The UK Energy Research Centre is the focal point for UK research on sustainable energy. It takes an independent, whole-systems approach, drawing on engineering, economics and the physical, environmental and social sciences. The Centre's role is to promote cohesion within the overall UK energy research effort. It acts as a bridge between the UK energy research community and the wider world, including business, policymakers and the international energy research community and is the centrepiece of the Research Councils Energy Programme.
The UKERC Energy 2050 project aims to show how the UK can move towards a resilient low-carbon energy system over the next forty years. The project focuses on the two primary goals of UK energy policy – achieving an 80 per cent reduction in carbon emissions by 2050 and ensuring that energy is delivered reliably. In addition, other policy goals need to be taken into account: managing environmental impacts other than those related to climate change; ensuring that everyone has access to affordable energy services; and that the UK energy sector continues to operate within the framework of a market economy. Together, UKERC researchers and associates are developing a set of "back-casting" scenarios describing possible future energy systems that are both low-carbon, and resilient to external and internal shocks. These will define desirable features of the UK energy system and identify ways of achieving the transformations needed to get there.
The Ministry of the Environment of Japan (MoEJ) and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in the UK (Defra) jointly promoted a scientific research project toward achieving a Low-Carbon Society (LCS) by 2050. The National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES), the UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC) and the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research are conducting research activities in line with this goal. We organized the 1st LCS workshop in June 2006 (Tokyo), the 2nd LCS workshop in June 2007 (London) and the third in February 2008 (Tokyo). The report of the first workshop was presented to the G8 Dialogue meeting in Mexico in October 2006. The Executive Summary was distributed to Parties at the UNFCCC meeting in Nairobi in November 2006. The conclusions featured in the conclusions of the Japanese G8 Presidency. A Special Issue of the journal Climate Policy was produced.
The UKERC conducts research activities on four major themes: energy demand; energy supply; energy systems; and energy environment. These all touch on the challenge of transitioning to a low carbon society through technology and lifestyle change. UKERC is a virtual centre formed by a consortium of seven core and four associated UK universities and research institutions. We are tasked with acting as a portal into low carbon research in the UK. UKERC participates in International Energy Agency groups and implementing agreements and helps to represent UK on the EU Framework 7 Energy Committee and the International partnership for the Hydrogen Economy.
UKERC can contribute work on modelling: low carbon energy systems; understanding the contribution of technological change to low carbon societies and investigating the role of lifestyle change and behaviour. We hope that LSC-RNet can allow the sharing of results globally between developed and developing countries, help build capacity to understand what a low carbon society is and how it can be achieved, and provide useful evidence for policy-makers. We think the most important question is how to achieve a low carbon society and what key steps need to be taken in the next two decades to put us on a trajectory to a low a carbon society.
In the UK, we believe that an 80% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, from a 1990 baseline is a fair contribution to achieving a low carbon society in the global context.
