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The Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres and the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, plan to collaborate more intensively in energy, earth and environmental research. To this end, the president of the Helmholtz Association, Prof. Dr. Jürgen Mlynek, and the president of the University of Alberta, Prof. Dr. Indira Samarasekera, have signed a memorandum of understanding.

The collaboration planned for the coming years includes research projects that focus on the environmentally-friendly exploitation of oil sands, carbon capture and storage (CCS), geothermics, water and soil remediation, re-vegetation measures and landscape design. According to Mlynek, Germany plays a leading role in this field. This opens up new opportunities for technology transfer and collaboration with industry.

The partners' research expertise will also be applied in the Helmholtz-Alberta initiative to agree on how the oil sands in the province of Alberta can be utilised with as much consideration for the environment as possible. These deposits are among the largest in the world and are a major natural resource. However, transforming the oil sands into oil seriously impacts the environment. Substantial energy resources are needed to mine and refine the material that comes in the form of bitumen. Large amounts of water are used for mining the oil sand, which subsequently has to be processed. Furthermore, the unavoidable land use caused by open cast mining later requires substantial re-vegetation measures.

Four Helmholtz Centres will apply their expertise to addressing these problems: the Helmholtz Centre Potsdam, the German Research Centre for Geoscience (GFZ), the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) and the Forschungszentrum Jülich.

More information: http://www.helmholtz.de/en