Global carbon emissions must decline rapidly to reduce the risk of dangerous climate change. Independent government advisers, the Committee on Climate Change, recently stated that the UK should reach net-zero emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050. This means that the UK's emissions of greenhouse gases should not exceed its ability to remove carbon from the atmosphere. Achieving this target will mean far-reaching changes to the economy, and to the way that people live in their homes, and travel. Yet so far, as the Committee notes, "To date, much of the success in reducing UK emissions has been invisible to the public... reaching net-zero emissions will require more involvement from people." A crucial challenge over the coming decade, then, will be to find ways to encourage and enable people to contribute to this shift to zero-carbon. This proposal looks at one crucial aspect of this shift. It examines how the energy system could be managed better, to achieve these climate change goals, and to make the most of the innovation in energy products and services. Such innovation includes the decentralisation of energy generation technologies, integration between heat, electricity and transport technologies, and increasing digitalisation and data-driven services. The project looks in particular at how to improve governance of the energy system. Governance is defined as the rules, regulations and institutions that govern the way the system is run. At the moment, in energy governance, individuals are understood primarily as 'consumers' of electricity, gas and transport fuel. Yet innovative technologies and business models give individuals the opportunity to shift away from a passive consumption role, to instead generate and store their own power, adjust how much electricity they take from the grid, and reduce their demand. This project examines how governance can be reshaped, to make the most of this innovation, and to support and build engagement for rapid carbon reduction. The project will learn from existing case studies of innovation, to develop a series of proposals, or 'Pathways', which describe how the future energy system could be governed. These Pathways will be discussed at a set of deliberative workshops. The workshops will allow representative groups of citizens to debate the future of the energy system together with businesses, and regulators and government organisations who manage the system. At the workshops, these three groups will discuss ways in which the energy system could be governed, and work together to propose new policies and approaches. Comparisons will also be made with other regions and countries, including Denmark, Sweden and the US states of California and New York. The evidence from the project will be used by project partners the Committee on Climate Change and the Energy Systems Catapult, as well as other organisations, to develop the advice that they give to government. Businesses will also be able to use the evidence to test and develop new business models. The research will develop guidelines for involving people in decisions about energy governance, based on the experience of the deliberative workshops. These guidelines will also inform the work of project partners and other organisations. Ultimately, the project aims to find ways to better engage citizens in rapid carbon reduction, in order to achieve the UK's energy and climate goals.

Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES) uses compressors to produce pressurised air while excessive power is available; the pressurised air is then stored in air reservoirs and will be released via a turbine to generate electricity when needed. Compared with other energy storage technologies, CAES has some highly attractive features including large scale, long duration, and low cost. However, its low round trip energy efficiency (the best CAES plant currently in operation has a 60.2% round trip efficiency) and low energy density cause major concerns for commercial deployment. The conversion of electricity to heat and storing the heat via thermal storage is a relatively mature and a highly efficient technology; but the conversion of the stored thermal energy back to electricity has a low energy efficiency (less than 40%) through (conventional and organic) Rankine cycles, thermoelectric generators, and recently proposed thermophotovoltaics. The project aims to develop a Hi-CAES technology, which integrates the CAES with high-temperature thermal energy storage (HTES) to achieve high energy conversion efficiency, high energy and power density, and operation flexibility. The technology uses HTES to elevate CAES power rate and also convert high-temperature thermal energy to electricity using compressed air - a natural working fluid. The proposed technology is expected to increase CAES's electricity-to-electricity efficiency to over 70% and overall energy efficiency to over 90% with additional energy supply for heating and cooling. The proposed Hi-CAES will also increase the storage energy density and system power rate significantly. Meanwhile, the technology can convert the stored thermal energy into electrical power with a much higher energy conversion efficiency and lower system cost than current thermoelectrical energy storage technologies. With the integration of HTES with CAES, the system dynamic characteristics and operation flexibility can be much improved in terms of charging and discharging processes. This will place Hi-CAES in a better financial position as it can generate revenue through certain high market value fast response grid balance service. The goal of the project is to improve both the CAES efficiency and energy density considerably through the integration with a HTES system. The research will address the technical and scientifically challenges for realisation of the Hi-CAES system and societal challenges of deep power system decarbonisation.

Establishing a hydrogen fuelled transportation network is a research challenge that cuts across both the energy and transport sectors. It is a truly multi-disciplinary challenge which will require the advancement of many mutually dependent research disciplines. This Network will support the dissemination and impact of these activities between academia, industry, policymakers and the general public. Under the hydrogen fuelled transportation theme, the Network aims to bring together the knowledge obtained through research projects funded by the RCUK Programme and other national and international cross-disciplinary research aimed at developing a "hydrogen" for transport economy. It will have a strong multi-disciplinary focus and aim to ensure engagement and knowledge transfer takes place across all modes of transport and hydrogen energy including technology, socio-economics, behavioural science and policy. The Network team will manage a £500k feasibility fund for cutting edge projects which also meet the wider objectives of facilitating collaboration and multi-disciplinary research.

