Grand Challenges
Energy IRC Grand Challenges focus on developing and delivering new large-scale collaborative activities, facilities, centres and research directions by bringing together academics and external partners to work on future energy challenges where we believe we can make a significant impact.
Grand Challenge: Carbon Reduction in Chemical Technology
This Grand Challenge seeks to extend existing expertise in reaction engineering and multi-scale imaging and modelling to reduce the carbon footprint and energy demand of industrial chemical processes. The Cambridge Centre for Carbon Reduction in Chemical Technology (C4T) is a world-leading partnership between Cambridge and Singapore, set up to tackle the environmentally relevant and complex problem of assessing and reducing the carbon footprint of the integrated petro-chemical plants and electrical network on Jurong Island in Singapore. C4T brings together industry and academic researchers from the Departments of Chemical Engineering & Biotechnology, Chemistry, Biochemistry, Information Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Materials Science and Metallurgy.
Click here for more information about C4T
Contact:Joy Haughton or Louise Renwick
Grand Challenge: In Search of ‘Good’ Energy Policy
The In Search of ‘Good’ Energy Policy Grand Challenge focuses on developing and delivering new collaborative activities that deal with understanding the principles of formulating ‘good’ energy policies. With an unparalleled breadth of expertise spanning the social sciences, physical sciences and humanities, the participating researchers, who are world class thinkers in their fields ranging from engineering, economics, politics, and law to history, philosophy and theology, have come together to develop this Grand Challenge which focuses on multi-disciplinary approaches to the development of ‘good’ or ‘better’ policies. Working with partner organisations from academia, industry and government, we aim to develop strategies for applying these principles to support a diverse range of energy policy scenarios.
Click here for more information on In Search of 'Good' Energy Policy.
Contact: energy@admin.cam.ac.uk
Grand Challenge: Materials for Energy Efficient ICT
The Materials for Energy Efficient Information Communications Technology (ICT) Grand Challenge aims to reduce the energy consumed directly by ICT devices and in other sectors, enabled by the application of energy efficient ICT. Current technologies for energy usage, generation and storage all operate way below limits set by thermodynamics and there is huge potential to introduce radical changes that derive from fundamental scientific advances in materials-based technologies. This new Grand Challenge, which involves over 50 academics from across the Schools of Physical Sciences and Technology, focuses on the new materials and devices discoveries required to engineer a step-change in ICT.
Click here for more information on Cambridge Royce.
Contact: energy@admin.cam.ac.uk