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[April 2008] Energy company E.ON UK and one of the country's leading scientific organisations have launched a research programme that seeks innovative and far-reaching change to help the nation secure a future based on low carbon energy.
In the first phase of their joint £10 million programme, E.ON and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council – the EPSRC – are channelling industry and university expertise into mapping out the nation's best routes to cleaner and more sustainable energy.
They have awarded more than £2 million to a consortium of eight universities to investigate how the UK can develop an economy and society that helps combat climate change.
Over the next three years the consortium will bring together some of the universities' top thinkers on energy and related issues, plus technology specialists, social scientists and analysts, to identify pathways to low carbon energy systems.
The programme reflects the broad and far-reaching perspective of energy research in E.ON UK, one of the UK's leading power and gas companies and part of the E.ON Group, the world's largest investor-owned energy company.
It is just one strand in a range of R&D initiatives involving E.ON UK, one of which will see up to £50 million invested by the company in new low carbon energy technologies and approaches over the next decade.
The EPSRC is the main UK government agency for funding research and training in engineering and the physical sciences. It invests around £740 million a year in subjects ranging from mathematics to materials science and information technology to structural engineering, and endeavours to meet the needs of industry and society by working in partnership with universities to invest in people and scientific discovery and innovation.
E.ON and the EPSRC are already shaping the second of the four phases in their joint programme, by calling for bids to form another university consortium to explore the potential for greater energy efficiency in industry, offices and homes. This project is expected to be awarded in 2008.Universities across the UK who want to research low carbon solutions can bid for funding under the programme, the third and fourth phases of which will focus on distributed generation, and cleaner coal and sustainable power generation.
The strategic five-year partnership between E.ON and the EPSRC is advised by a partnership committee, comprising representatives from the University of Birmingham, Loughborough University, London's Imperial College and The University of Nottingham. Each is a specialist in low carbon research.
As a group, they help to guide the initial direction of research for the themes in the four phases. After this EPSRC has lead a process to bring together other leading university academics for workshops that operate as 'consortium building' exercises for each phase, ahead of the formal bid applications.
The first consortium workshop, a three-day event hosted by E.ON, involved participants acting as mentors to help guide the research project development process from the Carbon Trust, the UK Energy Research Centre, and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
A review of the proposals from the event led to the £2.1 million first round of funding being awarded to the eight universities' consortium, led by the University of Bath and Imperial College.
The consortium's project, 'Transitions to a Low Carbon Economy', will examine how the UK can meet its low carbon challenges and what the energy resources mix might look like in the future.
The importance of the collaboration was underlined by John Bateman, E.ON UK's Research and Development Programme Manager, who described it as having great potential for innovation aimed at providing relevant, practical and realistic answers that would contribute towards changing energy in the UK.
"Bringing together the knowledge and experience of experts from industry and some of the leading energy researchers will help us create the opportunities that we need in the UK – to change the way that we think about energy, generate energy and use energy.
"We are extremely enthusiastic about this programme with the EPSRC because we firmly believe that research and development projects such as this will help provide the solutions to protecting our climate long into the future."
Working with the University of Bath and Imperial College on the first project will be Loughborough University, the Policy Studies Institute, the University of Strathclyde, the University of Surrey, the University of East Anglia and the University of Leeds. Their involvements embrace a range of disciplines: mechanical, electrical and electronic engineering, and environmental policies, strategies and sciences.
Their overall aim is: "…to develop a set of potential transition pathways for the UK energy system to a low carbon future, and undertake integrated assessments of the technical and economic feasibility, and social and environmental potential and acceptability, of these pathways."
The aim is based on three research challenges identified at the consortium building exercise: To apply the lessons of past energy-related transitions To design and evaluate future transition pathways To understand and model the roles of all the players in the transition.
The project is now moving ahead to look at the transition pathways, through a framework with electricity as the final main carrier of energy, spread over three 15-year periods related to key dates in the UK Government's Climate Change Bill.
These timescales correspond to the five-year carbon budgeting periods proposed in the bill: 2008 – 2022, 2023 – 2037 and 2038 – 2052.
In evaluating the transition pathways, the consortium will look at different mixes of supply-side and demand-side technological and behavioural options, and infrastructure networks.
The roles of participants at all levels of the energy industry will be examined – from multi-national energy supply and distribution companies, national governments and major investors, through to households, innovators and entrepreneurs. There will also be opportunities for input by industry stakeholders at workshops for discussion of the transition pathways.
The consortium will use a range of analytical and deliberative 'tools' and approaches to examine the overall aim and issues such as key policy trade-offs and potential showstoppers, financial and regulatory requirements, and the impact of technical, institutional and behavioural changes on the electricity sector and society in general.
Additionally, it will pinpoint the factors that could influence the transitions to a low carbon economy, which it says is at least a 60 percent emissions reduction by 2050. In this area, one of the main aims is to carry out a whole system analysis, employing a 'toolkit' of techniques to explore specific implications contained in the pathways to a 'highly electric, low carbon economy'.
The project's ultimate results will help to shape a future sustainable energy system accompanied by critical technical and social assessments of what would be required to achieve them.
This, the consortium says, will provide 'novel, strategic insights into the constraints and 'tipping points' associated with the national challenges that will result from concerns over climate change and energy security'.
It adds: "Our research will provide a practical demonstration of the 'co-production' approach in which stakeholders and academics with different disciplinary expertise work together to produce commercial and policy-relevant knowledge which will contribute to the mitigation of climate change in the coming decades."
The consortium's Principal Investigator, Professor Geoff Hammond, of the University of Bath's Mechanical Engineering Department, said: "Addressing climate change requires a radical transformation.
"This collaboration between leading UK engineers, social scientists and policy analysts aims to promote innovation. Our research team intends to come up with projects that can be used in a variety of situations, including in people's homes, to address the twin problems of security of supply and a reduction of carbon emissions."
The Joint Head of the EPSRC Energy Programme, Alison Wall, said the partnership with E.ON was a significant step in bringing together an outstanding team from industry and universities to tackle a major challenge.
"We believe that this programme will bring us advances in key areas of research that are crucial in delivering low carbon solutions to contribute to providing safe, secure and affordable supplies of electricity for the nation, while helping tackle our concerns about environmental impacts.
"Our partnership with E.ON underlines the strengths of collaborative research in helping to ensure the relevance of the problem being addressed and a clear route for exploiting the outcomes."
E.ON is already involved in a portfolio of partnerships and joint initiatives with government, the EU, scientific organisations, energy businesses and energy sector stakeholders.
They include the UK Government's flagship initiative, the Energy Technologies Institute (ETI), a vehicle for bringing forward new low carbon energy technologies, in which investment could reach £1 billion over ten years.
E.ON is one of the six industry members of the ETI, alongside other global energy groups and international technology and engineering companies. EPSRC and the Technology Strategy Board are the main public sector funders of ETI.
A second collaboration, currently entering its second year (2008), is a five-year E.ON-sponsored university professorship examining innovations for low carbon energy and greater energy efficiencies in the built environment.
The E.ON UK and Royal Academy of Engineering Research Chair in Low Carbon Energy Technologies was established at Loughborough University to focus on buildings and their energy systems.
E.ON's John Bateman said: "These are just two examples highlighting our commitment to changing energy. They show the scale and diversity of our work with world-class partners to ensure our R&D programme, now comprising more than 200 projects of various types, delivers maximum benefits.
"We are determined that our investments will stimulate valuable and focused research and yield answers that achieve practical and commercially feasible techniques for providing sustainable, low carbon energy."
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