Whether it be adopting energy management technologies like smart grids or implementing innovative energy management systems and storage solutions, significant energy investments that drive operational, economic and environmental benefits will continue to shape Canada’s energy future. The challenge going forward however will be balancing environmental commitments with immediate economic priorities.

Shifting geopolitical landscapes

While looming U.S. tariffs are forcing Canada to rethink its export strategies with greater interest in traditional energy sectors like liquid natural gas, Prime Minister Mark Carney plans to implement numerous financial incentives to promote sustainable energy alternatives. This is good news for organizations working to achieve net-zero targets, but their success will ultimately hinge on effective implementation while also navigating economic and political uncertainty.

On the global stage, similar challenges exist. In this recent Utility Dive article by ArchTam’s Adrian Del Maestro, Resetting net zero: What next?, he cites a 2024 decrease in the growth rate of clean energy investment, particularly in emerging technologies like hydrogen and carbon capture and storage.  He also emphasizes the importance of grid modernization and the integration of renewable energy sources.

Embracing technology and innovative thinking

Even though today’s geopolitical landscape threatens collaboration and makes whole-systems thinking more difficult, we’re also experiencing incredible momentum for innovation. Organizations are embracing intrapreneurship to spark accelerated digitalization and a collective desire to create positive societal outcomes. What’s more, technologies that help store, transport and recover energy are transforming how we design, build, and operate today’s infrastructure and its supporting systems.

To align with these rapid technical advancements, we have reimagined how we work and lead in energy transition. Our Sustainable Legacies strategy not only defines the meaningful action needed within our organization, it outlines how we extend our deep technical expertise to best serve our clients.

Our global Water and Environment Advisory business led by Jill Hudkins is an example of where we bring together experts in digital water, asset transformation, strategic energy advisory, resilience planning, climate change mitigation, and ESG to solve our clients most pressing challenges. Their work supports high-growth needs in an increasingly resource-constrained world. Coupled with our world-class program management expertise, we’ve further elevated the value of technical excellence to meet the rapidly growing size, scale and complexity of today’s critical infrastructure.

For over two decades, we’ve helped evaluate and develop renewable energy systems — biomass, solar, wind, hydroelectric, geothermal — and continue to expand our capabilities in emerging areas like hydrogen, nuclear, and future fuels. Across Canada, we’re helping local partners upgrade aging grid systems, strengthen disaster resilience, and build new infrastructure to connect renewable sources to where power is needed most.

We also understand the significant role Indigenous communities play in energy transitions and are committed to implementing the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada Call to Action #92. This includes building respectful, long-term relationships; supporting equitable access to employment, training, and procurement; and advancing economic participation for Indigenous Peoples.

Our work with Henvey Inlet First Nation to deliver a 300-megawatt wind farm on their traditional territory is one such example. With approximately 15 percent of project staff coming from the Anishinabek Nation, we worked closely with the community on environmental assessments and workforce planning to ensure knowledge transfer on local ecosystems and species-at-risk. This project now delivers clean power to 100,000 homes annually.

Looking ahead, Canada’s energy future will be shaped by more than technology — it will be influenced by economic shifts, social and environmental priorities, and evolving public policy. By engaging with clients early and holistically, we evaluate regional opportunities, mitigate organizational risk, and build tailored roadmaps that drive enduring positive outcomes. We are transforming how we deliver — investing in AI, knowledge management, and digital tools that enhance how we work and maximize impact.

Ultimately the success of sustainable energy requires participation from everyone — regulators, industry, transmission companies, large-scale energy users, and public entities. It also demands an all-encompassing, systems-based approach that champions innovation, equity and collaboration. By integrating advisory services that are deeply rooted in technical expertise and a commitment to our Sustainable Legacies strategy, we are supporting communities across Canada and throughout the world in building a clean, resilient and inclusive energy future.

The post What lies ahead for Canada’s green energy sector? appeared first on Blog.

She has expertise in developing approval strategies, leading the preparation of project referrals, coordinating environmental impact assessments and considering the potential risks and impacts posed by proposed projects with respect to their existing environments.

What do you enjoy about your role in the energy sector?

As an environmental specialist, I’m incredibly lucky to work on infrastructure projects across many sectors.

How has the industry evolved since you started working in offshore wind?

Since 2019, I’ve supported offshore wind projects in Australia, helping to navigate the complex approvals landscape. In the early days, there were no regulations, guidelines or precedents specifically for offshore wind — it was truly pioneering work. Since then, significant progress has been made, leading to greater clarity around assessment requirements and overall approval pathways, in parallel with the planned development of complementary infrastructure such as transmission networks and ports.

