Carrie Behar presenting the POE/BPE results

For Green Sky Thinking 2015, ECD architects presented the initial findings of a detailed Post Occupancy Evaluation (POE) and Building Performance Evaluation (BPE) of their own offices. The POE was led by Carrie Behar, a doctoral researcher at the Bartlett, UCL Energy Institute, where she also runs the POE module for MSc students. (more…)

On the 24^th of March 2015, Mark Bayley, the Chief Executive and Petter Allison, the Commercial Director of the Green Deal Finance Company came to visit the UCL Energy Institute to present their inside knowledge on the start-up phase and the current development of the Green Deal. (more…)

James Smith, Chairman of the Carbon Trust and ex-Chair of Shell UK moderated the discussion and summarised the outcome to the President of Mexico and UK government representatives.

Recently I took part in a high level round table on the opportunities of building a sustainable energy economy in the UK and in Mexico. The event was held on the occasion of the State Visit of the President of Mexico to the United Kingdom. This was a select roundtable discussion building on a dialogue initiated in Campeche, Mexico during HRH The Prince of Wales’s visit in November 2014. The roundtable was held in conjunction with the Department of Energy and Climate Change and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office; its aim was to debate areas of future co-operation through knowledge and technology transfer that will help each nation successfully meet their mutually ambitious carbon reduction targets, whilst addressing the challenges posed by the transition to a low carbon energy system.

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A sinister engineer in orange overalls and dark glasses looms from behind your fridge, hands raised, as if to strike… This is the scenario painted in the Daily Mail in a 2013 article on ‘direct load control’, or the possibility that third parties (‘outside forces’) such as energy suppliers could turn appliances in people’s home off and on to help keep the UK’s electricity system in balance.

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UCL’s career events are really something you should not miss: A large number of UCL students from the related studies visited the last event “Careers in Energy 2015” in the white pavilion in the main quad.

Here, young representatives from larger-sized companies as well as from fresh startups spoke about their personal experiences of entering the job market in the energy sector after they had completed their own education.

In that way, it made it very easy for students to relate to and exchange ideas in a more casual way. Even though the companies did not offer vacancies to the students directly, there was plenty of room to discuss possible internships or dissertation topics, which may be beneficial at a later stage.

The most important message though, came from one of the speakers: “Sustainability is like wrestling with a gorilla, you don’t give up when you are tired, you give up when the gorilla is tired!” This short message made it clear that there are plenty of opportunities out there. If one feels neglected, it is important to stand up again. As the issues about energy and climate change are likely to worsen with every minute, we now really need people to work together to tackle those issues.

For the next event, it would be great to hear a bit more about the career opportunities for students from overseas, as not all companies are willing to hire students who require a visa. It is important that also these students benefit from UCL Careers’ Events.

And finally, a brief hint from some students: Always bring your business cards, that can sometimes do wonders!

Thanks to the great presentations and ideas we got from Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), Green Tomato Energy, Rambøll, E4Tech, Element Energy, Zero Carbon Hub, Sustainable Engineering Collective and National Grid.

Post by
Lucas van Laack
MSc Environmental Design and Engineering
Student Representative Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment
UCL Institute for Environmental Design and Engineering (IEDE)

Keith Bell, the Scottish Power Professor of Smart Grids at Strathclyde University visited the UCL Energy Institute at the end of January to give a talk about the risks and challenges facing the UK power system and the role of smart grids in responding to them.

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As reported recently by GreentechMedia, venture capitals (VCs) are getting less interested about investing in cleantech companies, possibly due to previous renewable projects’ unimpressive returns and bad reputations among investors.  (more…)

Economy seven tariffs provide an alternative to electricity consumers in Britain, allowing users to pay less for electricity during the night.  The cheaper period last 7 hours but may be discontinuous. Rate savings during this period of up to 50% are possible, but daytime rates may be higher or a charge applied.  Very useful if you are at work all day and you can put appliances such as a washing machine or water heaters on a timer. (more…)

Two recently published papers (McGlade & Ekins (2015) and McGlade et al. (2014)) examine possible futures for fossil fuels, with a particular focus on the ‘bridging’ role that natural gas may be able to play during a transition to a global low-carbon energy system. Drawing on the findings of these papers, we have commented that the UK may be able to develop some of its potential shale gas resources within the context of a global effort to keep average global warming below 2 ^oC with a reasonable likelihood. This note aims to discuss the conditions that we consider are necessary for this to be the case. (more…)

This post explores what power stations produce the most emissions in GB, where they are and how GB emissions compare to other European countries. Using data from the Carbon Monitoring for Action (CARMA) website power plants can be placed on a map and their emissions plotted.  The dataset contains information on 60,000 worldwide power stations including name, location, ownership, production and CO2 emissions. (more…)