President Hamdullahpur opens the 2016 WGSI OpenAccess Energy Summit

Thank you, Julie.

Regional Chiefs, Honorable Ministers, colleagues, participants, and guests.

On behalf of the leadership team of Waterloo Global Science Initiative, and my own University of Waterloo, welcome to Equinox; and welcome to the Region of Waterloo.

Humankind has landed on the moon.

We put rovers on Mars.

A team of researchers, including members from the Institute for Quantum Computing at the University of Waterloo, have achieved quantum teleportation, teleporting quantum information between the Canary Islands of La Palma and Tenerife.

Humanity’s technological advancement has been rapid, and it has been thrilling.

But its benefits have not been shared by all.

As Julie said, about 1.1 billion persons around the world have no reliable access to energy.

There is a growing awareness, here in Canada and in many places around the world, that scientific, economic, and technological progress is spreading unevenly — sometimes even causing inequity.

We are here over the next days to envision and help make real a more equitable global society; where the building blocks of successful communities and families are firmly in place everywhere.

In many ways, this starts with energy.

To power our homes, our communities, and our economy. It is infrastructure for our lives.

Our ambition for this Summit is not only humanitarian, however. It is also a challenge that we thrive on.

It’s a challenge that I believe this group of scholars and practitioners convened here in Waterloo are uniquely positioned to start tackling.

That’s because we Summit participants possesses two key characteristics.

One of them is interdisciplinarity.

In developing actionable solutions for global, equitable access to energy, we are drawing on the full range of academic disciplines.

We draw also on insight from First Nations experiences, from business, from the development community, and beyond.

The challenge of equitable energy access is so massive and yet so very intricate — riddled with scientific, economic, ecological and sociological complexity — that we can address it only together. That’s why we’re here.

Our second characteristic, as a team, is engagement.

We Summit participants are an engaged group. We seek to not merely understand, but to provide ourselves and the sectors we represent with concrete proposals.

Actual steps to start illuminating the lives of the 1.1 billion people around the world who remain energy insecure.

We will not solve this enormous challenge over the next four days, of course. But if we succeed in identifying actionable policy options, we can make a start.

As president of the University of Waterloo, I am thrilled to co-host this forum. Because interdisciplinarity and engagement also define who we are, at UWaterloo.

Through interdisciplinary research, as with the Waterloo Institute for Sustainable Energy; we are helping to define was a 21st Century University Education needs to look like.

And as a highly engaged University, we depend on outstanding partnerships to leverage our strengths and extend our reach.

We have such a partnership with the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics.

The Perimeter Institute rails against the boundaries of human knowledge and asks fundamental scientific questions with elegance and depth. Perimeter’s scholars and staff members enrich all of us as partners, colleagues, and allies in addressing critical global challenges.

Neil and I and our teams are delighted to welcome you to the OpenAccess Energy Summit. Let’s have a terrific dialogue and enjoy our time together.

And let’s bring the world a little bit closer to true energy access and security.

Thank you