What’s a recent project you’re particularly proud of, and why?

Supporting Ørsted on the Gippsland 1 Offshore Wind Farm marine environmental surveys and assessments has been a career highlight. Not only is it a technically complex program, but the project is a game-changer for Australia’s clean energy future and it’s really rewarding to work with an industry-leading client.

What advice would you give to young professionals entering the energy field?

Say yes! There are so many opportunities across the board, from batteries and solar to wind and transmission. Your timing couldn’t be better to explore the field and get involved in as much as you can. Now is the perfect time to enter the energy sector!

What’s a surprising skill or hobby you have outside of work?

Hobbies, what hobbies?! When I’m not at work, you can find me with my three girls; watching Disney movies, sipping coffee at the playground or getting colourful and crafty…its messy, chaotic and (mostly) good fun!

The post Transitioning Australia’s energy system: Meet Kerrie Aldous appeared first on Blog.

Miriam Ozanne has a background in mechanical engineering and currently leads ArchTam’s Building Performance team. She established and now oversees this team, which is dedicated to achieving key building performance targets in operational buildings. While the majority of their work focuses on decarbonization and energy optimization, they also provide services aimed at broader wellbeing metrics, such as Indoor Air Quality.

Miriam’s role involves significant client engagement to understand their needs and tailor service offerings accordingly. She continuously liaises and collaborates internally with ArchTam’s multi-disciplinary teams. Clients highly value the team’s ability to provide integrated, multi-disciplinary services to address their building performance needs.

Tell us about what inspired you to join the industry.

I was initially inspired to study mechanical engineering because of my love of Formula 1 as a teenager. However, after graduating, I chose to stay in London and start my career in Building Services. I was drawn to the construction industry by its diversity and the opportunity to collaborate with professionals from various backgrounds and disciplines throughout the entire project lifecycle.

I’m a very purpose driven person, and so applying my built environment design skills to locations beyond just the UK also inspired me to pursue a career in this field. Early in my career, as I honed my core building services skills in my graduate role, I already had the opportunity to make meaningful contributions to international development projects. As a member of PART (Palestine Regeneration Team), a voluntary network of architects, urban planners, academics and engineers based in the UK, I assembled multi-disciplinary engineering teams to support sustainable regeneration projects with NGOs in Palestine.

As my career progressed and I developed my project management skills, I later created the scope and secured the funding to develop renewable energy and recycled water strategies for schools in the Levant using two schools in Lebanon and Palestine as case studies. In addition, I secured research funding to develop a holistic masterplanning methodology to facilitate the planning and implementation of electricity mini-grid projects both in Palestine and in other emerging economies around the world.

What is your favorite ArchTam project that you’ve worked on and why?

One of my recent favourite projects has been working on 20 Fenchurch Street, London (popularly known as the “Walkie Talkie”), where our team helped reduce the building’s operational energy consumption and plan the route to net zero. As project director, I really enjoyed collaborating with the engaged client and building management team to deliver the best outcomes.

When analysing the performance of buildings in use, the challenge often lies in the lack of data. However, in this case, the challenge was the abundance of data available. Our team developed a new tool to efficiently sort and sanitise the data, enabling us to identify significant energy saving opportunities. These included measures such as changing central plant operating set points and optimising plant sequencing which were simple to implement but required in-depth design knowledge and experience to understand the optimum balance between different systems. The building management team were already regularly reviewing plant schedules to minimise plant operation when the building was not in use. However, the in-depth data analysis helped us identify occurrences when main plant was still being triggered to run out of hours and variable speed controls were not working as expected, based on our understanding of building loads and external conditions. This also led to further savings opportunities.

Many of these measures have now been implemented, alongside other initiatives by the building management team, without requiring any investment in capital expenses. This contributed to a 10.6 percent reduction in gas consumption and a 5.3 percent reduction in electricity use in 2023, despite occupancy rising by more than a third over the same period. We recently reviewed the progress for 2024 and found that even greater energy savings have been achieved as the building management team continues to implement many of our recommendations. 

Tell us a story of how your work positively impacted the community.

While much of our building performance work focuses on energy and carbon reduction to address the current climate crisis, I believe that true building performance encompasses a wide range of factors that affect not only the environment but, among other things, people’s health, wellbeing and overall experience within a space.

We explored this with a longstanding client while carrying out a building performance review several years after the refurbishment of their building which our MEP team designed. Alongside reviewing the energy performance, we monitored indoor air quality and measured the lighting performance in typical spaces around the office. It was particularly interesting how the indoor air quality monitoring gave insights into how occupants were using spaces as well as how the plant was operating in a level of detail not available from the electrical meter data. This enabled us to recommend changes to plant operation that balanced optimizing energy performance with enhanced indoor air quality, matched to space utilization and occupancy patterns.

