SDG 7: Affordable and Clean Energy focuses on ensuring access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy.
Marina Freire-Gormaly, Ph.D., EIT, LEED GA is an Assistant Professor in the Mechanical Engineering Department at the Lassonde School of Engineering at York University. Her research focuses on the development of stand-alone solar-powered reverse osmosis water treatment systems and energy recovery systems for remote communities that lack access to grid electricity. She also is interested in machine learning applications for the smart design of innovative energy and water systems. Her research interests are also in advanced manufacturing, smart systems using the Internet of Things & artificial intelligence, and advanced additive manufacturing methods. She completed her Ph.D. and M.A.Sc. from the University of Toronto in Mechanical Engineering. She has previously been a course instructor for undergraduate energy-related engineering courses at the University of Toronto. She has also worked at Ontario Power Generation (OPG) on the Darlington New Nuclear Project and the Darlington Refurbishment Project. She contributed to a World Bank project evaluating Canada’s ‘Regulatory Indicators for Sustainable Energy (RISE). She currently serves as the Chair of Student and Young Professional Affairs for the Canadian Society of Mechanical Engineers (CSME).
Nitish Ranjan Sarker is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Water and Energy Research Lab at the University of Toronto (U of T). He is also associated with the Centre for Global Engineering at U of T and teaches strategies and challenges of replacing high GHG-emitting energy technologies with renewable and low-carbon alternatives to senior year undergrad/ graduate students. Additionally, Nitish volunteers as the program director of the International Water Association Young Waters Professional in Canada and manages several Pan-Canadian networking and professional development events to dissipate the understanding of the social, economic, and technological aspects of Canadian water research. As a cross-disciplinary researcher, Nitish focuses on technological and systemic innovation of water and clean-energy technologies, broadly relevant to the sustainable development goals (SDGs) and how to customize them appropriately based on the target community's needs and constraints. Nitish was also vested with the Mortenson Global Engineering Award earlier this year.
CREDITS: This podcast is co-hosted by Dr. Erica Di Ruggiero, Director of the Centre for Global Health, and Ophelia Michaelides, Manager of the Centre for Global Health, at the DLSPH, U of T, and produced by Elizabeth Loftus. Audio editing is by Sylvia Lorico. Music is produced by Julien Fortier and Patrick May. It is made with the support of the School of Cities at U of T.
SDG 7: Affordable and Clean Energy focuses on ensuring access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy.
Marina Freire-Gormaly, Ph.D., EIT, LEED GA is an Assistant Professor in the Mechanical Engineering Department at the Lassonde School of Engineering at York University. Her research focuses on the development of stand-alone solar-powered reverse osmosis water treatment systems and energy recovery systems for remote communities that lack access to grid electricity. She also is interested in machine learning applications for the smart design of innovative energy and water systems. Her research interests are also in advanced manufacturing, smart systems using the Internet of Things & artificial intelligence, and advanced additive manufacturing methods. She completed her Ph.D. and M.A.Sc. from the University of Toronto in Mechanical Engineering. She has previously been a course instructor for undergraduate energy-related engineering courses at the University of Toronto. She has also worked at Ontario Power Generation (OPG) on the Darlington New Nuclear Project and the Darlington Refurbishment Project. She contributed to a World Bank project evaluating Canada’s ‘Regulatory Indicators for Sustainable Energy (RISE). She currently serves as the Chair of Student and Young Professional Affairs for the Canadian Society of Mechanical Engineers (CSME).
Nitish Ranjan Sarker is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Water and Energy Research Lab at the University of Toronto (U of T). He is also associated with the Centre for Global Engineering at U of T and teaches strategies and challenges of replacing high GHG-emitting energy technologies with renewable and low-carbon alternatives to senior year undergrad/ graduate students. Additionally, Nitish volunteers as the program director of the International Water Association Young Waters Professional in Canada and manages several Pan-Canadian networking and professional development events to dissipate the understanding of the social, economic, and technological aspects of Canadian water research. As a cross-disciplinary researcher, Nitish focuses on technological and systemic innovation of water and clean-energy technologies, broadly relevant to the sustainable development goals (SDGs) and how to customize them appropriately based on the target community's needs and constraints. Nitish was also vested with the Mortenson Global Engineering Award earlier this year.
