Many university students who attended the first International Student Energy Summit, held in Calgary in 2009, left the conference inspired.

One youth returned to Mexico determined to create change in his community almost immediately.

A few months later, Manuel Wiechers launched Illuméxico, a social enterprise that has since installed more than 2,000 solar panels in homes and schools scattered across rural villages. The impact of these solar panels has been profound.

“Students in emerging markets are so passionate about energy,” said Sean Collins, cofounder of Student Energy. He believes that’s because the direct effect on people is so significant. “If you can’t refrigerate something, you can’t have vaccinations. If you don’t have light, you can’t study past sunset.”

Student Energy is an international non-profit organization aimed at educating and inspiring university students to tackle global energy issues. It was launched when Collins and two other socially aware students from Calgary decided to host a summit about global energy issues.

The inaugural summit was attended by 350 students from 30 countries. Today, Student Energy has more than 40,000 members, with chapters in 80 countries. In addition to holding international summits every two years, this June it’s running regional summits in Mexico City, Cape Town, Aberdeen and New York City.

Student Energy is a finalist for a 2014 Emerald Award in the youth category. The awards, administered by the Alberta Emerald Foundation, annually recognize environmental excellence in the province in a diverse range of categories.

Student Energy’s goals are not for the apathetic.

“We need to tackle the challenge of how do we provide energy access to the one to two billion people in the world that don’t have it,” said Collins, “while also significantly reducing the environmental impact of the energy systems in place.”

He says the organization has a crucial role in finding significant solutions for the global energy crisis — particularly when it comes to meeting 2050 emissions targets.

“If you do the math and look at setting a 2050 target, it’s not the current CEOs or political leaders or academics that are going to meet that target,” he said. “It’s the people that are in their 20s or 30s right now.

“Whether the millennial generation is ready or not, we will be the generation that has to finally solve some of these massive global energy issues.”

In 2012, Rajendra Pachauri, Nobel laureate and the chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, invited Collins and the Student Energy crew to produce an event in India.

The group received a tour of a village that had just installed solar panels to charge 50 lanterns. It was a simple task, installing just five solar panels, but Collins was shocked to hear how great the impact was on this agriculture-based community. With solar lanterns aiding them, the young men who did irrigation work at night no longer risked dying from poisonous snakebites.

“My jaw dropped,” said Collins. “The fact that they have access to light immediately led to lives being saved. People are no longer living in fear for their lives because they have access to the most basic energy service. This is why we see a huge role for what we do.”

Student Energy has attracted other international attention. In 2013, United Nations secretary general Ban Ki Moon wrote a letter to the organization, commending it for rallying youth to discuss and tackle global energy issues. Student Energy has now formed an official partnership with the United Nations, which will launch its next 10-year initiative, “A decade of sustainable energy for all,” in June.

“We’re not the drivers of the student energy movement,” said Collins. “We consider ourselves the curators for this incredible group of students around the world, the students who have woken up and want to have a progressive, multi-perspective conversation about energy.”