Research suggests people in the UK spend 80-90 percent of their time indoors (homes, schools, workplaces, other public spaces and on transport) and so working to ensure these are healthy spaces that promote wellbeing and support occupants to thrive is critical.

Poor indoor air quality has been linked to sick building syndrome, reduced productivity, and impaired learning in schools. Indoor air pollution has increased in recent decades with the increased use of synthetic materials and greater focus on air tightness to reduce energy loss contributing to this. Improved air tightness in buildings is one example where driving energy efficiency can have knock on consequences for indoor air quality and occupant wellbeing, demonstrating the need to balance a wide variety of metrics to achieve true building performance.

I regularly talk to clients and others in the industry about the importance of maintaining a holistic perspective of building performance and aligning the positive impacts on occupants in buildings with wider considerations impacting building operators such as financial and business metrics.

Share a piece of career advice.

Celebrate the “now” and dream for the future! I am a very passionate and ambitious person, always pushing on to the next thing, and I believe this has helped me achieve a lot of the things I’m proud of in my career. However, sometimes I think I’m too busy looking ahead to what’s next to pause and reflect on where I’m at and what I’m doing in the present. The risk is I forget to appreciate and celebrate some of the smaller things along the way. As I go forward, I’m striving to get a better balance of valuing the present whilst still dreaming big for the future and I would encourage others to do the same!

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In Richard’s 21-year-career as an environmental engineer, he’s managed programs and projects that include contaminated site investigation and remediation, hydrogeological assessments, and water resource management.

What have been the most rewarding projects you’ve worked on in your career?

Unsurprisingly, Defence projects come to mind. A couple of projects I worked on presented new types of environmental challenges that needed strong teamwork across discipline areas to solve. We also needed to be flexible to changing scope, context, and stakeholder needs, and evolve as we uncovered technical knowledge on these new challenges with no precedent. There were also immersive and extensive stints in the field.

In your role leading our contaminated land services teams for our Defence clients, what key skills and strategies do you often use?

While all project management fundamentals are important, change and people are especially important for contamination projects. I seek to understand the client and project drivers and the scope and then match the right team for what is required. Everyone has different strengths and ways of working, so understanding these and figuring out ways to align them with project needs supports delivery. You can plan and make decisions based on the information available to you, but nothing is certain, and planning for change and managing it effectively is critical for success.

How do you build and maintain strong relationships with clients when you’re working on complex projects like contaminated land remediation?

A good kick-off meeting and establishing regular and open communications (both verbal and written so everybody remembers what we spoke about previously). Building a good relationship makes it a lot easier to manage and tackle changes when they happen and means everyone can share in success. It’s also important to understand the unique requirements and systems of our clients so we can deliver. This doesn’t happen straight away but through learning from feedback and applying these to other tasks and projects.

How does your work in contaminated land management contribute to positive environmental outcomes? Can you share some examples of projects where significant environmental improvements were achieved?

When you design a remediation project with sustainability principles, and these are met, there are clear social and environmental benefits. Land investigation and risk assessments can solve uncertainties about a site and surrounding environment so that it can be released for beneficial uses.

In what ways do you engage with local communities during environmental projects? How do you ensure that their concerns and needs are addressed throughout the project lifecycle?

It depends on the project. Where there is engagement with a local community, it’s important to actually listen to them, and understand what’s important to them and what information they need. From there, stakeholder engagement specialists, supported by technical people, can clearly communicate project objectives, findings and next steps in a way that meets the community’s needs,

Richard’s leadership has been instrumental in our 20+ years of delivering robust and consistent environmental services to the Australian Defence sector.

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Since joining ArchTam in 2017, Felicia has worked on numerous Defence projects. She provides ongoing leadership, support and project management on the Australian Defence Force’s Regional Contamination Investigation Program. Through this, she’s developed extensive site contamination knowledge of the Defence Estate in South Australia and within other regions. She’s used her knowledge of the program to design, implement and provide technical advice on multiple other land contamination and resource quality Defence programs and projects across Australia.

What have been the most rewarding projects you’ve worked on in your career?
I find projects with complex problems — that need diversely skilled teams to solve — most rewarding. Additionally, I derive great satisfaction from working on projects that foster genuine partnerships with clients. These projects force me to think outside the box, to find the right people that will find the best solutions. In these scenarios I need to leverage my skills and networks, and build trusting relationships. Some projects that come to mind are remediation projects where complex challenges like co-mingled contamination or hazardous wastes were presented. These projects required established partnerships with clients, specialist teams, and subcontractors to deliver safe solutions.

