Key Priorities
One North East and the Energy Leadership Council have identified the key priorities for the region in the energy sector:
- New approaches to distributed energy – including business models and vehicles, management, economic feasibility, and overall technical feasibility, as well as issues of technology
- Low carbon transportation – bringing together work on fuels with work on engines and vehicles. Key is our industrial strengths in process industries and vehicle manufacture, backed by strong research
- Education and skills – developing innovative approaches to training, education and qualifications, building on recent Government announcements. Likely to be starting with offshore oil and gas
- Offshore wind, wave and tidal – focus on establishing large scale industrial capability – including construction and installation, design and supply chain
- Bio-Energy – linked to work on low-carbon transportation, but wider in scope and applications. Building on strengths in industrial processing and linking to rural development
- Ubiquitous Photovoltaics – bringing together academic networks with businesses and applications. Integrate OPV work
- Innovative Geo-Energy – including geothermal, coal gasification, and similar. Research leading to pilot projects
- Carbon Abatement and Management Infrastructure – including detailed analysis of requirements of major industrial areas, collection and storage loops and system integration
- Domestic and Community Energy – Improving the efficiency of our current housing stock and the potential of new technologies
- ERNEE – underpinning programme of university based research, strengths linked to industrial and community needs
These priorities will be taken forward within the Energy Leadership work theme groups which are currently being formulated.