So Durata is the same university distinguished professor.
The lab would be a strange endowed chair and professor in the Department of Civil, Environmental and Genetic Engineering.
She is the interim vice president for Knowledge Enterprise in the Ohio State University,
and she's also director of the Satellite Positioning International Navigation Laboratory.
Most recently also became the Princeton Investigator Very Exciting New Initiative established by the National Science Foundation,
the Engineering Research Visioning Alliance. I know she's going to talk a bit about this nature.
So to draw so many thanks for taking the time to join us from Ohio and talk about some very exciting developments,
both at Ohio State and with IRVM that may offer lessons for us and how we accelerate the development of solutions to tackle climate change.
Over to you. Thank you very much. I'm really glad I can.
I can talk to you and present a little bit on Aruba and also on the University
Private Partnerships for Climate Solutions from the Ohio State University.
So next slide, please. You.
Trevor, the Engineering Research Visioning Alliance established by the National Science Foundation to develop bold and
transformative new engineering research directions and a core partnership of the Big Ten Academic Alliance,
the Score Idea Foundation and you IDP. We represent every U.S. state.
There's a seat at the table for everyone in the engineering research community.
Irvine is a network of networks. We've designed an organisational engine that crosses boundaries and enables six key groups to work together
to identify and develop new engineering research directions and build unity across the community,
engaging stakeholder groups across numerous sectors who provide input or ideation through a range of visioning activities.
Irma's diverse network of allies, government labs, professional societies, nonprofits, students, educators, industry associations,
venture organisations and champions of the future of engineering research
provide the brain trust that fuels the Irba engine and to build collaboration,
spark next generation ideas, solve our grand challenges, protect our resources, train the workforce of the future,
create a vision for engineering research leadership that will unleash discovery and innovation and increase prosperity.
In Irvine, the Engineering Research Visioning Alliance.
How can we move to the next slide, please? All right. Thank you.
So let me just emphasise that one of the primary goals of why vote was even established was to really
connect academic industry and government partners to work together to jointly envision a faster,
better and more efficient solutions, particularly those pertaining societal challenges where engineering can significantly contribute.
So you can clearly see the pace and scale of what we envision is really only possible with this partnership.
So Irba, as you've heard in the video, is the first engineering research visioning organisation of its kind of its kind,
and it serves as a convenor to bring together multiple voices, voices of engineers, scientists,
technologists, ethicists,
policymakers and also the general public to exchange ideas and conceive cutting edge directions for new areas of engineering,
which can benefit from genetic research to benefit the society.
So based on its broad and very diverse network of networks, as you have seen in the video,
we have over 350 universities well over and industry partners and national labs and.
And then the moment even private citizens joined us.
So we have already an enormous footprint with the objective of Irba to convene in the inclusive representation of academic,
corporate, community and professional societies and also public stakeholders.
Number two, we will facilitate various visioning events to enable the engineering community to speak
with one voice and therefore we are really seriously aiming at breaking the silos.
We also are aiming at supporting rapid and efficient response to emerging opportunities.
We will catalyse the development of new programmes, policies and models of connectivity and communicate through more,
although channel possible strategies that we develop that will leverage the tremendous assets of National Science Foundation and urban networks.
So we are still really working on identifying the topics for our first vision and event since the organisation.
It's been in the making for several months now, but was formally established on on 15th of April, just three months ago.
So we really are working on it. But what I would like to emphasise that it's fair to expect that the impact of engineering on
climate solutions would be definitely one of our first upcoming focus areas for discussion.
But at the moment, I'm not ready yet.
So in the meantime, I will present an example of private academic partnership for energy and climate solutions from my home university.
Next slide, please. So let's talk about comprehensive energy management at Ohio State.
Next slide, please. Let me begin with defining the challenge and the opportunity as as we see it.
So I hope you agree with me that addressing today's critical scientific and societal challenges requires increasingly collaborative,
cross-disciplinary and convergent approaches through new models of engagement
and to ensure broad participation across the entire engineering ecosystem.
So one of the challenges in combating climate change through energy efficiency and by reducing our CO2 emissions.
So you may want to ask why we should rely on partnerships to achieve those goals.