In your role leading our contaminated land services teams for our Defence clients, what key skills and strategies do you often use?
My experience leading projects within the Defence estate has equipped me with a deep and practical understanding of Defence policy, legislation and technical guidance. I leverage this knowledge to develop and implement strategies tailored to the unique needs of each project to tackle contaminated land and other environmental issues for the sector.

I often draw on strategic planning, regulatory navigation, stakeholder engagement and technical risk assessment to deliver for our Defence clients. I prioritise early and proactive collaboration to identify issues early, streamline approvals and maintain compliance. My approach ensures the delivery of practical and cost-effective solutions to support long-term estate sustainability.

How do you deliver exceptional value for our Defence clients?
I deliver exceptional value to our Defence clients by building and leading high-performing, multidisciplinary teams that combine deep local knowledge with specialised technical expertise. During my time at ArchTam, I’ve cultivated strong relationships with our people across Australia in our Environment business, our broader multidisciplinary teams, and our global network of technical experts who have specialised and niche technical knowledge. I also maintain close working relationships with trusted subcontractors who bring specialist capabilities to the table.

These relationships are essential for building teams with the right local and technical knowledge, best suited to the unique challenges of each project, to deliver excellent results for clients. I’ve used this team approach to deliver complex remediation pilot trials and remediation projects for Defence. Ultimately, I focus on understanding our clients’ priorities and bringing our best people to align solutions to their operational, environmental and strategic goals.

How do you build and maintain strong relationships with clients when you’re working on complex projects like contaminated land remediation?

Relationships are only built and maintained on trust. By treating a project as a partnership with our clients, we jointly own the task of finding and delivering the right solutions. We continuously engage and communicate with transparency through project delivery so our clients can trust we’re doing what we say we will. We bring clients along the delivery path, sharing progress and wins, and if issues arise, we tell our clients immediately so there are no surprises. This is crucial for complex and sensitive projects.

What long-term environmental benefits result from successful contaminated site remediation? How do you measure and communicate these to stakeholders and the community?

When a site is successfully remediated it is no longer a potential (or actual) contamination risk to the environment and the people around it. When we remediate a site, land is unlocked for community/economic/industrial benefit, rather than being wastefully restricted. We plan for remediation by assessing a number of factors and determining which remediation approach is best. The approach is based not only on returning the land for use but also on meeting sustainability targets such as low energy use and low waste generation. This means we return the land to its most beneficial community impact. Stakeholder and community engagement is so important in remediation to make sure our approach best meets the expectations of those impacted by the land being decontaminated.

Felicia’s leadership has been instrumental in our 20+ years of delivering robust and consistent environmental services to the Australian Defence sector.

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The aviation sector stands at the forefront of one of the biggest challenges — how to grow and evolve while reducing its environmental impact. For airport operators, that means grappling with growing passenger demands, aging infrastructure, and an increasingly complex web of energy, carbon and resiliency targets.

Our team has been partnering with the Maryland Aviation Administration (MAA) to create a comprehensive decarbonization roadmap for two of its airports: Baltimore/Washington International (BWI) Thurgood Marshall Airport and Martin State Airport. This roadmap supports both MAA’s priorities: to achieve compliance with state and federal climate legislation while preparing their infrastructure for future passenger and airline growth.

Our challenge was to help MAA to meet ambitious climate targets, including Maryland’s Climate Solutions Now Act goals of a 60 percent greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction by 2031 and net zero by 2045; while simultaneously accommodating terminal growth and enhancing system resilience.

Tools that visualize action

Our aim was to help MAA make sense of a very complex picture. To do that, we created several in-house energy and emissions modeling tools, including:

• Central energy plant analysis tool (CEPA), which allows us to rapidly simulate various plant configurations and identify cost-effective, lower-carbon solutions that align with future electrification goals.
• Microgrid modeling tools, which allow us to model the performance of on-site solar power, battery storage, diesel backup generation, and their ability to collectively maintain critical operations during grid outages. Beyond resilience, we explored how a microgrid could also reduce energy costs by selling power back to the utility when it’s economically viable.
• Digital twin technology, which shows exactly where new energy systems (solar PV arrays, battery storage, future electrified central plants) are located. This not only helps with internal communication and stakeholder buy-in but also serves as a planning tool that ties infrastructure improvements directly to capital investment decisions.

