Travel Grant Application: Dynamic Energy Planning: Global and National Resilience

This overseas travel grant application seeks to fund some travel for a five and a half month research trip to the University of Toronto. Energy Systems and Engineering are vital to our daily living, but the generation of power for heating, electricity and vehicles propulsion has environmental impacts. This project links research into Energy and Environmental Analysis, particularly related to bioenergy and resource management, in the UK and Canada.

The research will build on the applicant's current research in LCA, bioenergy and energy planning. Emerging energy technologies and resources provide new challenges: can they provide our energy needs, and where will the resultant impact be? As we see with fossil fuels, the impact can be delayed in time (temporal variation) and can vary widely in spatial terms (extraction emissions occur in one place, and localised pollutants occur in another). LCA has become a tool widely used by policy makers in the energy industry, but it is still a somewhat blunt instrument for the job. Generally LCA impacts are amalgamated over time and therefore treated and reported as a single impact at one point in the life cycle of the product or system; the distribution of resource use and emissions over time is lost. Some researchers have begun to look at more dynamic modelling, for example, combining instantaneous and cumulative radiative forcing of GHG over time but none have linked this dynamic modelling across a wide range of inputs and outputs. None have looked at how these impacts, looked at in the wider system of commodity production and emissions can help us plan when impacts occur in order to minimise impact.

The aim of the project is threefold:
1. To gather data to produce:
a. Energy and carbon balances and life cycle assessments of shale gas as it could be used in the UK.
b. Potential Impact of localised emissions associated with bioenergy (and in the longer term, vehicles)
c. Guidance on global policy and GHG accounting methods for resource management

2. To build novel research approaches in energy and resource planning, to develop:
a. A dynamic life cycle emissions model (to be developed into a further grant application)
b. An Energy Planning Framework (again to be developed into a further grant application)

3. Exchange knowledge with, and learn from colleagues at with the aim to build lasting research and teaching relationships with opportunities for further exchange at the PhD and post graduate level:
a. The Institute for Sustainable Energy, University of Toronto, and especially the main contact, Prof Heather McLean
b. The Athena Sustainable Materials Institute
c. The Canadian Energy Research Institute

This work will lead to the development of a multi objective framework to incorporate spatial and temporal impacts of resource use and emission impact. This will be of use to industry (eg Power Companies (both large and small), policy makers (Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy, DEFRA), OFGEM, and academics in energy and/or resource management and in environmental impact reduction.

The funding applied for will fund a trip to Canada in order to gain knowledge, expertise and data and to build the beginnings of this work which will be further developed in grant applications and paper publications (three journal publications are to be written as a direct consequence of this travel grant).

The travel grant will enable the applicant to share the results of the current UK research in LCA, bioenergy and energy management with experts in Canada through networking and talks and seminars (at the Institute in Toronto and in the two research institutes; Athena Sustainable Materials Institute and the Canadian Energy Research Institute).

The applicant will set up PhD and post-doctoral research exchanges in the future and the work developed will be directly integrated into undergraduate teaching. The applicant teaches a final year MEng Mechanical Engineering unit in Energy and the Environment. As our energy portfolio changes it is likely that more shale gas will enter our market; to be able to present cutting edge knowledge in this as well as in dynamic energy and emission reduction modelling will be of great use and interest to the students. In addition the applicant teaches many PhD and masters level students who will all benefit from additional projects and knowledge in this area.

The applicant has links with DEFRA the DfT and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (links with DECC, as was) which will help enable the research to be viewed at a national policy level. On return the applicant will give talks at the University (through the Institute of Sustainable Energy and the Environment and the Water Innovation Research Centre) to which she will invite members of these government organisation. As well as journal papers the work will also be written up in a more generally accessible format, for example in The Conversation.