What caused two recent spikes in grain prices? Are we facing a global food crisis? Graduate students enrolled in the new Master of Food and Resource Economics (MFRE) at the Faculty of Land and Food Systems will probe these and other real world issues when the program launches this fall.
clean energy research centre
Front L to R: Prof. Dr. Ulrich Buller, Fraunhofer Institute and UBC President Stephen Toope. Back L to R: Thomas Rachel, Parliamentary State Secretary, Federal Ministry of Education and Research, and Mike Lake, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Industry. Photo creditL Franka Burns
The University of British Columbia today forged a formal partnership with Germany’s Fraunhofer, Europe’s largest research institution for applied research, to focus on renewable-energy technologies.
Jonathan Rhone (CEO, Nexterra Systems Corp.), Prof. Stephen Toope (President & Vice-Chancellor, UBC), Elyse Allan (President, GE Canada) and B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell at the announcement of the UBC Bioenergy Research and Demonstration Project on February 15, 2010. Photo: Martin Dee
A first-of-its-kind bioenergy project at UBC will generate enough clean electricity to power 1,500 homes, reduce the university’s natural gas consumption by up to12 per cent and eliminate up to 4,500 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions per year – the equivalent of taking 1,100 cars off the road.
Wood pellets offer opportunities for a cleaner burning biofuel. Photo: ErinRose Handy, reprinted with permission from Ingenuity, Fall/Winter 2008.
Each year, more than one million tonnes of wood pellets – made of waste wood from B.C. forests – are shipped to Europe to meet a growing demand for a clean-burning biofuel. Composed entirely of compressed sawdust or forest residues, wood pellets generate far fewer emissions than conventional firewood and are the subject of a unique research effort within UBC’s Clean Energy Research Centre.
Emissions of greenhouse gases produced through the combustion of fossil fuels is a problem receiving increasing attention. In order to meet greenhouse gas reduction targets, it will be necessary to develop strategies to reduce the reliance of the transportation sector on fossil fuels.
Gas hydrate research at CERC
CERC’s gas hydrate research focuses on the equilibrium and dynamic properties of gas hydrates and their applications to the fields of energy, environment and novel technologies.
Clathrate or gas hydrates are crystals formed by water and molecules like methane, ethane, propane, carbon dioxide and hydrogen. It is estimated that methane hydrate crystals below the seafloor and below permafrost contain an enormous amount of methane a potentially huge source of energy.
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