Partners in Energy

Boasting more than 400 energy-focused researchers between them, the two institutions play prominent roles within both the Canadian energy sector and the global energy research community. The Government of Canada recognized this combined strength in 2016, when it awarded each university $75 million through the Canada First Research Excellence Fund (CFREF) to pursue advanced energy research.

The University of Calgary's Global Research Initiative in Sustainable Low Carbon Unconventional Resources (GRI) is working to generate clean tech solutions by seeking new, innovative fossil fuel-based energy systems that are low or even zero carbon, as well as technologies that can actively store or convert carbon dioxide. This mission aligns with a number of Future Energy Systems themes -- particularly those under our areas of Developing Hydrocarbons Responsibly and Improving Environmental Performance, as well as our System-Wide theme.

Because of these common goals and thanks to close preexisting relationships between researchers working just a few hours away from each other, Future Energy Systems and GRI have come together to partner on research that will address pressing energy questions for Canada and the world. Both programs have set aside $6.5 million -- a combined total of $13 million -- for joint research, and as of January 2018 approximately half of those dollars have been allocated.

This week, more than thirty researchers, highly qualified personnel and administrators from the two institutions came together for a joint workshop hosted at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. Investigators from both universities presented updates on five joint projects that launched in 2017, and previewed two more that are about to begin. The research teams then broke off into separate groups for more specific planning.

Future Energy Systems and GRI will continue to collaborate closely in the years ahead, leveraging their complementary strengths to develop practical solutions for the energy industry while also exploring new horizons for humanity's energy future.

Future Energy Systems - GRI joint research projects:

• Advanced Electrochemical System for Energy Storage Through CO2 Conversion
• Thermal Impacts for Geological Storage of CO2
• Unlocking the Physics and Chemistry of Bitumen/Water/Solvent/Porous Media Interfaces- an Enabling Technology for New Production Process Development
• Reservoir management and advanced optimization for thermal and thermal-solvent based recovery processes using fundamentals, scaled models, and machine learning
• Life Cycle Assessment of Energy System Transitions