Climate change challenge energizes students
McMaster Energy Week about taking control of future resources
‘‘ Our proposed solution aims to close the loop between food production and food waste. HANNAH MCPHEE Team Alpha winner
McMaster Energy Week ended in a student showdown Saturday, where cricket meat and dirty bath water duked it out for best carbon-slashing solution.
The five-day event was Canada’s first student-led initiative .
It was hosted by the McMaster Undergraduate Energy Society, the faculty of engineering, and the McMaster Institute of Energy and partner Alectra Utilities.
Its focus was on empowering university students to take control of their energy future, and included a climate change challenge.
There were 10 teams involved, and the 50 participating students had five days to research and develop strategies to help government and industry meet Canada’s goal of reducing emissions by 80 per cent by 2050.
They focused on the sectors of agriculture, transportation, commercial real estate, residential real estate, electrical grid infrastructure, and waste. The teams pitched their strategies in eight-minute presentations to a panel of judges.
“It’s incredibly motivating to see students pick a topic they know little about and become experts,” said Ryan Rogers, a McMaster master’s student and case competition lead for the McMaster Energy Week contest and challenge.
“It speaks to the passion and commitment they have to climate change,” he said.
The winner was announced at a dinner at the Art Gallery of Hamilton.
In the end, Team Alpha (Melissa Cusack Striepe, Vincent Popovich, Hannah McPhee, Graeme Crawley and Dan LaFrance) won the $1,000 grand prize for their pitch: Closing the Agriculture Waste Loop.
“Every year in Ontario, approximately one million tons of food waste are produced and not utilized,” said McPhee.
“Our proposed solution aims to close the loop between food production and food waste, in order to mitigate the GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions of both areas.”
Other pitches included replacing meat farms with cricket protein to reduce agricultural gas emissions; growing coffee beans in Canada to curb transportation emissions caused by importing them; and recycling the energy from hot waste water in our homes.
Alpha’s solution dealt with converting food waste to energy using existing technologies.
They discussed distributing edible food waste from retailers to food banks and community kitchens and turning “bad” compost (not suitable for consumption) into energy to power greenhouses and other agricultural activities that could be sold back to the community.
Vick Lakhian, a post-doctoral researcher at McMaster, was one of the panel judges. She was impressed with the work done by all the students — some of which are in their first year with only a few months of the semester under their belts, he said.
“Overall, the projects were amazing,” he said, adding that team Alpha’s pitch to convert waste to energy was found to be the most comprehensive and would also stop the sprawl of landfills.