Researcher Wanted in Energy Case Study Development

A Researcher is required to work on the CLUES: CHALLENGING LOCK-IN THROUGH URBAN ENERGY SYSTEMS project at Loughborough University.

The post involves investigating the potential for local urban energy schemes to contribute to the UK’s long term carbon reduction targets to 2050 and the development of innovative urban energy case studies incorporating learning from Europe and further afield.

Experience in case study development and handling large and complex qualitative and quantitative datasets and paper writing is essential. Experience of organising and carrying out workshops, state of the art reviews and interviewing is desirable. You will have a good first degree in engineering, social sciences, business studies, geography or environment (other disciplines may also be acceptable).

Further information at:

http://jobs.lboro.ac.uk/index.php?page=Details&id=1422

http://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/ACQ231/research-associate-in-energy-case-study-development/

Closing Date for applications: Thursday 09 June 2011

For an informal discussion please contact Dr Chris Goodier at C.I.Goodier@lboro.ac.uk, +44(0)1509 222623, Department of Civil and Building Engineering, Loughborough University, Loughborough, Leicestershire, LE11 3TU.

Energy futures and the Renewable Energy Review (CCC)

Last monday (9th of May), the Climate Change Comittee (CCC) presented the Renewable Energy Review (see slides here ) which has been welcomed by the ETI and commented by professional press (here and there) or NGOs.

The review was commissioned by the Government, to advise on the role of renewable energy in UK energy consumption after 2020. Indeed, under the NREAP, (National Renewable Energy Action Plan to fulfil the EU Directive) renewable electricity generation will grow from 32TWh in 2010 to 117TWh in 2020, which would represent 31% of electricity demand.

The latest review of the CCC aims to look at role for renewables beyond 2020 in meeting the 2050 target to reduce carbon emissions by 80% on 1990 levels, available resource, and the speed of deployment. Therefore, this review builds on the Fourth carbon budget work looking to 2030 and beyond (to be released by the CCC in june 2011). Four specific papers have been commissioned on costs, discount rates used for low carbon technologies renewable heat and technical constraints.

Based on new technical and economic analysis, this Committee’s latest report recommended that renewables should make up 30-45% of the country’s energy by 2030, with wind and marine power leading the way. A specific chapter also deals with renewable heat.

In CLUES, we are quantifying the four scenarios that were developed in the Foresight Sustainable Energy Management and the Built Environment project (link to a presentation of SEMBE on Youtube, full archives from BIS ), and developing a shared understanding of how the energy system could evolve between now and 2050 at different scales - urban, regional and national.
This new review bringing up-to-date data and potentials and assessing key enabling factors is therefore of great interest and worth discussing the hypothesis and numbers.

Energy Futures: An event about the Research Councils UK Energy Programme

On May, the 11^th I went to an event about the RCUK Energy Programme at the House of Commons. The event was organised by the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology and RCUK and hosted an interactive exhibition of the latest developments in UK energy research. The RCUK Energy Programme ‘Energy for a Low Carbon Future’ is currently investing over £530 million in energy research targeting a wide range of topics from the latest nuclear, maritime and wind technologies to carbon capture and storage (CCS), fuel cells, domestic retrofitting and low carbon transport.

Two highlights from this event are of interest to the CLUES Project.

First, I had an interesting discussion with Professor Jon Gibbins of University of Edinburgh about the challenge of CCS in the context of decentralised energy systems. He suggested that that there is potential for decarbonising buildings by indirect use of gas and biomass. That’s to say that instead of current decarbonisation efforts within the built environment, directed at energy efficiency and decentralised initiatives such as renewables and small-scale combined heat and power plants fuelled by natural gas or biomass, the same result could be obtained by the same fuels used in centralised plants to generate electricity that can then power heat pumps. In turn, a greater emphasis on the use of heat pumps would facilitate the use of non-fossil electricity and the future application of carbon capture and storage to reduce emissions from any centralised fossil fuel use. He also highlighted the compatibility between centralised hydrogen production with carbon capture and storage and CHP (combined heat and power) and the need for further research and understanding of combined centralised/decentralised approaches. Always interesting to look at energy decentralisation with a centralisation twist!

Second, I was interested in Professor Adisa Azapagic’s (of Manchester University) ‘sustainable nuclear energy’ decision support tool: SPRING. The tool considers a range of technological, economic, social and policy aspects employed when deploying nuclear energy. The CLUES Project also aims to deliver a tool for local authorities to support decision making on decentralised energy and so, the methodological aspects of SPRING could be relevant here. Watch out this space!

Catalina Turcu, UCL

12 May 2011