logo SDG 7 Affordable and clean energy

Research & Innovation

  • The University published 1,480 research papers related to SDG7 between 2017 and 2021, when measured by the number of publications the University is ranked outside the top 100 in the world.

Teaching

Operations & support

  • The St George campus will become Climate Positive by 2050.
  • The Geoexchange project, part of the ongoing Landmark Project, is predicted to yield greenhouse gas reductions of 15,000 tons of CO2 equivalent.
  • The three campuses of the University used 3,150,000 GJ (gigajoules) of energy in 2021-22 and 799,000 GJ were from low-carbon sources.

Outreach & Partnership

  • The Climate Positive Energy Initiative is the University of Toronto’s centre for interdisciplinary clean energy research. Linking science, social science, engineering, economics and policy researchers to transform our energy systems.
  • The Institute for Sustainable Energy (ISE) at the University of Toronto is an inclusive, multidisciplinary centre designed to bring together researchers, students, and teachers from across the university, together with partners from industry and government, with the goal of increasing energy efficiency and reducing the environmental impact of energy use and conversion.
  • The Clean Energy Lab at the University of Toronto Scarborough works on developing new materials for Li-ion batteries, hydrogen storage, CO2 capture, and photovoltaics. Utilizing atomistic simulations, machine learning, automated high-throughput materials synthesis and characterization to demonstrate proof-of-principle devices that will speed-up the transition to renewables.

THE Impact Rankings

The University of Toronto was ranked 88th in the Times Higher Education Impact Rankings for SDG 7. The breakdown of scores are as follows:

Overall Score: 68.7
SDG7 Research: 93.0
Energy – university measures: 100
Energy use density: 5.1
Energy and the community: 83.3

Return to the overall SDG report