IEEE Power and Energy Distinguished Lecture – The Energy Transition in Canada and Ontario by Professor Claudio Canizares, University of Waterloo
This event was co-hosted by the IEEE PES SBCs at Imperial College London, University College Dublin, University of Birmingham, University of Manchester and University of Sheffield.
This talk provided an overview of Canadian provincial and remote community grids, and a more detailed discussion of Ontario’s power grid, market, and future expansion plans, from an emissions perspective.
A critical overview of the decarbonization status and policies for energy systems in Canada was also presented, focusing on EV, zero emissions, and hydrogen plans and strategies to enable a Next-Zero 2050.
About the Speaker
Professor Claudio Canizares is a University Professor and the Hydro One Endowed Chair at the Electrical and Computer Engineering (E&CE) Department, and the Executive Director of the Waterloo Institute for Sustainable Energy (WISE) at the University of Waterloo, where he has held various academic and administrative positions since 1993 and has received multiple recognitions, especially the 2021-2022 Awards of Excellence in Graduate Supervision at both the University and Faculty of Engineering levels.
He obtained the Electrical Engineer degree from the Escuela Politécnica Nacional (EPN) in Quito-Ecuador in 1984, where he held different academic and administrative positions between 1983 and 1993, and his MSc (1988) and PhD (1991) degrees in Electrical Engineering are from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
His research activities focus on the study of stability, control, optimization, modeling, simulation, and computational issues in bulk power systems, microgrids, and energy systems in the context of competitive energy markets, smart grids, and energy access. In these areas, he has led or been an integral part of many grants and contracts from government agencies and private companies worth millions of dollars, and has collaborated with multiple industry and university researchers in Canada and abroad, supervising/co-supervising close to 180 research fellows and graduate students. He has authored/co-authored over 370 publications that have exceeded 29,000 citations at a 77 H-index, including journal and conference papers, technical reports, book chapters, disclosures and patents, and has been invited to deliver keynote speeches, seminars, tutorials, and presentations at many prestigious venues worldwide. He is the Editor-In-Chief of the Institute of Electrical & Electronic Engineering (IEEE) Transactions on Smart Grid; the 2022-2023 IEEE Division VII Director of the IEEE and Power & Energy Society (PES) Boards; and a Fellow of the IEEE, a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, where he was the Director of the Applied Science and Engineering Division of the Academy of Science from 2017 to 2020.
Professor Canizares is also the recipient of the 2017 IEEE PES Outstanding Power Engineering Educator Award, the 2016 IEEE Canada Electric Power Medal, and of multiple IEEE PES Technical Council and Committee awards and recognitions, holding leadership positions in several IEEE-PES Committees, Working Groups, and Task Forces. In 2021 and 2022, he received the Award for Excellence in Graduate Supervision from the University of Waterloo.
