Background
The UK-India Sustainable Energy Technologies Network was established in January 2009 to enable a step-change in collaborative research activity between the UK and India in order to establish an interdisciplinary, multinational research centre focused on energy research.
Initial partners of the network involve the UK Midlands Energy Consortium, namely the Universities of Nottingham Birmingham and Loughborough. Indian partners are The National Environmental Engineering Research Institute, Nagpur; The Centre for Sustainable Technology, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, The World Institute of Sustainable Energy, Pune and Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai.
Through thus initiative it is proposed that new collaborations will be formed that will result in bilateral research programmes that result in technological advances which result in a material improvement of lives of both people in India and the UK. The network will initially undertake activities such as fact finding missions, face to face meetings, tours of facilities, and networking events to promote better understanding of on-going research activities. These will be used to identify and establish areas where collaborative research would add value. It is proposed that through the network sharing of expertise and state of the art facilities possibly not previously available to both the UK and Indian partners to accelerate progress beyond that achievable in isolation.
Initially the network will build upon the core research areas of the original partners. A novel element of this proposal is the integration of perspectives on the social and ethical dimensions of these areas of technology research. Initial collaboration is proposed in the following areas:
- Large Scale power generation
- Carbon capture and storage
- Plant Efficiency
- Biomass co-firing
- Hydrogen and pyrolytic carbon from biomass
- Biomass to liquid / gas fuel technologies
- Small scale energy applications
- Small scale alternative energy technologies
- Societal and economic assessment
The network is funded by the Engineering and Physical
