Hamilton, Ont., is set to be the guinea pig for a clean energy initiative that’s getting some $24 million from the federal government to help with a zero-emissions goal by 2050.
The CANSTOREnergy project will see a group from McMaster join 10 other Canadian universities combining with community partners to develop carbon-converting technologies and seasonal clean energy storage.
Led by University of Toronto researchers, Hamilton and Yukon are a part of the initial campaign for different reasons to test out conversion techniques and how they can be applied to a pair of regions with significantly differing environments, infrastructure and economics.
In a funding announcement Tuesday, researchers said Hamilton was chosen for its densely-populated urban centre, which is plugged into the main North American power grid.
Researchers say the city’s economic dependence on heavy industry and environmental costs, tackling air pollution, is “unevenly distributed” disproportionately impacting low-income and marginalized communities.
Much of those emissions were shown to primarily effect those living in the city’s industrial sector.
Meanwhile, the Yukon is not on the electrical grid and experiences seasonal extremes, limiting availability of renewable energy and proliferating diesel fuel imports during cold winters.
“We want to think about addressing these big global challenges such as climate change, but we don’t solve them at the global scale,” said Kate Neville, one of the project’s lead researchers and an associate professor at the U of T.
“You solve them by thinking about what those challenges look like in lots of places and working with communities to find solutions that meet multiple needs.”
Three McMaster researchers will join the team comprised of engineers, social scientists, economists and other experts.
The money is part of a larger $200 million support for Canadian-led studies via the New Frontiers in Research Fund (NFRF)
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