Sunday, May 4, 2025

Opportunity to participate in survey on future energy options

Voice your Opinions on Energy for the Future We are looking for volunteers for a study on energy options for La Ronge and surrounding communities. This project aims to understand individual and community opinions about different types of energy, such as wind, solar and battery storage.  Participants who complete a survey will receive $50... More

Wednesday, April 2, 2025

SMRs: “Grid saviors or billion-dollar blunders?”

A group of four experts in small modular reactors, including Professor Ahmed Abdulla, were recently interviewed by POLITICO's Energywire to discuss the economic, regulatory, and public acceptance challenges that would face small modular nuclear reactors as they are deployed in the electric... More

Tuesday, December 31, 2024

Integrating climate and physical constraints into assessments of net capture from direct air capture facilities

Few credible experts see how we’ll reach net-zero emissions without actively removing carbon dioxide out of the air, perhaps through direct air capture technologies. This has become an active research area over the past two decades, but most existing work doesn’t consider how ambient environmental conditions—temperature, humidity, pressure,... More

Monday, December 16, 2024

Luis wins Best Poster Award at EMH 2024

Congratulations to 2nd year PhD student, Luis Lopez Diaz, for winning the Best Poster Award at the 2024 edition of EMH! He presented his work on optimizing the flexibility of active distribution networks to support the larger transmission... More

Saturday, October 19, 2024

Ambient environmental conditions influence DAC cost and performance

Direct air capture (DAC) is touted as a potential contributor to climate change mitigation and the achievement of net-zero emission targets, including in nations like Canada. Recent research by Patrick Shorey and Ahmed Abdulla shows the extent to which ambient environmental conditions, including temperature, pressure, carbon dioxide concentration,... More

Tuesday, September 17, 2024

Laying the foundations for deployment of negative emissions technologies

Researchers Patrick Shorey, Grace Awuor Arwa, and fellow team members have published a new article in the journal Environmental Research Letters, exploring the opportunities and challenges facing large-scale expansion of direct air capture (DAC) and carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS). The paper summarizes results of a highly... More

Sunday, March 17, 2024

Postdoctoral Position in Energy Network Optimization

A post-doctoral position in operations research / network optimization / power and energy systems planning is open in the Alternative Pathways for the Energy Transition (APEX) laboratory at Carleton University. The Position The postdoctoral researcher will contribute to the development of several network optimization models of the Canadian energy... More

Monday, November 13, 2023

The U.S. pivot to small reactors

The challenges that continue to face small modular reactors are large. The recent cancellation of America's flagship small modular reactor project in Idaho demonstrates some of the economic challenges that face nuclear power. Ahmed Abdulla is quoted in a recent article in The New York Times that expands on these... More

Thursday, September 28, 2023

Do curtailment caps help or hinder decarbonization?

As the world deploys more variable and intermittent renewable energy capacity, power system operators increasingly need to make decisions that curtail the power that those sources generate to ensure the reliability of the electric power system. Curtailment refers to the reduction in power production from a generator to accommodate grid or... More

Tuesday, March 21, 2023

Atmospheric verification of emissions reductions on paths to deep decarbonization

To maintain credibility and support international cooperation on climate change mitigation, we need to be able to identify if and when national policy efforts are helping to stabilize the climate. In new research published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, a team of researchers that includes Ahmed Abdulla develops and applies a... More

Sunday, February 12, 2023

Estimating thermal energy loads in remote and northern communities

A new publication by researchers in the APEX research group develops, applies, and tests a method for generating simulated thermal load data for Canada's remote and northern communities. Remote and northern communities are eager to transition away from diesel and towards low-carbon, sustainable microgrids. This requires detailed knowledge of the... More

Monday, January 23, 2023

PhD Position in Power and Energy Systems Planning

A PhD position in operations research / large-scale network optimization / power and energy systems planning is open in the Alternative Pathways for the Energy Transition (APEX) laboratory at Carleton University. The Position The PhD researcher will contribute to the development of several optimization models of the Canadian energy system. These... More

Friday, December 16, 2022

Green hydrogen production in the Atlantic Maritimes for fossil fuel-exit

Research published recently by the APEX group assesses the cost and performance of integrated energy systems that employ offshore wind power and water electrolysis to supplant liquid and gaseous fuel consumption in the Atlantic Maritimes region of Canada. Apart from hydropower, it is difficult to find an energy technology in Canada around which... More