CREDITS: This podcast is co-hosted by Dr. Erica Di Ruggiero, Director of the Centre for Global Health, and Ophelia Michaelides, Manager of the Centre for Global Health, at the DLSPH, U of T, and produced by Elizabeth Loftus. Audio editing is by Sylvia Lorico. Music is produced by Julien Fortier and Patrick May. It is made with the support of the School of Cities at U of T.
Ophelia Michaelides [00:00:08] I'm Ophelia Michaelides and this is Healthy Cities in the SDG era, a podcast about the Sustainable Development Goals and how research conducted by faculty and students at the University of Toronto is helping to achieve them. We're recording from Toronto or Tkaronto, which for thousands of years has been the traditional land of the Huron-Wendat, the Seneca and the Mississaugas of the Credit. Today, this meeting space is still home to many indigenous peoples from across Turtle Island and we are grateful to have the opportunity to work on this land. In this episode we'll look into SDG seven, which focuses on ensuring equal access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy. Inequalities in accessing renewable and affordable energy are a major issue around the globe. 13% of the world's population still lack access to modern electricity, and 3 billion people still rely on burning would call or animal waste for cooking and heating pollution resulting from non-sustainable energy production is one of the major contributors to climate change, accounting for about 60% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Within Canada, indigenous communities living on reserves often have limited access to natural gases and rely on expensive fossil fuels as a heating source. This not only increases their financial burden but also results in poor air quality. The resulting health inequities are further exacerbated by the lack of clean water in these communities due to outdated and or dysfunctional water filtration systems available on reserves. Researchers across Toronto universities are tackling some of these issues by investigating novel solutions to increase the accessibility of clean water in an affordable way. In this episode, we'll speak with Dr. Marina Freire Gormlay at York University on some current challenges in energy delivery across Canada and the concept of energy justice in the context of equity and sustainability. Then we'll speak with Dr. Nitish Sarkar at the University of Toronto on clean energy and improving access to affordable, reliable and sustainable energy, as well as applying novel techniques like machine learning to increase energy efficiency.
Ophelia Michaelides [00:02:30] Marina is an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at York University. Her research interests include developing sustainable and resilient water filtration systems, using novel techniques and using machine learning and big data to improve the overall access to clean air and water in communities. Welcome to the program, Marina. I'm really looking forward to our discussion around affordable and clean energy today. And welcome to the podcast.
Marina Freire-Gormaly [00:02:56] Thanks. Thanks, Ophelia. I'm really excited to be here with you all today.
Ophelia Michaelides [00:03:01] That's great. First things first, though. I would love to hear more about your research.
Marina Freire-Gormaly [00:03:08] Sure. So I'm an assistant professor at York University in Mechanical Engineering, and my team focuses on the development of sustainable and resilient drinking water systems and novel filtration technologies for healthy and sustainable communities. We work in the field of micro and nanotechnologies for membrane based separation processes, and in another range of the work that we're doing is we're looking at novel methods for understanding how improved HVAC heating, ventilation and air conditioning can improve indoor air quality using computational fluid dynamics, modeling, and also experimental methods. So we really like to conduct experimental characterization of water treatment systems and couple that with machine learning and big data analytics to really help improve the quality and access to clean drinking water in remote and resource constrained settings for water security. And overall, we try to combine advanced dynamic modeling, computational methods and experimental techniques to develop these robust standalone smart water water treatment systems that also use renewable power.
Ophelia Michaelides [00:04:21] That sounds fascinating and very complicated. I think a lot of systems that are in technology that I may not understand at this point. And Marina I'm wondering if you could tell us a little bit more about energy generation and delivery across Canada, for instance, and using some examples from your research?
Ophelia Michaelides [00:04:41] Sure, I'd be happy to explain a bit about energy generation. So in Canada, most of our energy generation is really focused on the province's jurisdiction. So we end up having a lot of power generation that is decided provincially and it's typically based on the local available resources. So if we look at British Columbia, for example, they have a high amount of hydro power. And in Ontario we have a lot of hydroelectricity because of a lot of our lakes and our geography. But we also have a high percentage of nuclear power generation because of the large plants that were developed earlier. And some of the newer technologies like small, small modular reactors is something that they're trying to implement. And surprisingly, some provinces like Saskatchewan have high amounts of coal still. But I think, yeah, across Canada there's a really big incentive to create more renewable power. So Ontario, for example, has a lot of wind turbines and solar photovoltaic panels, and I think many jurisdictions are trying to improve that. And one of the challenges with this provincial aspect is that there isn't a lot of cross provincial border transmission. And and so that creates a lot of challenges. But one of the areas that relates to our research is that in one of our projects that was funded by the Department of National Defense Canada, we worked on designing pop-up cities for remote and off grid use in Canada. So we yeah, we used some modeling and assessment that demonstrated that it's feasible to design these integrated mini-cities using a combination of solar, photovoltaics, wind and even cogen units that rely on like biosolids and wastewater generated at the site. So by combining these optimization tools and design frameworks and simulation approaches, we can design these types of systems. But to make them a reality really requires concerted effort between researchers, government, industry and the local communities in Canada's north.
