Driving the Electric Future
Powering
CLIMATE SOLUTIONS
McMaster University is home to one of the world’s largest academic EV research programs. We are also leading discovery in everything from next-gen fuels to thermal and nuclear energy solutions.
Learn how McMaster is developing the technology and the talent for a sustainable energy future.
World-class innovation hub is driving the future of electric transportation
Pedro Neto had already worked in Brazil’s electric vehicle industry for four years when he switched gears to join the McMaster Automotive Resource Centre (MARC), home to one of the world’s largest academic EV research programs.
He’s among more than 100 graduate students working under McMaster Engineering Professor Ali Emadi, a Canada Excellence Research Chair (CERC) Laureate. He also holds the Tier I Canada Research Chair in Transportation Electrification and Smart Mobility.
“MARC is where researchers invent and test new technology for cars, both independently and in direct partnership with major auto makers,” says Emadi. “Students here are on the bleeding edge of technology in collaboration with the industry and they have opportunities to do work with tangible, real-world results.”
The Electric City is a better way to make cars
Automotive manufacturing has remained relatively unchanged over the past century, despite massive technological advancements in that time. It typically takes an automaker as long as three years and close to $1 billion to get a new model ready to manufacture.
McMaster engineering professor Ali Emadi has a revolutionary vision for a new way to manufacture automobiles.
“A thoroughly modern, far less expensive design and development process would not require hundreds of thousands of copies of a single model to be made before a manufacturer could recover its costs,” says Emadi.
“There is no reason we can’t reinvent the way we make cars, and we’ve already started engineering the change in Hamilton. We call our project the Electric City.”
Using thermal infrastructure to turn wasted heat emissions into energy
Buildings are the third-largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in Canada. The recently launched Infrastructure for Good barometer, released by consulting firm Deloitte, suggests that Canada’s infrastructure investments already top the global list in terms of positive societal, economic and environmental benefits.
In fact, over the past 150 years, Canada has built railways, roads, clean water systems, electrical grids, pipelines and communication networks to connect and serve people across the country.
Now, there’s an opportunity to build on Canada’s impressive tradition by creating a new form of infrastructure: capturing, storing and sharing the massive amounts of heat lost from industry, electricity generation and communities, even in summer.
Converting carbon emissions to fuel
As global temperatures continue to rise, policymakers need new tools to address climate change.
Emerging technologies hold promise, such as recycling captured carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions then converting them into fuels and chemical products rather than storing them underground.
Recycling may not directly reduce the current concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere, but it can decrease the production of new emissions.
Advancing small modular reactor research
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