UCL-Energy seminar: 'Developing secure, environmentally sound city and national energy systems' with UCL-Energy lecturer Dr Mark Barrett and research associate Dr Ed Sharp

Cities are where the majority of people live and accordingly where most energy resources are ultimately used. The use of energy, particularly in transport, is a major cause of air pollution and ill health. A central policy for improving health and to utilize renewable energy is to electrify transport and building heating. Cities import most of their energy and can provide a critical integrating role in a national system with high renewable energy fractions through the provision of energy storage and multi-fuelled energy systems.

The talk will introduce the work being done by UCL-Energy’s EnergySpaceTime group and the Energy Saving Trust on an Innovate funded project that aims to aid the development of energy and environment policy in cities and nationally using data and models. The initial focus of this project is the UK, in particular the stakeholder cities of Birmingham and Exeter, but globally there is rapid urbanization and therefore a clear audience for this kind of research.

We will be looking in depth at the data and model being used for this project and how the exploration of city energy and environment policies can be illustrated with data and model results.

About the speakers: 

Mark is a senior lecturer at UCL and company director. He has a BSc in Physics and Philosophy and a PhD in Energy Modelling. He has forty years’ experience of modelling energy and transport systems and atmospheric emissions. He has developed a number of national scale models of energy demand in the stationary and transport (land,  sea and air) sectors, and conventional and renewable supply, and used these to design low cost systems to enhance energy security and reduce emissions. These models have been applied at international and local level in Europe and Asia working with a range of national and local government agencies, private companies and consultancies, and non-governmental and environmental organisations. His current focus is as technical director of an Innovate funded project to produce a city energy and environment model.                 

Ed is a research associate at UCL. He has recently completed a PhD, developing a gridded model of the GB electricity system, focusing on wind generation and domestic demand. This followed an MSc and MRes in GIS and energy demand respectively.  He worked for a number of years in power station commissioning, completing projects in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. Ed is currently working on the data science aspects of the city energy and environment model alongside exploring wind generation simulation at a number of scales.

Presentation slides

Please note this event will be filmed and posted on the UCL-Energy Youtube Channel

Photo credit: louisredon pixabay.com CC0 Public Domain