Challenges and Futures for new technologies: finding (e)quality in work, water and food in the energy frontiers

This interdisciplinary, exploratory agenda focuses on maturing 'low carbon' innovations and policy for agroenergy and, often competing, localised social technologies in food and energy production in south Goias state and northern UK. It does so through two exploratory field visits and two subsequent collaborative pilot research periods. These pilots integrate a baseline geo-mapping survey with worker interviews to explore the implications of ethanol production in north England (from corn) and south Goias (from sugarcane) for the availability and quality of work, of water and of land for food production. These sites are of local, regional and global economic and environmental significance. Secondly, two component case studies of local, participative and potentially socially, environmentally and financially sustainable approaches to food and energy production will be drawn from coastal Scotland and south Goias. These activities form the basis for two complimentary workshops, with a focus on policy and technical innovation towards enhanced social and environmental futures for food and energy production and three structured meetings between partners, senior institutional staff and students to establish and resource an enduring, interdisciplinary research agenda and collaborative postgraduate training. The process will be filmed as part of project learning and dissemination. The project stages are set out below alongside the name of the individual applicant with responsibility for each.
Rationale: BP investment in agrofuel in UK and Brazil typifies recent market diversification by hydrocarbon/0etrochemical majors, and the issues regarding designated technologies: further market capture and concentration may have implications for work and natural resource allocation, while the socio and bio-diverse impacts of food conversion to energy crops remain under analysed. Secondly, Scotland's impressive record as an EU leader in renewable energy and stated aim to attain energy self-sufficiency from renewable resources by 2020 rests heavily on wind and water. Resource scarcity has forced islanders into innovating and maintaining community owned, sustainable energy alternatives leading to repopulation. Furthermore, in its coastal, rural areas short supply chains and low tillage have been among distinct and instructive survival and policy strategies of small farmers and their associations.
Activity: Three day Spring school on 'human and physical resources in the production of renewable energy' with UFG visitors, staff and students of Dept CEE, Dept HRM, Technology and Innovation Centre, existing research partners from Poland and Hungary and stakeholders from public, commercial and social sectors. (E Joao and P Stewart)
Activity -Formal partner meeting
Activity- Pilot Research period 1. Two Postgraduate researchers (CEE and HRM) and one from UFG accompanied by Brian Garvey (HRM). Scoping research that geo-maps the physical influence of ethanol production on land and water use in Hull, provides for preliminary interviews with workers in the sector. Case study development of sustainable food and energy production in coastal Scotland based on community interviews. (B Garvey)

Stage 2 Brazil
Activity - Stewart, João, Garvey and postgraduate researcher in UFG. Field visits to south Goias expansion of agrofuel production for national and EU market.

The UK-Goias link provides an opportunity of scoping research with international strategic relevance for future food and energy innovation. UK is faced with a diverse range of possible energy technologies; Scotland seeks to be 100% self-sufficient on renewable energy by 2020. Since Kyoto protocol introduced mandates for lower carbon emissions in EU countries, Brazil has boasted the world's first integrated energy matrix and has been a key source of both biofuels for the global market and a key site for investment by oil and food majors. Between low carbon policy and newly emerging agroenergy commodity production, however, exist more localised and potentially sustainable alternatives that suggest that quality at work and environmental sustainability may be further enhanced through promoting the development and transfer of socially orientated technologies and policy agendas.


By engaging scientists across disciplines in key sites of production of emerging energy forms in UK and Brazil we seek to better quantify the opportunities, or indeed risks, for dwellers in these local (rural) areas, their integration or exclusion from developments and question the evident asymmetry between the transnational political influence of industrial leaders of new innovations and the communities relying on land and water in these regions. We wish to establish a collaborative methodology across sciences in UK and Brazil in this exploratory project towards future solution based policy and technical innovation that enhances inclusive, financially, environmentally and socially viable strategies for energy and food production alongside stakeholders whose welfare, income and security are closely linked to the questions of research.

The research will strengthen international partnerships between researchers and institutes involved, open the possibility to exchange researchers and undergraduate and postgraduate students and co-develop programmes of common interest and transnational relevance.