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Nick Eyre began the Michaelmas Colloquium series with a talk on ‘Energy and Carbon in the Anthropocene’ which also acted as an early lecture for Masters students in the School of Geography and Environment. The talk sets the future of energy in the context of the idea of the Anthropocene, the era of human domination of the Earth. It argues that, to prevent dangerous climate change, we need a rapid transition in our energy systems towards sustainable systems. The available evidence indicates that these will need to be based on energy efficiency and renewable energy. Whilst there are challenges to overcome, such systems are now possible and beginning to happen.

You can watch the presentation of the #ONESuperyear for Nature webinar on through Micrsoft TEAMS.

Marina Topouzi, Research Associate in Energy Demand at the Environmental Change Institute, has been involved in developing retrofit standards for low energy buildings that involve specifications for new roles and skills. She recently attended a training course to become qualified as a ‘Retrofit Co-ordinator’. She gives a short overview of how these different aspects are expected to be linked and changed to help deliver improvements to the UK’s building stock.

The scale-up of smart local energy systems (SLES) that combine renewable energy (RE) and smart technologies for system flexibility has been seen as a potential way to accelerate the energy transition to deep decarbonisation (Ford et al, 2019).

Oxford Energy Society presents author, businessman and climate change expert Chris Goodall on Wednesday, 21 October.  Goodall’s ‘What We Need To Do Now: For a Zero-Carbon Future’ was short-listed for the 2020 Wainwright Prize for writing on global conservation. His latest book, The Switch, covers the unstoppable rise of solar power.

#ONEsuperyear | Monday, 12 October @ 4.30pm

Register now for your free place on a series of very interesting webinars from the Oxford Martin Programme on Integrating Renewable Energy. Hear about progress from Project LEO, and how AI could be useful in energy and helping the fuel poor.

The Energy Catalyst Programme is open to all energy technology from any sector. However, to be in scope for round 8 your project must address the following 3 subjects: energy access, the energy ‘trilemma’, gender and social inclusion.

We are in the final weeks of the first year of the inaugural cohort for the MSc in Energy Systems. Thankfully the classroom teaching was not disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic and the University closure. Only minor changes to two of the non-taught assessments were made. We are in the process of moving into the student’s research projects that are due to be submitted at the beginning of September.

The Energy Network has been leading in promoting a multi-disciplinary approach to net zero-carbon energy systems. We have worked over the last 10 years on many major projects and with many partners, with an emphasis on multi-disciplinary working. Our influence and success is evidenced by the fact that Oxford hosts 2 of the 4 UK Government’s Large-scale Demonstrators (funded under the Industrial Strategy’s ‘Prospering from the Energy Revolution’). Both have strong University involvement.