Sustainable Energy Speaker Series – Fusion Energy: Important Questions and Answers

• In-person event

• Contact
• Emma McDonald, emmasmcdonald@cunet.carleton.ca

This seminar addresses four sets of questions to create a basis for discussion, answers, and actions:

1. What is fusion energy and what is known about it as a natural phenomenon?
2. Why does industrial fusion energy hold great potential as a large source of carbon-free energy for personal, community, and industrial use?
3. What scientific and engineering approaches have been pursued to make fusion energy a commercial reality and what progress has been made, especially recently?
4. What is necessary to ensure that fusion energy development and industrial production meet safety, sustainability, social acceptance, and economic objectives and create world-wide benefits?

The answers to most of these questions require creativity and commitment, the qualities that Canadian students and their professors are known for.

The answers also point to Canada changing from ‘interested observer’ to ‘active participant’ in global fusion energy development and use.  Realistic pathways for the change exist and are based on concerted collaboration between academic institutions, governments, and industry.

Please register for this event by Friday, February 23, 2024. 

Speaker Biography

Axel Meisen currently serves as the President of the Fusion Energy Council of Canada, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the objective furtherance of fusion energy development and uses in Canada and abroad.

As a consultant, he advises senior management in Canadian and international organizations on strategy development and implementation using foresight and other methodologies suitable for issues with long time horizons.  Example projects are Bitumen Beyond Combustion (a project focused on making non-combustion products from Alberta oilsands bitumen) and Towards Low-GHG Emissions from Energy Use in Select Industry Sectors (a project of the Energy Community of the International Council of Academies of Engineering and Technological Societies, CAETS).

Axel held the inaugural Chair in Foresight at the Alberta Research Council, after serving as president of Memorial University of Newfoundland, president of the Canadian Commission for UNESCO, president of the Canadian Academy of Engineering, and Dean of Applied Science and Professor of Chemical Engineering at The University of British Columbia.  He was appointed to the Order of Canada in 2008.

He has B.Sc., M.Sc., and Ph.D. degrees in Chemical Engineering from Imperial College London, California Institute of Technology, and McGill University, respectively.