The UK is leading the development and installation of offshore renewable energy technologies. With over 13GW of installed offshore wind capacity and another 3GW under construction, two operational and one awarded floating offshore demonstration projects as well as Contracts for Difference awards for four tidal energy projects, offshore renewable energy will provide the backbone of the Net Zero energy system, giving energy security, green growth and jobs in the UK. The revised UK targets that underpin the Energy Security Strategy seek to grow offshore wind capacity to 50 GW, with up to 5 GW floating offshore wind by 2030. Further acceleration is envisaged beyond 2030 with targets of around 150 GW anticipated for 2050. To achieve these levels of deployment, ORE developments need to move beyond current sites to more challenging locations in deeper water, further from shore, while the increasing pace of deployment introduces major challenges in consenting, manufacture and installation. These are ambitious targets that will require strategic innovation and research to achieve the necessary technology acceleration while ensuring environmental sustainability and societal acceptance. The role of the Supergen ORE Hub 2023 builds on the academic and scientific networks, traction with industry and policymakers and the reputation for research leadership established in the Supergen ORE Hub 2018. The new hub will utilise existing and planned research outcomes to accelerate the technology development, collaboration and industry uptake for commercial ORE developments. The Supergen ORE Hub strategy will focus on delivering impact and knowledge transfer, underpinned by excellent research, for the benefit of the wider sector, providing research and development for the economic and social benefit of the UK. Four mechanisms for leverage are envisaged to accelerate the ORE expansion: Streamlining ORE projects, by accelerating planning, consenting and build out timescales; upscaling the ORE workforce, increasing the scale and efficiency of ORE devices and system; enhanced competitiveness, maximising ORE local content and ORE economic viability in the energy portfolio; whilst ensuring sustainability, yielding positive environmental and social benefits from ORE. The research programme is built around five strategic workstreams, i) ORE expansion - policy and scenarios , ii) Data for ORE design and decision-making, iii) ORE modelling, iv) ORE design methods and v) Future ORE systems and concepts, which will be delivered through a combination of core research to tackle sector wide challenges in a holistic and synergistic manner, strategic projects to address emerging sector challenges and flexible funding to deliver targeted projects addressing focussed opportunities. Supergen Representative Systems will be established as a vehicle for academic and industry community engagement to provide comparative reference cases for assessing applicability of modelling tools and approaches, emerging technology and data processing techniques. The Supergen ORE Hub outputs, research findings and sector progress will be communicated through directed networking, engagement and dissemination activities for the range of academic, industry and policy and governmental stakeholders, as well as the wider public. Industry leverage will be achieved through new co-funding mechanisms, including industry-funded flexible funding calls, direct investment into research activities and the industry-funded secondment of researchers, with >53% industry plus >23% HEI leverage on the EPSRC investment at proposal stage. The Hub will continue and expand its role in developing and sustaining the pipeline of talent flowing into research and industry by integrating its ECR programme with Early Career Industrialists and by enhancing its programme of EDI activities to help deliver greater diversity within the sector and to promote ORE as a rewarding and accessible career for all.

Decarbonisation of the UK's energy system will require substantial action at a regional and local level. Therefore, the UK's energy system is growing rapidly to a more decentralised model by 2050 with a great level of small-scale electricity and heat generation at the distribution level, where wind and solar renewable energies will play a large role. However, the intermittent nature of these renewable sources presents a great challenge in energy generation and load balance maintenance to ensure stability and reliability of the power network. This highlights the need for electricity storage technologies as they provide flexibility to store excess electricity for times when it is in demand. The majority of recent installations deploy fast response electricity storage systems (e.g. batteries) with short-duration electricity storage (minutes-days) and short-discharge duration of up to 4 hours. However, technologies with long-duration electricity storage (days-weeks) and medium-duration discharge of over 4 hours, with negligible capacity and efficiency degradation are required to ensure power supply security in all weather conditions (e.g. wind or solar energies are not available for several days). There are several possible technologies for long-duration energy storage, e.g., pumped-hydro storage, liquid air energy storage and compressed air energy storage (CAES). Among them, adiabatic CAES systems (ACAES) has the lowest installed energy capital costs (2-50$/kWh) for a wide range of storage applications from micro scale (few kW) to large scale (few MW). In conventional ACAES systems, the electricity is used to compress air in compressors, generating high levels of heat during the process. The heat of the compressed air is removed at the outlets of the compressors and stored in a thermal energy storage (TES) unit, while the cool compressed air is stored in a cavern at depths of hundreds of metres. To discharge the energy on demand, the cool compressed air heats up in the TES before expansion in turbines to generate electricity. Despite its promising features for decarbonising the electricity power system, there are major challenges which hinder further development of ACAES systems, including (1) limitations on the underground geology, (2) low roundtrip efficiency and (3) thermal and structural challenges on the TES unit because of high-temperature air at the outlets of the compressors. This proposal aims to address these major challenges through development of an affordable micro-scale co-generation near-isothermal and adiabatic CAES system with overground air storage vessels (micro-Ni-ACAES). The system utilizes near-isothermal and high-efficiency compressor/expander devices, TES and heat exchanger units based on an innovative composite phase change material and air storage vessels. The project will perform a fundamental experimental and modelling analyses to gain deep insight into the flow and thermal fields in the near-isothermal compressors/expanders as well as charging and discharging kinetics of the TES unit. Both isochoric and isobaric storage processes will be analysed. These fundamental studies will lead to efficient designs of the micro-Ni-ACAES system components and further support the development of a thermodynamics-based design tool. The design tool will be used to identify the system's optimum operating condition and control strategy for steady-state and dynamic operations of the system. Additionally, the project will include a techno-economic and environmental impact assessment in order to evaluate the economic viability of the system, as well as CO2 abatement and fossil fuel savings over the system's lifetime. The proposed high efficiency co-generation micro-Ni-ACAES systems are believed to be the future of the CAES technology, eventually culminating in decentralised microgrid power network in application to district energy network or commercial sectors (e.g. business parks).