2017 annual report: Message from our academic director

Since the Centre for Urban Energy (CUE) at Ryerson University opened seven years ago, the pressures on the energy industry have continued to grow. Current approaches to energy generation, transport, storage and use are not sustainable. They cannot achieve the ambitious local, provincial and national targets for greenhouse gas emission reductions. Nor can they cope with urbanization or ensure affordable and available energy for future generations.

A carbon-free energy sector is difficult to imagine. It’s also a challenge for any of us to grasp the magnitude of shift required to get there. What we do know is that we need a new paradigm, new thinking and new technologies, which is what the partners, researchers and innovators at CUE strive to generate.

CUE is thriving because we focus on delivering tangible solutions to real-world problems. This approach has fuelled productive collaborations, long-term partnerships and impact here at home and in diverse locales such as India, Brazil and Chile, where local technologies are having a global impact.

Looking ahead, our move to the state-of-the-art Centre for Urban Innovation late in 2018 will enable us to reconfigure our existing facilities while adding lab and office space. This move will also immerse us in a multidisciplinary hub of researchers exploring a range of urban issues.

On behalf of the staff, faculty members, researchers, students and industry partners who make CUE such a success, I invite you to join us in 2018.