Event Recording:
Mitigating climate requires a transition to low carbon energy systems and renewable energy looks increasingly likely to play a key role, but the most important resources are intermittent.
This lecture will describe the research of the Oxford Martin Programme on Integrating Renewable Energy, on how intermittency and related challenges can be addressed, technically and in markets and policy.
Join in on Twitter #sharedworld
About the speakers
Nick Eyre is Co-Director, Oxford Martin Programme on Integrating Renewable Energy, a Jackson Senior Research Fellow in Energy at the Environmental Change Institute (ECI) and Oriel College. He also leads the ECI programme on Lower Carbon Futures. He is a Co-Director of the multi-university collaboration, the UK Energy Research Centre, leading its research work on energy demand. He teaches on option on energy policy on the Environmental Change and Management MSc course.
Nick has worked as a researcher, consultant and manager on energy and environmental issues since 1984. His interests focus on energy policy, especially with respect to energy demand, energy efficiency and small scale conversion and supply. He has published extensively on energy, climate, environment and transport issues. He is co-author of a book on carbon markets.
Nick worked at the Energy Saving Trust from 1999 to 2007, initially as Head of Policy and, from 2002, as Director of Strategy. He was responsible for the Trust's work on public policy issues, business development and long term business strategy. In 2001, he was seconded to the Cabinet Office, Performance and Innovation Unit, where he was a co-author of the Government's Review of Energy Policy. He led work streams on energy efficiency and long term energy scenarios.
In 1997, he wrote the first published study on how the Government's 20% carbon emission reduction target might be delivered. He managed a large European Commission programme on the external costs of energy and was lead author of the report used as the basis for the UK Government's first estimate of the social cost of carbon.
Malcolm McCulloch, Associate Professor, is co-Director of the Oxford Martin Programme on Integrating Renewable Energy; Associate Professor in the Department of Engineering Science and Head of the Energy and Power group at the University of Oxford. He was Co-Director of the Institute for Carbon and Energy Reduction in Transport, Oxford Martin School from 2008-2013.
His interests are in the area related to the domestic energy sector, development of user centric demand side management technologies, useful information to enable behaviour change. Previous work lead the the spin-out Intelligent Sustainable Energy, of which Malcolm is both a founder and non-executive director. This has merged to form Navetas Energy Management.
In the transport sector, Malcolm has been involved in developing power trains for hydrogen vehicles. There are currently three hydrogen based projects – the BOC ECh20 an eco-marathon car, LifeCar a concept car being developed by Morgan and four other partners and Hyrban, an urban hydrogen car. Work includes developing high efficiency low weight motors using new materials as well as developing the power electronics and the control.
The domestic sector is one of the largest energy sectors in the UK, although large amount of the energy is used in heating. Two projects on the go are smart feedback metering and a relook at domestic devices so as to improve their efficiency. In renewable generation, he is part of a team developing tidal flow devices and second related project to develop slow speed direct coupled generators.