Ophelia Michaelides [00:07:05] Mmhm that's that's fascinating, Marina. And it sounds to me, as I say, listen to you speak, that there's quite a bit of variability across, you know, reliability of grids, you know, depending on what province of of the country you live in or even communities within provinces. So again, on various levels and I'm wondering, you know, the impacts on health, on different communities when we talk about this variability and whether it be impacts on health or health equity. Wondering if you could speak a little bit more around this?
Marina Freire-Gormaly [00:07:38] Certainly, there's actually a really interesting story that I'd heard from an elder recently. So with climate change, it can also create a lot of challenges around the reliability of the grid. So if you have really huge storms or winds, this can result in power outages. So communities that are smaller and farther away from the central electricity grid can face the biggest challenges with grid reliability. So this indigenous elder in British Columbia, she shared that her community had experienced a really long power outage that was extensive, about three days long, and it was in the fall and had been because of these high winds. And the challenge was that a lot of the community members rely on a lot of game meat for their food from hunting and fishing and in the winter then they store it in these freezers. But the challenge was that since the it was fall, you still have that really high variability of temperatures. So they really need those freezers to keep them that food at a frozen state. So it can last several months. And since it had they experienced this long power outage, then a lot of the meat spoiled and that relates to their health because then they don't have enough protein, animal protein sources, for example. And and it's also very expensive to be buying alternatives. So this really points to the need for these high grid reliability and considering the impacts of climate change and how it can even impact different communities. Because sometimes when we're looking at how decisions get made in industry or in government, there's a lot of different factors that are being considered like which part of the transmission line will get upgraded first, or which area needs it the most for a different economic impacts or health impacts on communities.
Marina Freire-Gormaly [00:09:48] Mhm mhm. Clearly, there seems to be, you know, significant challenges and and opportunities, I would imagine, in achieving what sounds like energy justice here in Canada, which can inevitably, as you, you know, talk about, lead to inequitable impacts across communities when these challenges arise. I'm wondering if we can focus our attention just temporarily for a moment on a more global scale. So we talked a little bit about some of the challenges here in Canada. But as I understand, Marina, you also work on desalination systems. I'm wondering if you could tell us a little bit more around desalination systems and their impacts on health equity globally, for instance?
Marina Freire-Gormaly [00:10:31] Certainly. So our team works on these solar-powered and renewable-powered desalination systems for remote and off grid communities. And these types of systems are so that typically some of these communities would rely on surface waters, which can cause a lot of diarrhea, or they might be using water directly from a brackish groundwater well. So because it's brackish, it means it has a lot of high amount of dissolved minerals. And then this can lead to hypertension or kidney stones and other negative health outcomes. So instead we use these reverse osmosis membranes in these desalination systems. And one of the ideas is that instead of storing the electricity from the solar PV in batteries, which you end up having a lot of reduced amounts of electricity that ends up in all these conversion methods, why not store the final product that you want, which is the water? So that helps bring down the cost of the water significantly. So so you can end up having a very large water tank and then very minimal energy storage just so that you can do proper shutdown procedures and startup procedures. And when the sun is shining, then you run the system at full, full production, fill up the water tank, and then as the sun starts to set, you turn off the system. And some of the research that we did earlier was to see what types of ways can we extend the life of these membranes by doing a quick wash before shutting it down and using very low concentrations of these anti scales, which is a chemical, to prevent the buildup of minerals and bio biological content on the surface of the membranes. And now yeah. And now my team is looking at how do we develop different coatings, for example, for these reverse osmosis membranes. Because typically reverse osmosis membranes are an older technology from the 1970s is actually one of the most common membranes used in desalination. But at the commercial scale, you want it to be operating continuously. And this intermittent nature of the solar or wind or other sources, it means that we're constantly turning it off and then it sits in this stagnant water for extended periods of time. So we need new ways of making the membrane more resilient to fouling in this intermittent mode of operation.
