UKERC AWARDS £2MILLION FOR TOPICAL ENERGY PROJECTS
The UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC) has committed over
£2million to support new research addressing some of the most
important energy developments in the UK and overseas.
Six new research projects will cover: the take-up and design of
offers under the government's Green Deal initiative promoting
energy efficiency in homes; the impact of UK energy activity on
'ecosystem services' provided by natural ecosystems globally and in
the UK; a detailed analysis of global gas security and the
prospects for global gas governance; scenarios for the development
of smart grids; and a risk assessment of UK energy policy.
The research teams have leading expertise in ecology, biology,
energy policy, psychology, engineering and marketing and come from
12 research institutions across the UK.
UKERC is supporting the projects via its flexible research fund,
which was set up to allow researchers within and outside the Centre
to apply for additional funding for specific energy research
projects. The scheme has attracted a wider range of researchers and
disciplines into the UKERC's research programme, incorporating the
best science and allowing the programme to develop flexibly in the
light of new scientific insights and policy developments.
UKERC has now commissioned 16 research fund projects with the
latest confirmed as:
Optimising value propositions for energy efficient
renovations
Researchers from Norwich Business School and the Tyndall Centre
for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia will
assess how services provided under the government's new Green Deal
scheme can influence UK householders towards improving the energy
efficiency of their homes.
The project will be the first of its kind to examine how the
Green Deal incentives can be made attractive to potential
customers. The scheme is intended to improve the energy efficiency
of British properties by enabling consumers to make energy-savings.
Customers can install energy efficient improvements to their homes
with no upfront cost and pay later through instalments on their
energy bill.
A global framework for quantifying the ecosystem service
impacts of oil and biofuel production
The goal of this project is to develop a new methodology that
will allow the impacts on ecosystem services globally of using
different transport fuels - oil or biofuels - to be compared.
'Ecosystem service' is a concept used to measure the benefits
that society obtains from natural ecosystems.
Researchers from the University of Southampton, Imperial College
London and the United Nations Environment Programme World
Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC), will map the area
covered by the infrastructure needed to produce oil and the areas
that are currently used to grow crops for biofuels,
They will also assess what ecosystem services have been lost as
a result of producing these fuels in different parts of the
world.
The project is a collaborative effort between ecologists and
experts in oil and biofuel production, with input from government,
major conservation organisations and the UK's major oil
producers.
Assessing the global and local impacts on ecosystem
services of energy provision in the UK
In a related project, Peter Smith from the University of
Aberdeen will lead an assessment of the impacts on global ecosystem
services of electricity generation from coal, nuclear, wind and
bioenergy.
The research aims to identify the impact of energy generation,
either at the location at which the power is generated or where the
feedstock is sourced, and project them forwards under different
possible future energy pathways for the UK using scenarios
developed by UKERC for its Energy 2050 project.
It will provide the first assessment of how UK energy activities
affect ecosystem services in a global context, as opposed to
previous assessments which only included local or UK level
impacts.
The geopolitical economy of global gas security and
governance - implications for the UK
The aim of this project is to develop a clear understanding of
the geopolitical drivers, governance challenges and risks shaping
current and future global gas security through to the late 2020s
and beyond.
Researchers from the Universities of Leicester, Birmingham,
Sussex and Manchester will conduct a detailed analysis of global
gas security, considering major issues likely to shape future
demand and supply, market relations and gas pricing, and the
prospects for global gas governance. The project will take into
account the Eurasian pipeline system, liquefied natural gas markets
and new developments in unconventional gas
Scenarios for the development of smart grids in the
UK
Smart grids will be able to respond intelligently to the
behaviour and actions of all electrical power users and producers.
They will improve the flexibility of electricity networks, helping
to manage increasing demand from consumers, enable increasing
amounts of renewable generation to be connected, and monitor the
equipment that makes up the network. Smart grids offer clear
potential to contribute to the UK's policy goal of a transition to
a low carbon economy.
Carried out by a multidisciplinary research team, the project
will identify key steps that will determine the future shape of
smart grids and go on to develop and evaluate a number of
socio-technical scenarios. These will take into account the views
of a range of stakeholders and will explore deployment, cost and
finance, regulation, and user issues.
UK energy futures - mapping uncertainties and
risks
Future energy systems are dependent on the structure of the
current system and understanding current limitations and risks.
These will directly impact decisions affecting the evolution of the
system. For example, coal and gas-fired generation are likely to
remain part of the UK energy supply mix after 2020 due to the
presence of existing assets/infrastructure and their operational
flexibility, while renewable technologies will have an important
role in the medium and longer terms.
There is a need for a robust methodology to assist policymakers
to allow the comparison of the risks and uncertainties involved in
each case.
This project will develop a risk-based tool capable of a
policy-level analysis and uncertainty assessment. The project will
be supported by a baseline assessment of current risk and
uncertainty associated with the existing energy system, which will
be used to inform the plausibility of future scenarios.
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