<aside> 💡 This short memo details who we are, and what we plan to accomplish. Treat this as a proposal! Last updated July 31, 2024.
</aside>
We’re a Queen’s design club focused on all things cleantech. Think sustainable energy, carbon capture & utilization, energy storage, etc.
Our mission is to give students a well-rounded experience in various sectors within cleantech. It will take a large portfolio of carbon removal and emission reduction technologies to solve this problem. If we want to be a part of the solution, we must be familiar with the portfolio.
Our vision is to be a clean-tech design hub which focuses on building projects across multiple sectors within clean-tech.
Although there’s a lot of interest at Queen’s in cleantech, there are few design opportunities for students to get involved and safely build cleantech projects (insured, with support & mentorship).
Currently there are 3 teams/clubs at Queen’s where you can work on cleantech projects:
There’s also QCO2 (carbon capture), but they aren’t ratified.
These teams are great, but there are large gaps in energy storage, other forms of alternative energy (nuclear, wind), and emission reduction technologies (carbon-negative materials, etc).
Our goal is simple, we want to fill those gaps.
The easiest way to fill these gaps are design competitions that flew under the radar. For example, the Battery Workforce Challenge would be a perfect fit for Queen’s, and there’s likely interest in this field, but students don’t have the means or the necessary support to compete.
In our view, that’s a missed opportunity for students to learn, and gain relevant industry experience.
Rather than ratifying individual clubs for each area, we are building an “umbrella” club where people can choose their own adventure. It’s a lot of work to ratify and build a club (trust us, it’s annoying) so we want to set up infrastructure to allow our engineers to focus on one thing: building and developing their skills.
We will create nodes based on interest within the club. A node would be responsible for its own project within a unique sector of cleantech. These nodes don’t have to compete, but they have to build something that can be demoed at the end of the school year.