Closer to home, and case in point, the Québec government announced its 2030 Plan for a Green Economy which calls for reaching carbon neutrality by 2050. Getting there will require significant improvements to electrical energy storage (i.e. advanced batteries) as well as conversion to hydrogen and other carbon-free energy carriers. Similarly, the Canadian federal government announced plans to greatly expand the role of hydrogen as an energy carrier, as much as 30% of end-use energy consumption by 2050.

Against this background, McGill University announced the launch of the McGill Centre for Innovation in Storage and Conversion of Energy (McISCE). The new centre will unite McGill’s world-leading expertise in energy storage and conversion technologies, and specifically targets these areas as the missing enablers in the emerging movement toward a Green Economy.

Hosted by the Faculty of Engineering and building on the McGill Sustainability Systems Initiative (MSSI), the McISCE will draw its expertise from multiple departments in the Faculty of Engineering, as well as diverse researchers in the Faculty of Science, Desautels Faculty of Management, and other departments such as Natural Resource Sciences and Economics. Relying on the interdisciplinary nature of its research core, the McISCE will explore design, prototyping, validation, closed-loop utilization of critical elements, commercialization of sustainable technologies and enviro-socioeconomic impacts, with a particular focus on the full lifecycle of proposed solutions as per the circular economy paradigm.