Tag Archives: energy

Developing the offshore wind supply chain

1 Reply

Tue 13 Nov 2012 – Thistle Hotel, Marble Arch, Bryanston Street, London W1H 7EH

The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) and the Technology Strategy Board are to invest up to £11.2m in technical feasibility studies; development and demonstration of component technologies; and knowledge transfer partnerships (KTP) to stimulate innovation in the UK offshore wind sector and to strengthen the supply chain.  The deployment of wind farms off the coast of the UK will see the UK continuing to lead the global market over the coming years.  However, the cost of energy from offshore wind remains relatively high and the UK supply chain captures relatively little value in current deployments. This competition aims to help the development of technologies that will minimise the cost of energy to the UK consumer while ensuring that the UK economy captures more benefit from increased supply to future projects. 

Development and demonstration

Up to £7m is available for the third round of DECC and the Technology Strategy Board’s offshore wind component technologies development and demonstration scheme.  Applications to this scheme should be made to DECC and should seek to develop and demonstrate components across the offshore wind system. Applications will be welcomed from single businesses or consortia, including those not currently established in the UK or those seeking to expand into the offshore wind sector.  Successful projects are expected to attract between about 25% and 60% public funding, and may receive up to £4m funding per project. This element of the competition opens in early November and the deadline for applications is noon on 16 January 2013

Feasibility studies

Up to £3m is available for technical feasibility studies lasting up to a year and applications should be made to the Technology Strategy Board. Projects must be led by a UK business and may be developed by a single company or be collaborative. They will attract up to 75% public funding of up to £100k for pre- industrial research, with total project sizes expected to be between £100k and £150k. The competition for feasibility studies opens on 5 November 2012. The deadline for registration is noon on 9 January 2013, and the deadline for applications is noon on 16 January 2013.

A briefing event for development and demonstration funding, feasibility studies and the KTP call will be held on 13 November 2012.

View the ‘Developing the offshore renewable energy supply chain competition’ (Knowledge Transfer Partnerships

FP7 Energy: UK NCP Proposal Clinics and Review Service

Leave a reply

If you are applying for one of the FP7 Energy calls, then the UK National Contact Point (NCP) for the FP7 Energy Theme has various free support services. For example, they are holding proposal clinics (one to one meetings of one hour with a member of their team to discuss your proposal) and proposal review services prior to the deadlines. This article gives further details of this support. The Energy NCP also has a newsletter, which you may wish to subscribe to.

Bookings are now open for those applying to:

  • the FP7-ENERGY-2013-1 call (the main long-term research call which closes on 28th November 2012); and
  • the FP7-SMARTCITIES-2013 Smart Cities call (which has a deadline is 4th December 2012).

It is expected that the Energy NCP will organise an equivalent support service in the future for those who are interested in applying for one of the other FP7 Energy calls with a later deadline.

Proposal clinic sessions are available in London on Wednesday 17th October and Manchester on Thursday 18th October.  Please register your interest in attending a clinic session by email a proposal summary to the Energy NCP.  The Energy NCP will then allocate the sessions and inform you of the time for your meeting.  Please let the Energy NCP know if you would like to attend a clinic session but are unable to attend on these dates and they will try to accommodate you on alternative dates or at other locations if possible.The Energy NCP will be also be offering a proposal review service between Monday 5th November and the proposal deadlines.  Please email them now to let them know if you anticipate that you would like them to review your proposal so that they know how many proposals to expect.

All proposals will be treated as confidential.

To register your interest in attending a clinic session or interest in the proposal review service, please email a proposal summary to energie@enviros.com.
The UK Energy NCP website provides more information including contact details and the Energy NCP newsletter.

