Davey Elder, a CivMin PhD student, has been named a recipient of the University of Toronto’s Lawson Climate and Sustainability Award for the 2025–2026 academic year. The award supports multi-disciplinary graduate researchers whose work advances the Lawson Climate Institute’s pillars of Sustainable Innovation and Technology and Climate Policy and Sustainable Finance.
Funded by the Brian and Joannah Lawson Family Foundation, the Lawson Climate and Sustainability Awards recognize outstanding early-career researchers from across the University of Toronto’s three campuses. Recipients join a growing network of Lawson Climate Institute Scholars and receive support for programming, experiential learning opportunities, and internships, fostering collaboration across more than 10 academic departments.
Davey’s research, supervised by Dr. Daniel Posen and Dr. Heather MacLean, focuses on energy systems modelling and the development of new methods to robustly and quantitatively assess decarbonisation pathways under deep uncertainty. “I work with energy systems optimisation models, rethinking how we use these models to inform decisions for the energy transition under deeply uncertain futures,” he says. His work examines how energy systems may respond to uncertainties such as climate change and the emergence of new energy technologies, generating insights to support decision-making today. As part of this research, he is also developing the Canadian Open Energy model (CANOE), including backend data aggregation and pre-processing infrastructure.