Energy summit ends with big ideas

by Karen Kawawada, Communications and Public Affairs

Villagers in remote locations around the world gaining access to electricity through cheap, flexible solar cells mounted on their roofs. Drilling deep into the ground to tap into the inexhaustible thermal energy of the earth’s core. Nuclear reactors that use their own nuclear waste as fuel. A new generation of powerful batteries that store the intermittent power generated by the sun, wind and waves.

These are some of the visions outlined in the Equinox Communiqué, issued yesterday to sum up a new vision for the world’s energy in 2030. It’s the product of a week of discussions among some of the most eminent scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, policy experts, and future leaders from around the world.

The elite group of 36 was meeting at the Equinox Summit, hosted by the Waterloo Global Science Initiative, a partnership between the University of Waterloo and the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. The communiqué is the starting point for a more detailed Equinox Blueprint, to be released in the fall, and a year-long campaign to internationally promote the ideas generated at the summit.

In an interview after the presentation of the communiqué, University of Waterloo president Feridun Hamdullahpur emphasized “the importance of fundamental university-based research in very close collaboration with industry” in making the recommendations a reality.

Hamdullahpur said he saw Waterloo playing a key role in the research and development to come, especially regarding batteries, solar cells, smart grids, sustainable energy, and biomass gasification — the last being one of his own areas of expertise.

“There is no silver bullet; there’s no single solution. It will be a combination of many, many solutions,” Hamdullahpur said.

Perimeter Institute director Neil Turok said holding the event at the Perimeter Institute may have influenced the outcome. “We (physicists) have very clear ideas of objective knowledge, and we don’t say things we can’t justify. This lent a spirit to the meeting that is quite unusual. People came, they listened to reason, they didn’t try to impose their pre-existing views, and so there was a spirit of openness in the discussions.”

The communiqué’s recommendations centre on four key ideas: changing the baseload of the current energy system, smart urbanization, electrified transport, and rural electrification.

Today’s global energy consumption is 16.5 terawatts — that is, 16.5 trillion watts being consumed all the time. Only 2.5 terawatts of that is from renewable sources, said Waterloo professor Jatin Nathwani, who served as scientific advisor to the facilitation team.

By 2050, the world’s energy demands are predicted to rise to at least 30 terawatts, “most likely higher,” said Nathwani, who is executive director of the Waterloo Institute for Sustainable Energy.

“If 50 per cent of the global energy demand in 2050 were to be met by non-carbon sources, that is a requirement of 15 terawatts of new, renewable, non-carbon sources of energy … a six-fold increase from today’s renewable energy capacity, actually equivalent to today’s total energy consumption. In simple terms, then, all new growth must be met by non-carbon forms of energy.”

There’s more about the recommendations on a special Equinox Summit web page. The full communiqué can be downloaded from the WGSI website.

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Student-built vehicle finds its own way

A team of undergraduate and graduate students from the University of Waterloo Robotics Team and the Waterloo Autonomous Vehicles Lab are back from the recent Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition with the best showing of any Canadian entry.

Seen in the photo, left to right, are faculty advisor Steven Waslander (mechanical and mechatronics engineering), PJ Mukhurjee, Sid Ahuja, Arun Das, Michael Tribou. Key team members not pictured include Peiyi Chen and Ryan Turner.

The 19th annual Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition was held at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. It's described as one of the largest and most prestigious competitions for custom autonomous vehicles in North America. The competition is run annually by the Associate for Unmanned Vehicle's International, with sponsors including the US Department of Defense, Lockheed Martin, and General Dynamics.

The Waterloo entry — named Indrik — placed second out of 56 teams from the United States, Canada, India, Japan and the United Arab Emirates in the vehicle design competition, winding up just 4 points (out of a possible 300) behind the grand prize winner. Waterloo also finished 4th in the JAUS challenge, which requires successful implementation of an industrial calibre communications framework for autonomous vehicles.

According to Craig MacKenzie, a member of the team's executive, the competitors are also looking forward to a top-ten finish in the autonomous navigation challenge, which requires vehicles to autonomously navigate between four GPS waypoints while dynamically avoiding obstacles including construction barrels and staggered fencing without human intervention. Full results will be released at the end of the month.

The competition also features a “fully autonomous” challenge (without GPS) requiring navigation of a simulated roadway strewn with barricades. A last-minute failure of the vision computer left Indrik unable to participate properly in that event.

However, the team's solid mechanical design and software strategies were widely recognized by competitors. “Our custom suspension design and unique approach to mapping and path planning generated a lot of interest with the other teams and industry representatives,” says a report from Rochester. “We are eagerly looking forward to continued development and even more success in the future!”

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Copyright, and the route out of town

Data, charts and details answering 122 questions about photocopying, library services and use, the course management system, budgets and other matters have been sent off from Waterloo to Access Copyright, the agency that represents Canadian publishers and “creators”, such as authors. For years now, this university has paid fees to Access Copyright (including $1.65 per term added to each student’s fee statement) for a licence to copy course handouts and other items. Negotiations are under way for a new licence, for which Access Copyright hopes to charge a much higher rate. In December the Copyright Board of Canada approved a set of “interrogatories” that Canada’s universities have had to answer. “Basically, they are seeking ammunition to use against us,” provost Geoff McBoyle told the university senate last month in a briefing about the project. Staff in the library, led by university librarian Mark Haslett and associate librarian Susan Routliffe, have been coordinating efforts by people in many departments — IST, retail services, institutional analysis, the secretariat, CEL, CTE, finance and so on — to assemble all the required information. As part of the effort, questions about scanning machines and copy centres were also forwarded to faculty and many staff across campus.

What you're seeing in the photo at left is "Pink Ghost", a "sculptural transformation" of a Paris intersection that is now part of an exhibition, "Installations by Architects", in the Design at Riverside gallery in Waterloo's Architecture building. The show opened last night and runs until early August. It features "a collection of the most significant projects from the last twenty-five years by today’s most exciting architects. Projects are grouped under the themes of tectonics, body, nature, memory, and public space. Architectural installations that invite the public to touch, enter, and experience the work, whether it is in a gallery, on city streets, or in the landscape. These temporary artworks aspire to alter viewers’ experiences of the environment, and engage them around issues in the built environment and expands the ways that architecture can participate in and impact people’s everyday lives. The exhibition presents printed banners and film projection rather than photographs, drawings, or architectural models."

Don Cowan (right), who retired more than a decade ago from the school of computer science but hasn't really stopped working, will be honoured Monday with an honorary degree from the University of Guelph. "Donald Cowan’s research on software engineering and in improving system development and use has benefited the software industry worldwide," says a citation from U of G. "He is a distinguished professor emeritus of computer science at the University of Waterloo, founding chair of the university’s computer science department and an active researcher. He helped found several software companies in Waterloo’s tech community." Cowan's degree will be presented during a ceremony for graduates from Guelph's College of Physical and Engineering Science, starting at 7 p.m. Monday in the historic  War Memorial Hall.

And . . . if you’re heading from somewhere in the Research and Technology Park to, say, highway 401, it might seem natural to go south, or maybe east down University Avenue. But the best route (Google Maps confirms it) is actually to take Wes Graham Way and Parkside Drive up to Northfield Drive and get onto highway 85. Locals might not think of it, and out-of-towners might not have a clue — which presumably explains the cardboard sign that’s lately been erected at the traffic circle just north of TechTown, pointing the counterintuitive way to highways 7, 8 and 401.

CAR

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