Well, let me begin by saying universities have the brainpower and research bench strength,
which is critical for new technologies and systems that can advance solutions to the pressing challenges posed by climate change.
Universities, however, are often slow to change.
Often, faculty intensive incentives are misaligned, and we are usually not very well equipped to bridge the R&D valley of death.
Private firms, on the other hand,
lack bench strength stability for long term partnerships because they are subject to the short term demand of their stakeholders and marketplace.
And this may prohibit a longer term R&D commitment that is needed to generate a return on investment.
Hence, academia industry partnership can benefit both sectors.
As in the example I will be presenting today, next slide, please.
Before I move on to the example I want to introduce to you, Ohio State, it's one of the top three largest campus in the United States,
with close to 500 buildings on 200 2000 acres in urban environments, close to 60000 students with about 100000 people.
They are daily, maybe not during the pandemic, but this is our average on the normal operations.
We have 38 campus residence hall halls and then when I mention major major medical centre and of course, three stadiums,
Ohio State is all big about football, so you can imagine how much energy we require to really operate this giant campus.
Next slide, please. Motivation. So you may ask, so what motivated Ohio State leadership some years ago to seek efficiency,
efficient energy solutions through a partnership with the industry?
So, number one, if you look at our energy cost of 15 million annual energy costs is a humongous amount of funding.
So, of course, cost was certainly one of the driving factors.
However, I want to emphasise in other important aspect from the very beginning,
when university was thinking about it, we were thinking of finding a partner who can also support academic mission.
Now, in other aspects, why we really wanted to switch for no obvious, essentially from the beginning of the university.
University has been buying and managing energy, including the chiller plant on campus, all by the university employees.
Not the best solution. So the idea was to really bring a private sector to do it much more efficiently, also faster, cheaper and better.
So the guiding principle, as I mentioned earlier, was not to just find a vendor to do that.
We were thinking beyond the transactional relationship and really,
really wanted to include a much broader set of academic goals while essentially entering any future agreements.
Next slide, please. So the idea was to lower our energy cost, as I mentioned earlier,
with the ultimate goal of CO2 CO2 footprint reduction through a systems approach to energy and to operate,
maintain and expand utility system with a specific focus on impacts and benefits through the university and to the environment.
One of our guiding principles was to enter a partnership that will also support, like I said earlier,
the core academic mission and you will hear me repeated many times during the talk.
It was very important to us to work with the organisation, which will share our values, our goals and will be able to support our academic mission.
So University issued a request for proposals and subsequently in 2017, after multiple levels of reviews,
the engine North America and Acxiom infrastructure proposal was selected to form Ohio State Energy Partnership.
I'd like to also mention to you that this partnership was not the first industry
partnership that Ohio State has established a few years prior to this partnership.
Ohio has entered a lease agreement with an external investor to form what is now called Campus Park,
which is the exclusive rights to which has the exclusive rights to operate Ohio State's
parking system and provide parking services for the duration of 50 year lease periods,
and it began in 2012. So in return, the university received an upfront payment of about half a billion dollars.
So clearly, university opted to transition the management of its parking operation to Campus Park.
Seen this as an innovative, innovative way to fund its academic mission.
I want to emphasise that the money from the agreement will provide about three point one billion over the lifetime of the lease,
which all will be invested in academic initiative faculty, higher student scholarships and support in arts and humanities.
Next slide, please. So what made M.G. Acxiom proposal attractive to Ohio State?
So number one, obviously upfront payment of over a billion dollars was a great incentive.
This was by far the largest addition to our endowment. But what was most important, very important to us as well,
that part of the money was agreed to be essentially redirected to academic collaboration, scholarship, faculty chairs,
endowed chairs, philanthropy, students innovations,
etc. and one of the important components and I will get to it in a moment is the idea of energy advancement and innovation.
Centred energy came with an idea of building this centre on campus as a part of this agreement.
So certainly this was extremely attractive to us. And of course, on top of this, there was a promise which they are actually keeping very,
very nice to improve campus energy efficiency and achieve about twenty five or more percent of efficiency within 10 years.
And of course, keep going because our our ultimate goal is really to also not only reduce the energy usage,
but also reduce our CO2 footprint ultimately to zero.
