Towards Zero GHG Emissions by Symbiotic Design and Operation of Industrial and Civic Entities

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The vision for this research program is to design energy infrastructures for systems that are comprised of light industries, civic buildings, and personal transportation sectors, currently emitting 40% of Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in Canada, such that their combined GHG emissions are net zero. Until now, the research on increasing energy efficiency and reducing GHG emissions has focused on opportunities within individual sectors. Novelty of the proposed research is the focus on reducing GHG emission even further by integrating energy systems between different sectors. Long term goals of the program are to design clusters of energy-integrated civic and industrial entities that in their aggregate have net zero GHG emissions. For instance, a cluster may contain a hockey arena, a residential complex (civic structures), and a bakery, a supermarket, and a brewery (light industry). Clusters need to be able to maintain the targeted level of GHG emissions even for the varying ratios of the types of energy demands within sectors. Expected outcome of the research is a design roadmap showing how the structure of the clusters (degree of integration) and the sizes of different energy system components vary with the targeted level of GHG emissions and with changes in energy demands due to climate change. For a set of civic buildings and possible light industrial plants required for a community or a city, short term (next five yrs.) goals are: (i) identify configurations of clusters (what types of civic building and of industrial plants) that lead to stable (steady) GHG emissions reduction even when individual subsystem demands vary (ii) determine integration topology so that the integrated systems are not vulnerable to cascading network failures, (iii) modularize sizes of system components to provide redundant capacity required to increase system resilience to component failures and flexibility with respect to changes in demand, (iv) define optimal roadmap to system configuration changes (structure and component capacities) to achieve GHG emissions of specified level, and (vi) lowest possible GHG emissions with presently available technologies. Longer term (5 to 10 yrs.) goal is to design net zero GHG emissions energy clusters that can meet changing energy demands due to climate change, are resilient to degradation of its components, and do not suffer cascading network failures if one or more components malfunction. This research will enable decision makers to anticipate future changes in their own energy systems and determine the best pathways to modify them to be net zero. Over the next 5 yrs. the program will train 5 Undergrad, 1 M.A.Sc., and 3 Ph.D.; additional 3 Ph.D. students will be in progress in yr. 5 of DG grant. Besides publishing in technical journals, conceptual results / high level summaries of the research will be published in widely accessed media in order to raise awareness of these options.