Wednesday, November 23, 2022

Announcing new 5-year research project supported by ECCC: Bending the Curve with NETs

The Government of Canada’s Environmental Damages Fund, administered by Environment and Climate Change Canada, is allocating $1.489 million to Carleton University for the research project entitled “Bending the Curve with NETS: Developing a New Modelling Framework for Negative Emissions Technologies”. The project is led by Dr. Kristen R.... More

Wednesday, August 24, 2022

Addressing nuclear power’s social challenges to increase deployment

Nuclear power could provide large amounts of low-carbon electricity that would help us deeply decarbonize the global energy system. However, it often faces societal challenges that dampen its deployment prospects. What are these challenges and how do we resolve them in the next generation of reactors? As part of his work on the U.S.... More

Thursday, May 26, 2022

PhD position in the modelling of separation processes and negative emissions technologies

A PhD position in the modelling of separation processes and negative emissions technologies is open in the Alternative Pathways for the Energy Transition (APEX) laboratory at Carleton University. The PhD candidate will develop open-source process models of negative emissions technologies (NETs), like direct air capture of CO2 (DAC) and carbon... More

Tuesday, November 23, 2021

APEX research featured on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation

On the heels of COP26, research on carbon capture and storage (CCS) that was recently conducted by the APEX research group and colleagues was featured on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's (ABC) Radio National show, Science Friction. Ahmed Abdulla took part in the broadcast, which can be heard on the ABC's website and is also available as... More

Monday, July 12, 2021

Spatio-temporal probabilistic wind power forecasting framework

Accurate probabilistic forecasting of wind power output is critical to maximizing network integration of this clean energy source. New research by Professors Arrieta-Prieto and Schell, published in the International Journal of Forecasting, developed a spatio-temporal framework that outperformed competitive models in both the univariate and... More

Monday, June 28, 2021

Real-time electricity price forecasting of wind farms

The ability to forecast real-time electricity price for wind power is key to the operation of energy markets and hedging price risks. In new research published in the journal Applied Energy, Professor Kristen Schell, working with her PhD student Haolin Yang at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in the U.S., develop novel machine learning algorithms... More

Sunday, May 16, 2021

Exploring the deleterious effects of strategic energy storage operation

Batteries could be critical in the transition to clean energy. They can complement renewable energy sources and help the grid manage fluctuations between supply and demand. But the same characteristics that make batteries attractive could enable users to exploit the electric power system for private profit while increasing overall costs and making... More

Thursday, April 1, 2021

New methods for evaluating energy infrastructure development risks

In new research published in Risk Analysis, Ahmed Abdulla and his colleague Dr. Michael Ford at the Argonne National Laboratory analyze the role of economic risks and institutional risks in limiting the deployment of large, complex energy infrastructure. The abstract reads: "Many energy technologies that can provide reliable, low-carbon... More

Wednesday, February 24, 2021

Ingenious Talk: Engineering Energy Systems for a Climate in Crisis

The climate change alarm bells are ringing for researchers as mounting evidence reveals the extent of humanity’s impact on the Earth and the growing risks of inaction on carbon pollution. Emissions are rising at 1-2% per year, which sets the world further back from stabilizing the climate at internationally agreed upon temperature targets, like... More

Tuesday, January 19, 2021

Explaining success and failure in carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects

Global climate and energy system models often deploy carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technologies to address the challenge of cutting CO2 emissions. One can see the appeal: first, CCS technologies make it possible to use existing infrastructure, avoiding the need to construct new energy systems. Second, they can complement renewables as... More

Monday, December 14, 2020

Abdulla selected to membership of U.S. National Academies committee

Ahmed Abdulla has been selected to serve on a committee that will investigate the opportunities and challenges facing the future of nuclear power in the United States. This study, "Laying the Foundation for New and Advanced Nuclear Reactors in the United States", is being undertaken by the Board on Energy and Environmental Systems (BEES)... More

Tuesday, December 8, 2020

How might we turn nuclear fusion into an engineering reality?

Ahmed Abdulla recently published a discussion paper in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A. Co-authored with Professor George R. Tynan, Chair of the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at UC San Diego, the paper identifies the characteristics that fusion reactors will need if they are to fit into the emerging... More

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