Theme Leader: Job Thijssen (j.h.j.thijssen@ed.ac.uk) , Edinburgh
If civilisation continues at its current rate of fossil fuel usage, an energy crisis will ensue this century. In order to survive this crisis, new and innovative methods to extract energy from renewable sources, and to conserve our current resources will need to be developed.
At present, mainstream development and implementation of new generation and conservation technology is slow, but, public awareness and government pressures to deliver on agreed emission targets are rapidly changing this story.
The SUPA alliance recognises that energy technologies are deeply rooted in the science of physics. Physics provides the theoretical foundation for essentially all of the technologies and processes involved energy conservation and generation. Physics has a major role to play, and is embedded all the way from resource exploration, extraction, conversion, transmission and distribution to providing the energy services demanded by our high-tech societies. Without thermodynamics there would be no heat engines that form the mainstay of the world's current electricity generation or transportation systems; without the laws of classical mechanics, classical electro-magnetics or relativity theory, there would be no wind turbines, photovoltaics, nuclear power, batteries, or fuel cells.
However, we also realise that a solution to the energy problem will not only involve the development of our existing technologies. Therefore SUPA are involved in researching new solutions and developing innovative collaborations across the traditional research disciplines.
The SUPA Energy Theme builds on the existing high-quality research across the alliance universities in key areas including; solar power, nuclear power, energy conservation and management, and, emerging power sources.
Please take a look through our web-pages below, and feel free to contact us.
Energy conservation and management
Download the Energy flyer:
Fuel cell photo by Dr Gari Harris. © University of Dundee