Metrics that inform decisions

Metrics are the backbone of any credible roadmap, and for MAA, we focused on three primary dimensions: 1) energy use, 2) GHG emissions, and 3) cost.

One of the most important strategies we had to deploy was the transition away from fossil fuels by electrifying legacy natural gas systems. This helped shift emissions from Scope 1 (on-site combustion) to Scope 2 (purchased electricity). At the same time, we modeled future electricity market scenarios in the PJM grid (which includes Maryland), where electricity prices are forecast to rise by as much as 30 percent. This dual focus allowed us to balance emissions reduction with cost resilience.

We also provided clarity on Scope 3 emissions, particularly those from airline operations, providing strategies for how MAA can influence reductions through collaboration with carriers, sustainable aviation fuel adoption, and more efficient airfield and gate operations.

Timelines that anchor implementation

We mapped each target to specific, timed actions and bundled them into short-, medium-, and long-term initiatives that integrated with MAA’s existing capital improvement plans. In effect, we transformed decarbonization from ambition into an embedded part of their growth strategy.

We helped MAA identify which projects they should advance now (e.g. electrifying existing systems, installing solar and storage) and which could be phased in later, ensuring each investment was justified not only environmentally, but financially and operationally.

Through a clear, actionable framework, we helped MAA move from planning to progress, with every decarbonization initiative supporting both their sustainability goals and long-term operational success.

For more information about our portfolio decarbonization and climate resilience services visit: Portfolio Decarbonization and Climate Resilience

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Felix Cox joined ArchTam in 2018 as a graduate mechanical engineer in our residential buildings team, before becoming an incorporated engineer (MCIBSE) and an UPTIME Accredited Tier designer in the data center team. His responsibilities include designing resilient cooling systems for data centers, overseeing installation and commissioning of data center projects through the construction phase and optimizing energy efficiency in data center designs.

Tell us about what inspired you to join the industry.

I have always loved taking things apart to understand how they work, and then putting them back together – things like coffee machines, bikes, dishwashers and washing machines, to name a few. I have also always had a strong interest in sustainability, so I wanted a career where I could make a positive impact. 

I have taken a fairly unconventional route into engineering. At 18, I chose a jazz clarinet scholarship at Trinity College over Mathematics at Manchester University. Throughout this period, I continued to nourish my interest in physical problem solving and mathematics. After years as a musician and instrumental teacher, I retrained for A-Levels in physics and math, earning a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering at Queen Mary University of London in 2015. This has worked out brilliantly. I have loved every minute of learning about engineering and working as an engineer. 

Now is a very exciting time to be working in the data centre sector. We are rapidly moving towards a more digitally focused society, and this means digital infrastructure is also rapidly expanding. There are cutting-edge developments in the technology available to us and we are right at the forefront of this in the mechanical design team in the UK. Data centers are particularly interesting to me from a mechanical point of view because they are technically challenging. The cooling systems which support the critical IT must be resilient to equipment failure, able to withstand power and water outage, and above all, they must be energy efficient.  

What is your favorite ArchTam project that you’ve worked on and why? 

My favorite ArchTam project is the first major hyperscale data center I have worked on in Spain. It has been a great experience to see the project go from initial appointment, undertaking our engineering calculations and modelling all the mechanical systems in Revit, to seeing equipment being delivered to site, installing our design, and attending factory tests for the equipment we have specified to verify that it meets the design requirements.  

We worked very closely with a strong MEP team in Spain on the delivery of this project. I have also had the opportunity to travel and forge relationships with some of our Spanish colleagues. It is a good example of how we can leverage our expertise across different regions to offer something unique to our clients. 

We designed a direct air-cooled solution for this data centre. Large air handling units pull in air directly from outside to provide cooling to the critical IT. Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) – the ratio of total facility energy (including factors such as cooling and lighting) to the IT equipment energy – is the measure of data centre efficiency. For this project, we were able to achieve a low PUE of around 1.2, improving energy efficiency by reducing energy use. 

There are major challenges associated with direct air-cooled data centre projects. Data halls must be kept within a close temperature and humidity range – and kept very clean. To that end, we conducted local air quality testing. The results indicated relatively high air corrosivity, likely caused by dust and debris from a nearby quarry and road. To solve this, we installed a special carbon filtration system on each air handling unit to ensure that servers are not compromised. 

We spent a lot of time meticulously modelling the whole project in 3D using Revit. It has been a good experience to see the 3D Revit model being built on site. It all looks a lot bigger in real life! 

Tell us a story of how your work positively impacted the community. 

