Concordia PhD student Meysam Maleki is researching how to develop large-scale batteries to store electricity from renewable sources like solar and wind energy.Adil Boukind
Multipartner, cross-country program set to hire 1,000 graduate students, 600 researchers
As Canada transitions to a greener grid and increases reliance on electrical power, Montreal’s Concordia University is at the forefront of innovative research and bringing those ideas to market.
Volt-Age, a new program that launched this past fall, will expand on Concordia’s prowess by bringing together thousands of researchers and students to focus on improving everything from electric car batteries to sustainable buildings.
Bankrolled in part by a seven-year, $123-million grant from the Canada First Research Excellence Fund (CFREF), the program brings together top researchers from Montreal’s Concordia and three partner institutions – Halifax’s Dalhousie University, Toronto Metropolitan University and the University of Calgary – with stakeholders in government, industry and the community.
Heading up Volt-Age is Karim Zaghib, a professor in Concordia’s department of chemical and materials engineering and a world expert on green battery development. A veteran of industrial research who has done groundbreaking work for Hydro-Québec, Prof. Zaghib says the program is designed to produce real-world solutions. “Our main goal is building a bridge between discoveries and the market for decarbonization technology.”
To get there, Volt-Age is assembling a team of 1,000 graduate students and 600 postdoctoral researchers and creating 10 chairs for early-career professors.
Xia Li, assistant professor in chemical and materials engineering at Concordia, holds the Concordia University Research Chair in high energy rechargeable batteries.Adil Boukind
Among those students is Meysam Maleki, whose PhD research at Concordia focuses on developing large-scale batteries to store electricity from renewable sources like solar and wind energy. “We need to decrease the cost of renewable energy to make it sustainable and stable,” Mr. Maleki says. He believes organic redox flow batteries are becoming the most economical and durable storage option and is working to improve their performance for use on power grids.
Mr. Maleki, who is Iranian, came to Concordia after taking his master’s degree at Tarbiat Modares University in Tehran. He was drawn to Montreal by Prof. Marc-Antoni Goulet and his work in Concordia’s sustainable electrochemical technologies (SET) lab, where he decided to concentrate on batteries. “I saw that they were everywhere in daily life not just in our cellphones and transportation, but also grid-scale energy storage, and I’ve always been passionate about doing work that will have an impact.”
Xia Li shares that passion. An assistant professor in chemical and materials engineering at Concordia, she holds the Concordia University Research Chair in high energy rechargeable batteries. Prof. Li and her research team are looking to build a better battery for electric vehicles – specifically, to improve the energy density and safety, which determines how long a vehicle can run before being recharged.
“Right now, with commercial lithium-ion batteries, it’s almost at the limit,” she says. “We need to find a battery system with a higher energy density, higher safety and low cost” to make EVs compatible to gasoline-powered cars.
Prof. Li says the federal government’s mandate that all new light-duty vehicles sold in Canada must have zero emissions by 2035 gives her work a sense of urgency. “We’re going to need these new systems for electric vehicles in the next 10 years,” she says.
The Volt-Age program will help accelerate her research and bring it out of the lab and into the industry.
Volt-Age’s broad vision for an electrified society is organized around three themes. Along with transportation and grid-scale energy, it is also focusing on smart, sustainable buildings and environments, and social equity and citizen engagement.
“We have a very strong relationship with the First Nations,” Prof. Zaghib says.
Indigenous Clean Energy is just one of close to 30 partners already on board. Others range from Hydro-Québec and Siemens to battery materials supplier Nouveau Monde Graphite. Volt-Age is actively seeking other partnerships and collaborations going forward.
Prof. Zaghib has high hopes for the initiative. “I think we can put Canada on the map for energy transition,” he says.
Prof. Karim Zaghibsupplied
Karim Zaghib: Charging ahead
Prof. Karim Zaghib remembers the incident that led to his life’s work. It was 1979 and he was an asthmatic Algerian teenager on vacation in France with his parents.
“We were stuck in a big traffic jam,” he recalls, “and it made me very sick. From that day on, I was determined to develop electric vehicles.”
Today, Prof. Zaghib is a leading expert on lithium-ion batteries, the power source of EVs and one of the major alternatives to fossil fuels. After a long and distinguished career in research and innovation, including groundbreaking work at Hydro-Québec, he has brought his lifelong crusade for clean energy to Concordia University as chief executive officer of its ambitious Volt-Age program.
“My No. 1 priority with Volt-Age is to make an impact,” says Prof. Zaghib, who joined the university in 2022 after 25 years as a director of the vaunted Hydro-Québec Research Institute (IREQ). “We want to build a sustainable future for the next generation.”
After earning a PhD in electrochemistry at France’s Grenoble Institute of Technology in 1990, Prof. Zaghib’s interest in lithium-ion batteries took him to Japan, which was doing cutting-edge research in the field. His four-year stint as a guest researcher for the Ministry of International Trade and Industry in Osaka was an eye-opening experience. “I learned how they took the technology to the marketplace,” he says.
In 1995, he came to Canada at the invitation of Hydro-Québec to help build the public utility’s energy storage and EV programs. That same year, he began a 30-year collaboration with the late American scientist John Goodenough, winner of the 2019 Nobel Prize for his work on creating lithium-ion batteries.
Prof. Zaghib’s other collaborators have included Prof. Michel Armand of France, with whom he developed the lithium-ion phosphate battery for commercial use. It has become the battery of choice for such EV makers as Tesla and China’s BYD and is also being taken up by the major American car manufacturers.
Prof. Zaghib’s prolific research has resulted in more than 550 patents and 60 licenses and has won him many accolades. His current focus is on solar-powered batteries, inspired, he says, by his inability to recharge his cellphone during a visit to a remote mountain region in Africa. “It’s a lithium-ion battery, but it contains a solar cell, so you can travel with it anywhere without needing to charge it,” he explains.
Prof. Zaghib’s innovations at Hydro-Québec have helped earn the province an international reputation in green-energy circles. That was reinforced when he attended the COP28 climate-change conference in Dubai this past fall.
“Whenever I said I was from Quebec, people told me, ‘You guys are doing an amazing job on batteries and energy transition,’” he says. “I was very proud.”
Advertising feature produced by Globe Content Studio with Concordia University. The Globe’s editorial department was not involved.