Marina Freire-Gormaly [00:13:17] Mm hmm. Mm hmm. And imagine these systems. I mean, you know, I'm just curious, where abouts in the world you work to implement some of these systems that seem that the technology seems very fascinating.
Marina Freire-Gormaly [00:13:31] Yeah. Our first project was earlier in La Vacuna, Mexico, and this community is on the Yucatan Peninsula, about 200 kilometers from the nearest other small community. So they were relying on these trucked water sources. And by the time it reaches their community, it was of questionable quality. So when this system was installed there and my research was more on the lab scale and power scale for developing different methods of washing the membranes. And now I have a Ph.D. student who is working on developing a pilot scale study in Laos. So that's quite interesting because she she wanted to focus on that community specifically sort of setting up a pilot probably in the next 12 to 16 months.
Ophelia Michaelides [00:14:28] Oh, that's exciting. And clearly the applicability of of this technologies is very widespread from Mexico to Laos. You know, everyone drinks water after all. So that's very fascinating. And and clearly, a lot of the things you mention around the the very real health impacts, you know, of, you know, unfit to water sources are very real. And I think this, you know, in thinking about some of your earlier, earlier descriptions of of your research and, you know, reliability of the grid and quality of the water, we talk a lot about, you know, you know, equitable distribution and what, you know, health equity looks like in these technologies that you apply. And again, going back to the concept of energy justice, why is energy justice important and what can be done about it in your opinion?
Ophelia Michaelides [00:15:23] So I think energy, justice is very crucial to creating access to all of these sustainable development goals, because when we think about it, without energy, it becomes extremely difficult to access basic health care or education or clean water. So when I think about energy justice, it's really about improving the quality of life for as many people around the world as we can by giving them that basic access. We can't keep food without toiling, without energy very easily. And if we think about even from a health perspective, one of the projects it's been quite interesting that we're been working on for a few years with a capstone team, is looking at kidney dialysis and a lot of communities in sub-Saharan Africa, for example, they have the highest rates of chronic kidney disease. But getting the treatment, once you have reached the point of chronic kidney disease, you need to be in a hospital almost once a week to have the treatment. So we wanted to develop. So one of the teams worked on a portable hemodialysis machine for low income countries. Yeah. And then another team was really looking at how can we even prevent chronic kidney disease in the first place? Because a lot of people don't even realize that they might have too much salt intake or different risk factors. So how can we raise community awareness so that can prevent it in the first place?
Ophelia Michaelides [00:16:58] Of course. Yes, very much the ethos of public health. Yes, exactly. It is exactly that. Yes, it's amazing. And I'm wondering, Marina, I mean, all the things that you talk about are so important and it's so applicable on the local and global scales thinking, you know, how can students, you know, be it they in public health or engineering, how can they get involved in advocating for, you know, the development of solutions for society's, you know, growing sustainability challenges, as you mentioned? I would be curious to hear some of your thoughts on that.
Ophelia Michaelides [00:17:34] Yeah, I think it's always great for students and also just the general public to get involved. There's a lot of different design competitions like the Canadian Society for Mechanical Engineers has a yearly design competition, and the American Society for Mechanical Engineers, they have this I show which one of my capstone teams participated in. But they are able to develop some technology for low and middle income countries. And then you can try to go through a bit of a pitch competition. And there's also other organizations like Academics Without Borders is one that I've been involved with recently with the Strengthening Engineering Research Initiative, and we've been working with different universities to really increase the level of research, output and education at these types of institutions that might be a bit disadvantaged economically. So we've worked with them, our University of Science and Technology in Uganda and most recently with the Vardar Institute of Technology in Ethiopia. So they attend different workshops and then they go through the proposal development phase. And with colleagues, we've developed this education program and then kind of like there's volunteers that review the proposal, giving them feedback. And a lot of the projects that they end up recommending or proposing are very locally focused. So one team was looking at like oxygen concentrators for their local hospital or another team was looking at like farm farming technologies for livestock to monitor the diseases between the different cattle. And as a spread like the Ugandan government, also make sure that they can contain any illnesses, but they don't have the data. So they need these new tags that they can work on and do both from an engineering perspective. And there's also some exciting things with like citizen science. So one of the earlier projects, yeah, that we collaborated with the Asian University for Women in Children, they were looking at arsenic contamination and doing some tests of the local wells. So I think it's also really useful to reach out to policymakers and also get involved in your local and broader community. Sometimes, you know, you don't even know what's out there. They may be engineers without borders at your school has something going on or listening to podcasts. But then I think taking action is the best, best route after you've gotten some neat ideas and of course reaching out to researchers, we always need more members of our team. So always happy to connect on LinkedIn or Twitter or through my website and emails.