Another project I am proud of is one based in Finland. Many Nordic countries use district heat networks as an efficient way of providing heat to towns and cities. Data centres are large producers of heat, which is typically exhausted to the atmosphere and essentially wasted. For this project, we worked with the local district heat network provider to design a cutting-edge and innovative project which repurposes low-grade and low-carbon heat from our data centre to provide heating and hot water to the local community. 

The existing heat network infrastructure comprises approximately 900 kilometers of underground pipes, facilitating heat distribution to around 250,000 users in the surrounding cities. It is estimated that the data center waste heat recovery scheme will reduce carbon emissions by up to 400,000 tons of CO2 per year – the largest single waste heat recovery system by a hyperscale provider in Europe.  

It is also great to see that waste heat recovery schemes are now being looked at in the UK. As they become more widely adapted across Europe, our team is able to leverage the knowledge and experience gained to position ourselves to deliver these projects. 

Share a piece of career advice.

Maintaining a hunger and appetite for learning has served me well in my career. 

In the engineering field, each new piece of knowledge gained contributes to your problem-solving capabilities and enhances the quality of solutions you can provide. It helps you to stay relevant and consistently refine your skills, allowing you to meet the evolving demands of the industry. The engineering world is constantly changing, and staying curious helps you keep up with the latest developments. Being humble and admitting there’s always so much more to learn keeps you flexible and open to different ways of doing things. 

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Anirban Basak joined ArchTam over a decade ago in 2012. He is an Uptime Accredited Tier Designer for our data center team in London and is focused on data centers and mission critical projects in the sector. He is responsible for designing resilient systems such as electrical systems, life safety and ancillary services and EPMS monitoring topology, and optimizing energy efficiency in data center design. This includes designating benchmarks and overseeing the installation and commissioning of projects through construction phases.

Tell us about what inspired you to join the industry.

A career in engineering always felt to be on the cards for me, since I come from a family of engineers. However, most of my family has worked in civil and mechanical engineering, so my decision to focus on electrical engineering was going against the mould. From a young age, I have enjoyed problem-solving and taking apart and rebuilding things like circuit boards to understand how they work. 

This led to me pursuing a degree in electrical engineering at university. After obtaining my master’s degree, I decided to focus on implementation rather than research and development. I was really interested in making designs work well.  

Working in the data centre field was a natural progression in my career, as it provides the technical challenge that I thrive on and the opportunity to work on more intense engineering aspects within the mission critical sector.  

As most engineers will appreciate, the sector provides the opportunity to implement engineering-first principles in developing appropriate bespoke solutions. It also tests your problem-solving skills.

What is your favorite ArchTam project that you’ve worked on and why? 

One of the best things about working at ArchTam is the opportunity to work on global projects, ensuring a diverse and varied professional experience.  

Our data centre team is truly a global operation. Through ArchTam’s Centres of Excellence program, I have had the opportunity to work closely with colleagues in India, Ireland, Romania, Spain, Germany, Greece and South Africa who bring their own wealth of knowledge and expertise. Our Centres of Excellence allow us to share knowledge and best practice to inform projects around the world. This ensures our designs are both cutting edge, and consistent throughout the region. 

My favorite projects include major hyperscale projects in the Nordics, Iberia and South Asia. These projects provide the opportunity to tackle the issue of data management and storage specific to each country. Beyond the sheer scale and technological requirements that these projects entail, they provide the opportunity to work and travel internationally with a team that always supports knowledge sharing and curiosity.  

On these projects, I have worked with local design guidelines that differ from standard practice. This means you are on a very fast paced learning curve to get up to speed and you will need to accommodate for different impacts to your design. For example, your design needs to consider the local environmental conditions and guidelines set by the local code and you will need to coordinate with colleagues from various disciplines, such as civils, architecture and telecommunications. These projects also provide opportunities to engage with local manufacturers and vendors to ensure specification of the right materials.  

From a technical perspective, it was great to be able to contribute to projects with all these challenges while successfully meeting the design criteria, project deadlines and planning requirements. It has also been a good experience to see the model built on site after meticulously drafting the whole project in 3D using Revit. 

Tell us a story of how your work positively impacted the community.  

Working within the data centre sector, you do feel you are positively impacting a worldwide challenge in terms of data management and storage.  

It can be challenging to tackle the transfer and use of the energy generated for these projects to address the issue of energy requirements for data centres. Designing and implementing a highly resilient electrical infrastructure entails the usage of an efficient system that is highly sustainable, including improving the overall efficiency and decreasing the energy quotient to 1.0, thereby helping to reduce the power consumption and energy costs. The opportunity to do this is what makes working in this sector feel important and worthwhile. 

