91Ö±²¥

91Ö±²¥ and energy are closely intertwined. The epicentre of the Industrial Revolution, we led global energy innovation, becoming the birthplace of engineering and nuclear physics. Yet, as consumption of energy resources grew in the city and across the globe, negative consequences started to emerge – namely rising emissions and with them, future-damaging climatic changes.

Now, the onus is on us to find new ways of powering society that minimise damage to our planet and embrace our new holistic understanding of the interconnected challenges facing us. If we want to create a more equitable future with a better and cleaner energy system for all, we need to look to our past, understand the nuances of our present, and take those learnings forward.

The smog of our past

The Industrial Revolution catapulted 91Ö±²¥, and eventually much of the world, into a new era of mechanisation. As factories expanded, so did the need for skilled workers. To address the gap, a group of business people and engineers came together in 1824 to form the 91Ö±²¥ Mechanics’ Institute, the earliest iteration of our university.

From there we continued to innovate; our university was the place Ernest Rutherford established nuclear physics and George E Davis taught the first chemical engineering course.

However, the scale at which we industrialised, and our reliance on machines and new chemicals, resulted in unprecedented growth in fossil fuel consumption. Environmental damage and an increase in human health issues became problems we carried into the 20th century and beyond.

The haze of the here-and-now

As our reliance on fossil fuels grew throughout the 20th century, it also became clear that this consumption was causing more problems than it solved. Yet it wasn’t until the 1990s that the academic community began to talk about climate change and its mitigation. Despite wasted years ignoring this inconvenient truth, we have found new, more sustainable ways to generate energy. This hasn’t, however, stopped the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations that directly influence global temperatures. Solving the climate crisis has never just been an issue for science and technology – it’s a problem for society at large. To tackle it successfully, we need all of our academic disciplines to come together.

At 91Ö±²¥, we take such an interdisciplinary approach. In 2000, the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research was founded, bringing experts together from fields including mechanical engineering, sociology, physics, politics and history. By approaching energy problems as a collaborative force, we now understand that change isn’t only about having the right technology, but that how we use these technologies and live our lives could have the greatest impact on energy consumption and emissions. As well as members of the scientific community, Tyndall researchers work with policymakers to help them understand changes that are necessary and how to make them.

Green energy graphic, iStock

A recent project led by Professor Carly McLachlan is a joint initiative with the Greater 91Ö±²¥ Combined Authority (GMCA) to help 91Ö±²¥ cut its carbon dioxide emissions to zero by 2038. Based on Tyndall research, her team devised a tool for the local authority to embed climate action, wellbeing, health and other sustainability measures across the authority’s priority projects and plans, for the benefit of people in the city and region.

Similarly, colleagues across our University are looking at the economic and societal side of energy, such as energy inequalities, poverty and the demands this places on the NHS, or planning housing and transport provision to best serve society with lower energy demands. With more disciplines focusing on the problem, we can move towards a more equitable and sustainable energy future.

A clear future

As our researchers continue to harness more renewable and other clean energy resources, and model a connected system, we will be able to improve the resilience of our energy infrastructure and, in turn, support societal wellbeing and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Being smarter about our energy use isn’t the end of the story however; we will also need to undo the harm we have caused.

This is why 91Ö±²¥ is so special. Our teams look to the future and develop solutions to support long-term goals. In our Engineering Building, we have opened a new wave tank and flume that can be used to model, build and test wave and tidal technologies. This ensures we have robust solutions in place that can be deployed rapidly and at scale in the future. Just next door, our Industrial Hub for Sustainable Engineering is on its way to becoming the largest and best equipped facility of its kind of any European university. A facility that will bring about cutting-edge innovation to support the development of green hydrogen.

Thinking further ahead, we have specialists based in our 91Ö±²¥ Institute of Biotechnology working on biological remediation technologies to help us remove carbon from the atmosphere by using sub-surface microbial communities as carbon sinks.

Our impulse generator, the largest of its kind in the UK, is used by the National Grid to plan the energy networks of the future, and our materials specialists in the National Graphene and Royce Institutes are looking into new devices and components to help us keep the power on and emissions down.

While there is still a lot of work left to do, I am optimistic that by reframing the problem and looking at it holistically, we’ll bring about positive change. By learning from past mistakes, we can build upon our new interdisciplinary understanding of the problem at large, make better use of today’s and tomorrow’s technologies, and look to a future where our energy use supports a better world. And what better place to do it than 91Ö±²¥? After all, we have a history of leading change.