored with researchers at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and the Research Institute for Sustainability, defined a global polycrisis as occurring "when crises in multiple systems interact in ways that greatly magnify their threat to humanity's well-being," and identified five global systems undergoing rapid change: the environmental, energy, international-security, economic and information systems.[5] Lead author Michael Lawrence argued that contemporary crises "lack single causes and thus have no simple solutions."[5]The institute operates the website polycrisis.org as a hub for research on the topic and is developing an analytical framework and a "Polycrisis Core Model," a systems-mapping tool intended to explore plausible global futures to 2040.[2][6]
Ultradeep geothermal
The Cascade Institute also runs a research program on ultradeep geothermal power—geothermal systems at depths greater than five kilometres—which it has identified as a potential high-leverage intervention for decarbonization.[3] The program received CAD $3 million in funding from three philanthropic funders for what was described as a first-of-its-kind Canadian ultradeep geothermal research effort.[3]In August 2024, the institute published an "Ultradeep Geothermal Research and Action Roadmap" aimed at policymakers, developers and investors. According to the roadmap, tapping just one percent of Canada's ultradeep geothermal resource could conservatively generate 77 GW of power—equivalent to about half of Canada's installed generating capacity in 2021—and it proposed a roughly CAD $550 million program of linked test sites to close technology gaps.[3] In reporting for Canada's National Observer in 2025, journalist Kate Lunau noted the institute's calculation that geothermal costs could fall from CAD $85–145 per megawatt-hour toward as low as $33 per megawatt-hour.[7]
In September 2025, the Cascade Institute convened a Geothermal Accelerator Conference in Ottawa that brought together representatives of industry, government, Indigenous organizations and civil society; the gathering produced a declaration of intent, signed by 23 companies and organizations, to form a Canadian Deep Geothermal Coalition and to present a national deep-geothermal roadmap at the World Geothermal Congress in Calgary in 2026.[8] At that congress, in June 2026, the institute and the geoscience software firm Seequent announced a partnership to build a "Canadian Thermal Model" mapping the country's deep heat resources, working with partners including Simon Fraser University and the Geological Survey of Canada.[9]
Reception
The institute and its director have been cited in national and international media discussions of interconnected global risk. In a 2025 feature, The Guardian profiled the institute's work and Homer-Dixon's view that "you've got to get the diagnosis right before you can go to the prescription."[2] Writing in the Canadian outlet rabble.ca in 2026, environmentalist David Suzuki referenced the Cascade Institute and quoted Homer-Dixon's description of the polycrisis as a "system disequilibrium" that, while severe, is "resolvable" through major changes in how societies operate.[10] The polycrisis concept the institute promotes has also drawn criticism; the historian Niall Ferguson has described it as "just history happening," and the political scientist Daniel Drezner has questioned whether the negative feedback effects its proponents assume actually exist.[2]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 "B.C. university launches institute to study effects of global 'tipping events' like COVID-19 pandemic". CBC News. 2020-04-21. Retrieved 2026-06-11.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 Cantor, Matthew (2025-03-06). "Are we living through a 'polycrisis' or is it 'just history happening'?". The Guardian. Retrieved 2026-06-11.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 Cariaga, Carlo (2024-08-21). "Cascade Institute publishes roadmap for ultradeep geothermal power in Canada". ThinkGeoEnergy. Retrieved 2026-06-11.
- ↑ "Cascade Institute launched at Royal Roads". Royal Roads University / Goldstream Gazette (Black Press). 2020. Retrieved 2026-06-11.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 "Global collaboration of scientists needed to solve polycrisis, say researchers". Phys.org. Cambridge University Press. 2024-01-23. Retrieved 2026-06-11. See also: Michael Lawrence et al., "Global Polycrisis: The Causal Mechanisms of Crisis Entanglement," Global Sustainability (2024). doi:10.1017/sus.2024.1
- ↑ "Polycrisis Core Model". Cascade Institute. Retrieved 2026-06-11.
- ↑ Lunau, Kate (2025-10-09). "Can new tech finally wake Canada's sleeping geothermal giant?". Canada's National Observer. Retrieved 2026-06-11.
- ↑ Anton, Beth (2025-09-10). "Canadian Energy Leaders Unite to Advance Deep Geothermal Power". Renewable Energy Magazine. Retrieved 2026-06-11.
- ↑ "Seequent and Cascade Institute Partner to Map Canada's Deep Geothermal Resources" (Press release). Business Wire. 2026-06-08. Retrieved 2026-06-11.
- ↑ Suzuki, David (2026-06-10). "Connected crises contain opportunities for a better world". rabble.ca. Retrieved 2026-06-11.
External links
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