Energy and International Development: Understanding Sustainable Energy Solutions in Developing Countries

Leave a reply

EPSRC is leading a call on behalf of the RCUK Energy Programme in collaboration with the Department for International Development (DFID) and the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) and invites expressions of interest from organisations (based in either developing countries or the UK) who wish to bid under a major new research call on understanding sustainable energy solutions in developing countries. Successful applicants will be invited to take part in a short development workshop to refine the priority research challenges around energy in the context of international development and help facilitate collaborative bids. This workshop will be held from 12-14 December in Nairobi, Kenya. The outputs of this workshop will be outline proposals that will undergo peer review immediately following the workshop, the successful outlines will then be invited to submit full proposals. Only attendees present at the development workshop (and those they are representing) will be eligible to submit full proposals to this call.

The UK Research Council’s Energy programme has allocated a budget of up to £5M to support research projects arising from this call. Depending on the quality of proposals received, up to an additional £7.5M of matching funding could be made available from DFID and DECC, bringing the total for this call up to a maximum of £12.5M. It is anticipated that up to three large-scale and ten smaller-scale proposals will be funded through this call.

Applicants will need to complete an Expression of Interest form by 12:00 on Friday 28 September 2012.

The expressions of interest will be assessed by a sifting panel in October 2012 and those that best meet the preliminary criteria outlined in this call will be invited to take part in the development workshop. Those invited to attend the workshop will be notified by 15 October 2012. Successful proposals from the workshop will be invited to full proposals by 21 December 2012. The deadline for the submission of full proposals will be 8 February 2013, and will be peer-reviewed in late February 2013 with the expectation that funding decisions will be made by the end of March 2013.

For more information and to complete the expression of interest form please visit the call page:

http://www.epsrc.ac.uk/funding/calls/open/Pages/energyandinternationaldevelopment.aspx

Encouraging physical sciences research to meet energy needs (EPSRC)

Leave a reply

The need to encourage the physical sciences to support energy research

As highlighted in the published Physical Sciences Portfolio, there are multiple research areas within the physical sciences that have the potential to contribute to the energy agenda. Examples include Materials for Energy Applications, Catalysis, Chemical reaction dynamics and mechanisms,Computational and theoretical chemistry, Electrochemical sciences, Photonic materials and metamaterials, Superconductivity, Synthetic coordination chemistry and Synthetic supramolecular chemistry.EPSRC wishes to encourage the physical sciences research community to realise the potential of the disciplines to contribute to the energy agenda. We are looking to researchers to come up with challenging, speculative ideas that go beyond the current research supported by the energy programme whilst addressing the identified needs for energy research.

EPSRC wants to encourage physical sciences researchers to engage with the challenges of energy research. The RCUK Energy Programme has set out the challenges and they include:

  • securing energy supply by funding world-class, speculative research to define future energy supply options, including hydrogen and renewables;
  • low carbon innovation;
  • reducing energy consumption through technological advances informed by a whole system understanding.

Research grant applications wanted

We are looking to the Physical Sciences research community to come up with speculative research ideas to be submitted as a standard research grant applications in areas that offer promise to tackle some of the issues identified by the RCUK Energy Programme.

This is not a special initiative with earmarked funding, rather an encouragement to the community to respond to a need. Applications received will be considered as standard research proposals, but will be ranked in a separate list.

Application content

Applications should address the usual points we require in a grant application including  National Importance which for this area should also include reference to the Government’s 2050 targets where appropriate.

Applications should include the phrase Energy and the Physical Sciences as part of the title (eg “Energy and the Physical Sciences: Characterisation of new energy storage materials” and should follow the guidance for standard research proposals.

Deadline

Proposals can be submitted at any time, but before 30 September 2012 at the latest to ensure funding decisions are reached before the end of the 2012/2013 financial year.

Further information

For further information please contact:

Have your say on the future of Intelligent Energy Europe!

Leave a reply

The current Intelligent Energy Europe (IEE) programme is coming to an end in 2013, and the European Commission is seeking your views to help shape the next IEE programme.

 

IEE III will run from 2014 to 2020 under the Energy Challenge of the future EU programme for Research and Innovation ´Horizon 2020´.

 

You can express your views by 5 September 2012 by completing a short online questionnaire.