So energy is implementing a serious of energy conservation measures, which were specifically designed for higher state needs such as smart deployment,
smart metre excuse me, deployment through campus, energy efficient indoor and outdoor lighting,
and also repairs and upgrades to our utility infrastructure.
Next slide, please. So in this couple of agreements, Ohio State Energy Partnership operates a grid to operate all of the campus utility systems,
which is electricity, natural gas, steam, chilled water, geothermal generation and distribution.
And I want to mention we have five 000+ with geothermal wells on campus.
And it also invests in energy conservation measures, existing systems improvements and replacements.
And, of course, the utility system expansion to serve a new campus facilities as we continue to grow.
And I have to tell you, there is not a single year when we don't have multiple development of new buildings, new infrastructure on campus.
And once again, you can see in red on this slide.
A very important part of the partnership is, again, academic collaboration.
Next slide, please. I'm going to actually to provide you a few examples of such a collaboration shortly,
but before I move onto it, I'd like to very briefly introduce Energy North America.
You probably know the company. I just want to emphasise a couple of aspects why this is very important to us to enter.
Why? Why? Essentially, Energy North America was an ideal partner for America, for academic collaboration.
So, of course, the size is important. They have a huge footprint in the United States.
But what really is attractive to us is their commitment to environmental, social and governance, governance, best practises.
And those traits have been recognised by Dow Jones Sustainability World and Europe Index,
which essentially placed energy amongst the top 10 percent of sustainability driven companies in the in their peer groups.
So angry at the moment is fully engaged in developing future energy composite conservation measures and utilising
new all the newest technologies that are being at the same time developed in cooperation with the university.
So once again, I want to point out the pace and scale of this operation, which is only possible with this partnership.
I don't think that university could have accomplished this alone.
And let me give you just one example why we strongly believe that this partnership is really helping us in pace and scale of the operation.
So prior to entering this partnership, Ohio State has been retrofitting buildings on campus to become energy smart.
The impressive and I'm trying to be sarcastic, impressive pace of five buildings in three years.
And remember, we have close to 500 buildings on campus with energy on board.
They have been retrofitting 50 buildings per year, so you can immediately see the pace and scale as the benefits this this partnership.
Next slide, please let me introduce the energy digital platform smart institutions.
It was developed in collaboration with C three I.
It's an air and IoT based platform customised for Ohio State.
But of course, it's a platform which energy use is what they are other customers right now.
Like I said, it's been implemented to the next step of our of our evolution to more efficient and less CO2 emissions kind of a system.
So this platform is really key to managing campus energy in a more effective way.
And essentially, like I said, earlier moves, this platform far beyond Ohio State is being used by energy with other customers,
so you can see the scale of the operation again beyond Ohio State campus.
Let me let me also tell you that in the old system, which is partially current system as well,
Ohio State is nearly 100 percent reliant on the public utility grids for energy supply.
The new model that you can see you can see depicted in this figure.
The Ohio State University Microgrid uses that digital platform, which you can see on the screen, which serves as a neutral system of the microgrid,
which provides expanded and interconnected heating and cooling network,
which is anchored by a new combined heat and power plant, which is currently under construction.
So once again, this is a digital platform which will be connected to the new plant, which is currently under construction.
And I want to also emphasise that energy provides upfront investments to build this new plant.
So once the system is fully ready and operational, this new system will allow information to flow completely seamlessly from me.
Just the controllers from controllers,
the generators ET reduce volume and cost of purchased energy commodities reduce and provide more control over Ohio State carbon footprint.
Extremely important to us, increase the campus energy, reliability and resiliency,
and also allows seamless interaction for future energy sources such as hydrogen.
You'd also be able to connect disconnect from the public grid to continue to operate in island mode in times,
for example, of natural disasters, cyber attacks or any other situation when we need to operate on our own.
And most of all, this new system really provides a massive, massive platform of opportunity for various academic collaboration activities.
As I said earlier, Ohio State's intent is to stop using fossil fuels over time.
So the hope we can help is that we can switch to hydrogen fuel.
And again, I want to emphasise the new plant will be able to use hydrogen as a fuel.
That's a long term plan, and we hope that this will take us get us to zero carbon emissions by 2050.
