News

The Council for Clean and Reliable Energy and the Waterloo Institute for Sustainable Energy (WISE) organized the 1^st annual Technology Innovation and Policy Forum 2016. This inaugural event was intended to bring together policymakers, technology innovators, leading researchers and entrepreneurs, to address the convergence of policy development with technology advances. The goal of the forum was to understand the timing and impact of emerging disruptive technologies on the current policy regime, and to understand the impacts of microgrids embedded on a large scale within existing networks.

Event title: Microgrids & Distributed Energy: Is there a revolution in the making?

On Nov. 17-18, fifty experts from academia, local institutions, government, businesses, and local NGOs from the Waterloo Region met to grapple with the long term energy challenge every region in North America faces—how to end reliance on fossil fuels across residential, business, and transportation sectors.

This forum brought together experts to articulate the pathways for decarbonizing the energy systems utilized in the Waterloo Region. The purpose of the forum was to combine the expertise and insight from these different sectors to find the pathways to a decarbonized energy future. Such pathways describe short term (next 5 years), medium term (next 15 years), and long term (next 35 years) policies and choices which will produce a more prosperous and sustainable energy system.

Salt caverns are widely used around the world for natural gas and crude oil storage, for temporary storage of chemical products and other hydrocarbons, and even for waste disposal. WISE conducted student presentations that focused mainly on the emerging potential of salt caverns as a means of energy storage through cyclic compressed air use. These presentations were the result of a graduate course in the Fall of 2015, and each presentation from each student represented a different question posed. The emphasis, was therefore, on compressed air energy storage, but by no means exclusively.

University of Waterloo technologies and research continue to revolutionize the development of greenhouse gas reduction, contributing to innovative solutions applicable to a variety of industrial sectors. This event provided an opportunity to connect with Waterloo’s research expertise and technologies and explore opportunities for collaboration in the areas of industrial greenhouse gas emission reduction. In particular, this event focused on connecting industry and researchers with interest in the following three categories:

1. Industrial Point Source
2. Value Chain
3. CO₂ Innovations

An overview of potential funding opportunities through Ontario Centres of Excellence and NSERC were also presented.

The Canadian Plastics Industry Association (CPIA) teamed up with WISE and the University of Waterloo to host the third annual, invitation-only Resource Recovery Partnership Workshop on Thursday, June 23, 2016. 

The day focused on the relationship between academia, government, and industry.  Workshop participants debated and deliberated on ways of improving the working relationship between these critical sectors and shared ideas and insight about how collaboration will lead to improved waste policy and planning. 

This was an AE4H event held in April 2016 in partnership with the Waterloo Global Science Initiative (WGSI) at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo.

From April 24th to the 27th, 2016, The Waterloo Global Science Initiative hosted OpenAccess Energy, a Summit addressing the global energy access challenge that is motivated by these issues. WGSI’s summits bring together a multidisciplinary, multinational, and multi-generational group of stakeholders for a four-day intensive event where they develop an actionable framework for addressing a complex global issue.

The annual event brought academics, industry, and government experts together to share their insights and optimism for the future. The topics for 2016's panel sessions considered the questions:

1. Geothermal Energy in Canada: How can research shape the market outcomes?
2. Electric Mobility Infrastructure: is it a technology or a business model challenge? and
3. Social and Policy Issues of De-carbonizing the Canadian Energy Economy: is there a clear path?

On Feb. 25, 2016, a panel of speakers and researchers got together at the University of Waterloo for PowerShift: Rethinking Design for Energy Access, where students were encouraged to use innovation to address global problems — specifically, how to create a future where energy is available to all.

The interactive discussion and design session, hosted by AE4H (Affordable Energy For Humanity) and the Waterloo Institute for Sustainable Energy (WISE), connected engineers to the value of development work, and addressed the need to develop ultra-efficient and ultra-affordable technologies to combat energy poverty in a sustainable way.

The event was hosted on campus for students with a focus on humanitarian engineering, international development and social innovation to shape solutions for energy access in remote and energy-impoverished communities.

WISE proudly announced the launch of ‘A Global Change Initiative: Affordable Energy For Humanity’. In partnership with Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) Germany,  Waterloo Global Science Initiative (WGSI)  and University of Waterloo: WISE Executive Director Professor Jatin Nathwani and Professor Dr. Joachim, Knebel led the way towards the next energy transition on a global scale by harnessing the insights of existing expertise and the technological capacity for innovation at leading universities and institutions around the world. . The public launch event began at 3pm September 29th DC1302 which included Professor Nathwani’s lecture: ‘Affordable Energy for Humanity: If Not Now, When?’ followed by the announcement of the AE4H Initiative and a wine and cheese reception in the lounge.

Professor Jatin Nathwani, Ontario Research Chair in Public Policy for Sustainable Energy, University of Waterloo, discussed the pathways to a low carbon energy future. The goal is to unlock scientific and technological innovations to deliver clean, low cost energy services to every global citizen.