You can also directly see how our work is positively impacting the communities in which we are working. Adapting the usage of highly efficient generator engines with HVO100 fuel significantly reduces the nitrous oxide and carbon oxide emissions levels. It is a great example of how we are transforming and integrating new technologies which are at the forefront of engineering development.

Share a piece of career advice.

Working within the mission critical sector provides the opportunity to work with incredibly inspiring like-minded colleagues who all value the detail, diligence, complexity and specialist aspects of the work which sometimes others might not understand. My career advice would be: 

• Absorb as much information as possible. 
• Have patience. 
• Don’t get overwhelmed. 
• Be a sponge and put your problem solving and analytics skills to the best use. 

The post People Spotlight: Meet Anirban Basak appeared first on Blog.

Nanotechnology is the ability to engineer and create useful materials at the nanoscale (100,000 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair) to take advantage of enhanced properties not present in their bulk counterparts. It is a disruptive technology, a new technology that unexpectedly displaces an established technology, and an enabling technology, one that can be applied to existing technologies to make them better.

Nanotechnology is described in a recent GAO report, “as a future megatrend that will potentially match or surpass the digital revolution’s effect on society and the economy bringing new opportunities, ‘disruptive innovation,’ jobs creation, and diverse societal benefits.”

Energy is key area where nanotechnology offers solutions. The late Dr. Richard Smalley from Rice University, who received his Nobel Laureate for synthesis of fullerenes, a type of carbon nanomaterial, is quoted as saying, “Energy plays a key role in the quality of our environment, the prevention of disease, and so on; down the entire list of global concerns…. Energy is probably the single most important factor that impacts the prosperity of any society.”[i]

Imagine a future world without abundant, low-cost, clean energy. Manufacturing would be constrained, as would the jobs tied to manufacturing. A lack of energy would limit the ability to pump water from wells and surface waters, treat it and provide clean water to a growing populace. Pumping water for irrigation of crops would be restricted. Transport of food and manufactured goods to cities would be diminished. A lack of energy would seriously curtail treatment of sewage. The list goes on. Without sufficient energy, water and food resources, maintaining a safe, clean and healthy environment will be compromised, and the superior lifestyle we expect our future cities to provide will be threatened. Since 2008, for the first time in history, the majority of the world’s population has lived in cities. It is estimated that around three out of every five people will live in an urban area by 2030.[ii]

Demand for energy is not going to decrease. Worldwide energy usage is on track to increase by roughly 40% in the next 20 years and to nearly double by 2050.[iii]  To ensure that our future cities remain viable, sustainable entities, innovative solutions to generate, store, transmit, and conserve energy must be developed. Many of these solutions will have their foundations in new nanomaterials being developed now.

Nanotechnology research and commercial production ramping up

The amount of nanotechnology-related research that is currently underway is staggering. According to Statnano, there were over 118,000 ISI indexed nanotechnology articles published worldwide in 2014 – 140% more than in 2010.  The 2015 US Federal Budget provides more than $1.5 billion for the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI), which supports nanoscale science and engineering R&D at 11 federal agencies.[iv] Corporate spending on nanotechnology R&D is also increasing dramatically across all geographies. A December 2013 study by Lux Research, funded by the US National Science Foundation and the US Nanotechnology Coordinating Office, showed that global corporate nanotechnology R&D funding reached $10 billion in 2012.[v] Much of this research is focused on energy and is providing unprecedented breakthroughs in energy production, conversion, storage, and transport.

The Lux report also showed that global funding for emerging nanotechnology has increased by 40 to 45% each year for 2010-2012. It pointed out that revenue from nano-enabled products grew worldwide from $339 billion in 2010 to $731 billion in 2012 and to more than $1 trillion in 2013, and predicts that in 2018 the global value of nano-enabled products, nano-intermediates, and nanomaterials will reach $4.4 trillion.

Nanotechnology will be part of the solution in meeting the world’s energy demands

There are many approaches to meeting the world’s energy demands, including developing new energy sources and conserving the energy supplies we already have. Nanotechnology is not the whole answer, but it is a key part of the solution to help the world meet humanity’s rapidly growing energy needs.

Just a few of the sustainable, nanotechnology-enabled breakthroughs that are on the horizon and that ArchTam will be evaluating and employing over the next few years to respond to critical energy challenges are listed below.