Ophelia Michaelides [00:20:27] It's great. So I'm so happy to hear so many opportunities to engage in, especially so many, you know, locally driven solutions, I think are are important part of that. Marina, I really appreciate learning so much about your research today. I want to thank you for being on today's podcast and for sharing your really important insights with us today.
Ophelia Michaelides [00:20:54] My pleasure. I'm not sure if I mentioned this, but some of our research also intersects really well with public health. On the COVID 19 aerosol transmission. So I wonder if I should share a bit about that.
Ophelia Michaelides [00:21:11] Yes, we'd love to, actually. You very much feel free. And we can also include some in our in our show notes as well, if you have any resources that you want to share. And certainly, you know, a lot of these the fluid dynamics or whatever technology you use seem very applicable to the COVID situation and in some of that. So, you know, want to give you the space to to share that, if you'd like on today's show. And we can always add some resources at the end as well.
Marina Freire-Gormaly [00:21:37] Okay. Sure. Yeah, that'd be great. Yeah. So another area of our team's research, which has been very exciting, is working with graduate students on how does COVID 19 aerosols move around rooms or different classrooms or offices or even in malls, for example, and then trying to be able to bridge that gap between the mathematical modeling, which is much higher level, and looking at the entire community and different transmission rates and then taking it down to the granular level of aerosols. And how do you predict how much risk there is within a certain room from an infected person? And then how how does that impact the situation if they're sitting at the front of the room versus the back of the room? And what types of HVAC, heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems should we be designing or slightly upgrading to take into consideration these risks? So yeah, it's been a pretty exciting field of research and now we're also working with DeHavilland supported by and submissions alliance grant to be able to see how when we're traveling around the world what types of risks and how can we minimize those risks? And we started off working with the COVID-19 VPRI grant from York University. So that and also with the answer, emerging infectious disease modeling of one health modeling initiative, which is out of York University. So that's been a really interesting pan-Canadian and some international colleagues as well to look at how COVID 19 and even other new infectious diseases might be emerging from from the environment in future. So how we can be prepared for the next pandemic?
Ophelia Michaelides [00:23:32] Absolutely such important work. And you can't help [...] I can't help but think as I sit now in my office. So we're back in the office part time around, around, you know, with what the system is like, you know, in our work environments. But like you said, in terms of, you know, risk and and mathematical modeling. And I think it also really outlines the importance of the interdisciplinarity of, you know, these public health challenges, global health challenges, whatever you want to call it. You know, as we clearly have all I think understood as, you know, these infectious diseases do not have any boundaries. And we very much live that in the COVID era. And so really bringing together the type of expertize that, you know, your your team, your engineering teams bring to, you know, some of the, you know, bio statisticians to our sociologists, to, you know, name the discipline that, you know, there is a perspective, a framing and whole area of knowledge and skill that can contribute to, as you said, you know, looking ahead and preventing the next pandemic, for instance. So really appreciate the work that your team has done. It's absolutely fascinating and very much connected. These are all things that we, you know, we need and continue to build on past experiences. So I'm glad that your team is working on this.
Marina Freire-Gormaly [00:24:55] Thanks. Yeah. It's always interesting to collaborate with many different fields. I think that's where the most exciting insights can come from and most innovative approaches as well.
Ophelia Michaelides [00:25:07] Exactly. Absolutely. I could not agree more. Well, thank you, Marina, so much. We really appreciate all of this giving given us a lot of food for thought, that's for sure.
Marina Freire-Gormaly [00:25:17] Thanks so much for having me. I really enjoyed speaking with you all.
Marina Freire-Gormaly [00:25:21] Thanks so much. Nitish is a mechanical engineer and a post-doctoral researcher at the Center of Global Engineering at the University of Toronto. His research aims to develop innovative technologies that increase sustainability and accessibility to clean water and energy. Hi Nitish Welcome to the program and thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us today.