And I also want to emphasise at this point again in every aspect of the academic contribution
of energy engines very actively sponsoring our faculty as research on hydrogen technology.
Next slide, please. So one of the prime examples of academic collaboration is the project, which you can see briefly described in the slide.
It's the National Science Foundation and Art Empowerment Friendship Programme.
It's a three million grant which essentially is focussed on training the next generation of energy innovators.
We are aiming at training about Eight-page students in first four years,
and it will be all focussed on digital technologies and decentralised generation of energy.
And I want to emphasise a key participation participant is energy.
We believe that the partnership with Energy really gave us a cutting edge and allow us to win this proposal.
I also want to add a few words aside from just this project,
when we obviously are asking our are been working together to get external funding NGOs heavily investing internally.
Twenty five million for scholarships and internships. 200000 for Student Sustainability Challenge competition.
In other million to support curriculum development in sustainability.
This is very telling. This is the only organisation that works with us to help us develop new curriculum
for solely aimed at sustainability and also support our capstone projects.
So has perfectly present her perfect presence in our classrooms.
Again, examples can be multiplied here. I have a long list of those.
I just want to also emphasise they are maybe not direct and engagement in research,
but they are absolutely full understanding of the markets where the innovation is needed and they are support it in targeted research,
investments, hydrogen modelling and simulation and new energy business model.
Next slide, please. Energy innovation and investment centre.
It's another yet example of the engagement with energy and their investment into sustainable innovation.
Energy sources. So the partnership, of course, is being used in campus as a living lab,
and this new Energy Advancement and Innovation Centre, which will be located in the University Innovation District,
is another example of of the academic partnership when energy invests significant
amount of money $15 million to help us extend our innovation district.
And just as a side note, Innovation District is been under development right now.
It's been designed as interdisciplinary innovation space where full cycle of innovation will happen.
So from idea inception through all stages of research to translation, so we expect presence of research, a student industry venture capital,
what have you so entire cycle and entire ecosystem, which is needed to quickly move idea to application?
Also,
I want to emphasise that it was energy leadership who came up with an idea of including energy innovation and advancement centre in the agreement.
Next slide, please. I want to show you another example of the collaboration in sustainability and workforce development space,
and that was just the first one we had together with energy. Now, recently, about two months ago or so, we have submitted another large proposal,
11million proposal to the Department of Energy on connected communities.
This is again another perfect example of a partnership between university and energy.
We have a living lab already on campus. We are at an energy innovation and advancement and innovation centre,
which certainly would be leveraged in this research if we are awarded this proposal
and we believe that we really have a great chance just because we have energy,
which is the critical partner and gives us competitive advantage.
Can I have a next slide, please? So let me try to summarise with very brief summary of the overall benefits of
the partnership as we see it right now after about three and a half years.
So how are your states certainly? Is modernising campus an unjust system, something which we really wanted to accomplish?
Now, Energy Innovation Centre is and is certainly an additional benefit to us.
It is an investment which will increase the pace and scale of energy innovation and, of course, academic collaboration.
The examples I gave you a few samples, but those are also growing and expanding for energy.
We are very stable customer. They are. They already are here for 50 years.
We are very open and flexible partner for their experimentation. They are using our campus as a lab.
And of course, we both are working together to accelerate the development by working with faculty and students.
And my next slide, please. I want to emphasise one important aspect of the success of those kind of partnerships.
Secondly, alignment alignment is absolutely crucial.
So the decision for us to enter a 50 year long term agreement with energy was really made solely after Ohio State had a kind of
percent confidence that the deal will mutually benefit both parties and both parties would work together to benefit the environment.
So that's actually extremely important to us.
And again, I cannot emphasise more how alignment of objectives and goals is important and key to success.
And just one other comment I want to add is that, of course, energy is not working just with Ohio State.
They have at least three other universities Maryland, Iowa and Georgetown, and working with other universities to enter agreements.
However, one important differentiating factor is that Ohio State is the only organisation now which
is actually who enter the partnership with the focus on academic and academic components.
So no other universities have done it so far. And can I have my last slide, please?
I want to give the acknowledgements to my fantastic colleague Kate Barger and Elaina Erwin,
who lead the Sustainability Institute and help me in preparation of this presentation.
Thank you so much for your attention.