Transparent solar cells (University of California Los Angeles)

Nanotechnology and energy generation

Solar cells made of new nanomaterials continue to break efficiency records. As new manufacturing methods are coming online, costs will drop and their use will increase. Nano-enabled paints will not only be self-cleaning, but will also generate electricity to power our houses and decrease stress on the grid. Nano-enabled fabrics are under development and will be used in our clothing to generate electricity to power our mobile devices. New nano-metamaterials are being developed for use in roads, automobiles and power plants and will be able to convert excess heat and even pressure directly into electricity – energy harvesting.

Nanomaterials are currently being used to enhance crude oil recovery. New nanocatalysts will enable more efficient conversion of this crude oil into fossil fuels.

Fuel cell technology is being advanced by nanotechnology-related breakthroughs. New nano-catalysts will allow for enhanced production of “clean” fuels like hydrogen and ethanol from biomass and other sources. There are even nano-catalysts that have shown promise in converting waste gases like carbon monoxide from vehicles, power plants and manufacturing facilities into ethanol.

Applied Nano Solutions Supercapacitor (Lockheed-Martin Subsidiary)

Nanotechnology and energy storage

Breakthroughs in new energy storage devices are difficult to track since they seemingly occur every day! Scientists are designing new batteries using nanomaterials that make them lighter with significantly more energy density and higher efficiency. A new paper-like nanomaterial for lithium-ion batteries that could boost electric vehicle range was recently announced. The problems with battery deterioration due to heat generation during charging and use may have been solved with incorporation of a new unique nanofiber.

Super and ultracapacitors are being made with nanomaterials that will allow storage of tremendous quantities of power and be able to release that power to the grid in a controlled manner. New supercapicator arrays will allow portable power storage and distribution at point of use – ushering in a new form of emergency power supplies.

And new breakthroughs are being made using carbon-nanotube-enabled through-flow batteries that are well suited to store electricity produced by wind and solar installations.

16 gauge wire made from carbon nanotubes (www.nano.gov)

Nanotechnology and energy transmission

New nanomaterials are being used in development of near-superconducting materials which will outperform copper wire and increase the efficiency of the new transmission lines required to meet ever-growing energy demands. Nanosensors will be used to manage the grid.

Research is also beginning on wireless energy transmission, using microwaves, lasers and other electromagnetic energy sources. Nano-enabled components will play a key role in the development of this technology.

Nanotechnology and energy conservation – another source of energy

ArchTam has unique experience utilizing nano-enabled materials in our designs and specifications to reduce energy footprints. There are significant opportunities for use of more efficient nano construction materials such as nano-aerogel insulation, the most thermally efficient material known; nano-enabled LED and OLED lighting, which is significantly more efficient than fluorescent; nano-enabled thermochromic windows insulation; and nanoconcrete, which is stronger, more weather resistant and more thermally efficient.

The Halley VI Research Station in Antarctica, engineered by ArchTam, features panels of translucent Nanogel Aerogel.

Carbon nanotube wire may replace copper in the windings of electric motors – making them more efficient. Nano coatings are now used on engine components to reduce friction. New nano additives are being used in fuel to enhance combustion, contributing to a gain in fuel efficiency.

Notes

[i] Future Global Energy Prosperity: The Terawatt Challenge, Richard Smalley, Materials Research Society Bulletin, Vol 30, June 2005

[ii] Silver–Haired Surfers, John Beard World Health Organization, One, ArchTam’s e-magazine, Issue 7 — December 2013

[iii] Nanotechnology Research Directions for Societal Needs in 2020 -Retrospective and Outlook, Mihail C. Roco ed., World Technology Evaluation Center, Inc., October 2010

[iv] http://www.nano.gov/about-nni/what/funding

[v] Nanotechnology Update: Corporations Up Their Spending as Revenues for Nano-enabled Products Increase, Hilary Flynn, Lead Analyst, Lux Research, U.S. National Nanotechnology Coordination Office and U.S. National Science Foundation, December 2013

Nanotechnology on the Connected Cities blog

Water crisis, nano solutions

For future cities, think small, as in nano

Additional Information Resources

1. Nanotechnology and the As Built Environment: Investing in Green Infrastructure, Crystal Research Associates’ and Livingston Securities’, second edition, December 2012.
2. Application of Nanotechnologies in the Energy Sector, Hessian Ministry of Economy, Transport Urban and Regional Development, Volume 9, August 2008.
3. Global Energy Architecture Performance Index Report 2015, World Economic Forum, December 2014.
4. Annual Energy Outlook 2014 – With Projections to 2040, U.S. Energy Information Administration, Department of Energy, April 2014.
5. Nanotechnology and Energy, National Nanotechnology Coordination Office, January 2012.

Bill Looney (bill.looney@archtam.com) is a senior program manager, Environment, and director of the Nanotechnology Initiative, ArchTam.

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