Nitish Sarker [00:25:51] Well, thank you so much for having me.
Ophelia Michaelides [00:25:54] It's fantastic. Nitish, to begin, please tell us a little bit about your research.
Nitish Sarker [00:26:00] Yeah, thank you. So I'm a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Global Engineering at the University of Toronto. And basically I'm a mechanical engineer who was working on adaption of novel, clean water and energy technologies designed for a low resource communities. For example, you can assume that more than a billion people in the world have do not have access to safe drinking water. And in many cases, we have seen that although we have water resources or technologies to produce potable water, they often do not get implemented because due to lack of energy access. So it's more like an interconnected problem. And these issues are even more significant in low and middle income countries of the global south. So if we want to support water capture and treatment technologies for renewables, that could be a really viable solution. But because they're really intermittent in nature, it adds on to the existing complexity of the water energy nexus, and it's also making them the maintainability of these systems really complicated. So what I do on my part is I try to identify those complexities, like exactly how they can inhibit the adoption of those technologies and what would be the appropriate approaches to solve those problems.
Ophelia Michaelides [00:27:25] Mm. This is that's fascinating. You touched upon already so many complex and interconnected issues there. I'm wondering, you know, as you've been conducting your research, what are, in your opinion, some significant existing issues regarding sustainable energy, whether it be specific to Canada or a more global context? I'd be interested to know more about that.
Nitish Sarker [00:27:52] Hmm. Oh, that's a great question. Actually, no, it depends really on how you define sustainability in the energy sector. And there is no one single answer, as you can understand. So if we think about sustainability in terms of reliable energy access, in that case it can be talked about or it can be split into two halves. One is energy access, the other would be energy affordability. So while Canada is doing good in terms of having energy access to everyone, but in terms of affordability generally, we're not doing that grid. So you can still find energy poor households in Canada, especially in the Atlantic region, with more than 20% of the people are below the energy poverty line. Now, I should note that the energy poverty line means that those households have high home income or home energy cost burdens compared to the rest of the Canada. So they're paying more than 6% of their after tax income for their household energy mix. And moreover, energy accessibility issues are still existing among indigenous communities of Canada. Now, if you zoom out and kind of look into the entire world, both of these challenges are even more acute because most of them are still dealing with sustainable, reliable and affordable energy access on the first hand. And then they have to solve that affordability issues. Now, kind of on the other end of the spectrum, if you think about sustainability in terms of whether or not we are producing those energies from low carbon resources or whether or not we're producing greenhouse gas as a byproduct. In that case, it's a different game, right? So in that case, we have to think about whether or not our energy sources are renewable or low carbon or whether or not we are producing energy from fossil fuel resources. So that is another big challenge. Luckily, we are looking into we have this Paris climate agreement. We are trying to reach that 2050 near zero decarbonization goal. But we are still a long, long, long road away from that.
Ophelia Michaelides [00:30:10] Mm hmm. Nitish I [..] in in your answer there, I heard a lot about sustainability around accessibility, affordability. And I also hear a very strong thread around equity. And the you raise this important point around equity and how does equity play a role in accessing and improving access to affordable, reliable, sustainable energy that you mentioned previously.
Nitish Sarker [00:30:38] All right. So equity is probably like, in my view, it is the most critical point of the Sustainable Development Goals seven that we have. So if you read into the Sustainable Development Goals seven by UN, you'll see states that ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all. Now, in this case, if you want to see the progress of our or measured the progress of the goal, the indicators states that the indicator actually wants to actually have Internet access in terms of 50 kilowatt hour per person per year in rural areas. And if you're living in an urban household, in that case, your energy limit is about 100 kilowatt hour per person per year. But in high-income countries, we have an annual electricity consumption over 2000 kilowatt hour per capita. So this is not on the same power. So when you're considering upward energy, access to low income or middle income countries or energy poor households or low income households, we cannot just put 50 kilowatt hours per person per year as a threshold. It's not enough to improve the living standard livelihood or kind of moving them away from their poverty situation. So the minimum needs to be at least starting somewhere, what, thousand kilowatt hour to make those changes happen, to improve their health care system, to make sure they have better education and have economic progress. And it also goes hand in hand in hand with climate action and other sustainable development goals. So in that case, we have to like. As from the policy side, we need to have clear and long term policy signals. We need to have a better financial kind of attachment or innovation. For example, the carbon pricing in Canada is a really good approach, so we have to expand on those things. So stuff like that would be really helpful.
