UKERC in the news

UKERC has had a rather good week for being quoted or featured in things. We got six mentions in the House of Lords European Union Committee report 'The EU's Target for Renewable Energy: 20% by 2020', which was published today (Friday 24 October). The Committee was interested in what we had to say on energy efficiency, renewable power, wave and solar energy, the Severn barrage and intermittency issues. A couple of special mentions are deserved here, Professor David Infield (UKERC and University of Strathclyde) was instrumental in putting the UKERC submission together and Dr Rob Gross (UKERC and Imperial College) was Special Advisor to the Committee. The report has been picked up by the popular media and featured on the BBC news website.

Congratulations to Professor Paul Ekins (UKERC and Kings College London) who came 51st in the The Independent on Sundays' list of Britain's top 100 environmentalists. Within the list Paul rubs shoulders with the likes of the Sir Stuart Rose, KT Tunstall, Professor Bob Watson and the Queen.

To complete the success story UKERC's Executive Director, John Loughhead, has been quoted in New Scientist on their feature Graduate Special: Best of Britain and also in The Guardian commenting the world's largest algal biofuel project which will be sited in the UK.
In this week's news, which you can examine on the slightly redesigned NERN news pages, there were a couple of excellent articles that caught my attention. Fred Pearce has scribed an excellent diatribe about the great green swindle in which he outs companies that are making exaggerated or absurd claims about their green credentials. New Scientist has a really interesting piece why the financial system is like an ecosystem. The article suggests that the current way in which the system is treated is too simple because it treats the economic world as a series of simple, largely separate transaction-based markets; in reality the system is far more complex system of interrelating networks. It is proposed that insights could be gained by studying complex systems such as electricity networks or eco-systems such as a pond or swamp. Perhaps there are lessons that could be learned from the work UKERC is conducting within our Energy 2050 project.

Three scientific breakthroughs have caught the eye this week. Tropical Cyclones, which may perhaps become more frequent, or stronger, with climate change, are also responsible, to some extent, for burying away greenhouse gases. Basically the storms are responsible for washing vegetation and soils into the sea where they sink to the bottom, locking carbon away. Its one of those pieces of research that's quite obvious when you think about it, but one which you had probably never thought about until now. CIP Technologies has claimed that they have increased the efficiency of thermal PV by a third to 12% and have aspirations for a device that is 15% efficient. Finally, Carbon Sciences have announced a new technology to convert carbon dioxide into gasoline. Their process avoids the necessity to use molecular hydrogen, which is rather energy intensive to make, and instead uses hydrogen atoms formed through a biocatalytic process that mimics processes that occur in all living organisms.

As a football fan I was interested to see that Ethical Consumer magazine has ranked football teams, not according to sporting success, but environmental friendliness. Manchester City came top (and I'm sure they are happy to be the top of at least one table) whilst my team, Liverpool, worryingly finished behind Manchester United and Arsenal – I hope that's not a sign for the season ahead!