A Sustainable Futures Initiative, the summer school is hosted by the Water Institute, the Waterloo Climate Institute and the Waterloo Institute for Sustainable Energy (WISE) and aimed at senior undergraduate and graduate students, post-doctoral fellows, practitioners and interested stakeholders.
The 4th International Conference on Solar Technologies & Hybrid Mini Grids to improve energy access, known in short as the S-@ccess conference, occurred from April 26-29, 2023. This conference was run by Trama TecnoAmbiental and the University of the Balearic Islands in Palma, Spain, and WISE was one of the conference partners, sponsors, and on the organizing committee. Prof. Jatin Nathwani, the founding Executive Director and a WISE member, was also on the conference scientific committee. Throughout the 2022-23 year, WISE supported the organization of the conference, and Prof. Nathwani and Ambika Opal attended the conference as representatives from the University of Waterloo.
WISE along with WCI, WISA, and Water Institute, hosted a day-long Net-Zero workshop to highlight key projects and research related to Net-Zero. University of Waterloo professors, researchers, and industry partners presented their projects and research in three panels:
The Grid of the Future: How smart grids, decentralized energy resources, and new business models can help us reach a Net Zero Grid by 2035
Engineering Science Quest is a program run by the Faculty of Engineering for high school and elementary school students to get involved in science and engineering. One program is a weekly after school session for students in grades 9-11. Ambika Opal and Professor Jatin Nathwani were invited to conduct a presentation on access to energy for environmental engineering week. Students learned about the Sustainable Development Goals, access to electricity and clean cooking, learned about WISE and AE4H partners and projects, and had a meaningful discussion on how they can contribute to sustainable energy and energy access goals.
Optimizing operations in net-zero buildings
In the case of a 100,000-square-foot office building recently constructed in Waterloo, Ontario, closing that performance gap required a complex process of optimizing the HVAC systems.
WISE, along with Impact Alliance (a student club) and Cooperative and Experiential Education ran a two-day collaborative hackathon for students of all disciplines and years of study. At the hackathon, Rajnish Jain, founder of Avani Bio Energy, presented two real-life sustainability challenges his India-based organization is facing. One challenge was focused on calculations to develop a business case for selling carbon offsets as a revenue stream for Avani, and the other challenge was focused on the development of a resource centre or library to scale the work that Avani does.
In March 2023, AE4H member Rajnish Jain from Avani Bio Energy in Uttarakhand, India, conducted two guest lectures in an Environment and Business class taught by Professor Sean Geobey, and an International Development class taught by Professor Simron Singh. Rajnish shared the work of his social enterprise and discussed corporate social responsibility in the Environment and Business class, and progress towards sustainable development goals in the International Development class.
Sustainable Development Goal week was held in March 2023, at universities across Canada. Impact Alliance, an SDG-focused student club at the University of Waterloo, ran an SDG Mentorship Week to give students access to education and experts related to the SDGs. Impact Alliance invited Ambika Opal to conduct a mentorship week session on SDG 7: Affordable and Clean Energy on March 7th, 2023. Ambika presented the challenges of access to energy, projects that WISE works on regarding SDG 7, and inspired students to see the connections between SDG 7 and other SDGs such as No Poverty, Good Health and Wellbeing, and Quality Education.