Ophelia Michaelides [00:32:48] Mm hmm. I really appreciate the tissue. Kind of a, you know, macro perspective on this and some of the policy levers that we can use to to achieve equity in this in this SDG specifically. And in that vein, I'm wondering if I mean, I suspect there are also tools on the more micro level that we can use to achieve these goals. How can, for instance, something like machine learning approaches be applied in generating and delivering renewable energy more equitably, for instance? Hmm.
Nitish Sarker [00:33:24] Oh, that's actually a great point, because in in the energy sector, machine learning can be thought of as part of the digitalization of the technology. So whenever we are talking about energy systems, so we're not just talking about electrification of our households, we are also talking about electrification of the transport industry or the heavy industries, all of those things, right? So in those cases, we can actually make our grid systems smarter. So we can design smart grid systems where you will have your EV or your electric vehicle charged at there at a time when your grid system is not at a very, very high load. So you can use machine learning tools to design a smart demand response system so that your EV is charging when no one else is using the electricity, like between 12 a.m. and 6 a.m. in the morning. Right. So those are two things like in those kind of demand response management or a smart grid management machine learning tools can be really, really valuable also. So this is a really high end use of machine learning technologies in developed countries where we already started seeing talks about smart grid management are kind of the initial points to design a smart grid. Now if you move into a low resource communities, machine learning can also help. So we are more or less all familiar with the crypto trend or initiatives which uses blockchain based systems. So you can use basically the same technology to design a peer to peer solar home systems. So if I'm living in a remote community and I have affordability of using a solar, solar home system, but my neighbor doesn't have that opportunity. I can actually sell my excess energy to that neighbor using this peer to peer connectivity programs. So people are still making like already making these really comprehensive tools like this peer-to-peer, machine learning-based solar share systems. So which are, I think, a really cool initiative in terms of seeing or using machine learning to solve critical problems in low resource communities.
Ophelia Michaelides [00:35:56] That's very fascinating. I had no idea that was possible. And it's so encouraging to hear, you know, a lot of these tools bridging the gap between, you know, real world problems and and, you know, some very tangible approaches that are being worked on and in engineering labs, for instance. Thank you so much for sharing your research with us today and for giving us some important things to consider when reimagining what clean and affordable energy looks like here in Canada, but also, as you mentioned, in a lot of other contexts and settings around the world. Really appreciate you taking the time to be on our podcast today.
Nitish Sarker [00:36:39] Yeah, no worries. And thanks for having me today.
Ophelia Michaelides [00:36:48] The conversations with our guests today have shed light on the importance of developing innovative solutions to improve access and sustainability of clean energy. As our speakers noted, inefficiencies in energy delivery within Canada reduce the affordability of clean energy in many communities across the country, resulting in significant economic burdens. Moreover, burning fossil fuels to generate electricity, as is done in Canada, causes significant air pollution and poses great health risks, particularly for communities that lack access to natural gases. Marina's research on improving air quality through improved HVAC and air conditioning aims to address these concerns. Furthermore, Marina and Nitish's research on novel water filtration and delivery systems are also relevant in resolving ongoing issues regarding the lack of clean drinking water for many indigenous communities in Canada. Advancements in the field of computer science statistics and engineering are also coming into play in the efforts to achieve SDG seven. Both Marina and Nitish discussed the potential of using machine learning, big data and novel computational methods in designing energy systems. These novel techniques will hopefully bring us one step closer towards reaching a more sustainable future with equitable access to clean energy.
Ophelia Michaelides [00:38:08] Healthy Cities in the SDG Era is made with the support of the School of Cities at the University of Toronto, whose mission is to bring urban focused researchers, educators, students, practitioners and the public together to explore and address complex urban challenges. We would love to hear your thoughts on Healthy Cities in the SDG Era. If you enjoyed this episode, please rate, subscribe and share to help others find the series. You can find healthy cities in the SDG era on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and the Dalla Lana School of Public Health's YouTube page, as well as our Center for Global Health website. Join us for a final episode where we'll wrap up our series on the SDGs and Healthy Cities. Thank you for tuning in and we look forward to speaking soon. Take care.