Research funding

This project focuses on the electricity network of 2050. It investigates the Grand Challenge of designing an Autonomic Power System for 2050. Our work is in 2 areas. First, we are examining transmission governance arrangements for the Autonomic Power System. As part of this work we are looking at the current global state of the business of electricity transmission system operation as well as presenting a policy case for a move towards the most economic and efficient transmission arrangement that would be the most compatible with the autonomic future. We are also analysing the role of auctions in the future self-design of the electricity transmission network. Second, we are looking at business models in a future power system. As part of this work we are examining possible business models for electric vehicles and learning lessons from the development of business models in telecoms.

Duration

2011 Oct – 2015 Mar

Amount awarded

£230,000

EPRG participants

• Michael Pollitt
• Mallika Chawla (Research Assistant)
• Claire Weiller (PhD student, Department of Engineering)
• Thomas Greve (PhD student visiting from University of Copenhagen)

Outside partners include

• University of Strathclyde
• Imperial College
• University of Durham
• King’s College London
• University of Manchester
• University of Sussex

The purpose of the Flexible Plug and Play Project is to test innovative and cost-efficient technical and commercial solutions that allow a faster and cheaper way to integrate generator of renewable energy to the electricity distribution network. The EPRG role is to perform an international review of specific case studies in order to explore smart ways for allocating constraint capacity and to conduct a cost benefit analysis of the FPP business model to be developed by Imperial College London.

Duration

2012 Apr – 2014 Apr

Amount awarded

£172,000. The total amount awarded for the project is £9.7m (including OFGEM, UK Power Networks and partners fund).

Partners

Different partners participate in the project. Among these are:

• Cable & Wireless Worldwide
• Alston Grid UK
• Silver Spring Networks
• Smarter Grid Solutions
• GL Garrad Hassan
• Imperial College London
• Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET)
• Fundamentals
• GE Power Conversion
• Wilson Transformer Company
• University of Cambridge (EPRG)

The aim of the UKCCSRC is to provide a national focal point for CCS research and development in order to bring together the user community and academics to analyse problems, devise and carry out world-leading research and share delivery, thus maximising impact. The amount of funding is £10 million over 5 years from the EPSRC and RCUK Energy Programme divided across 10 institutions and numerous academic departments. Dr David Reiner is involved in the Centre as the Coordination Group member responsible for social science research and serves as Research Area Champion for Policy, Economics and Finance.

Duration

2012 Apr – 2017 Mar

Amount awarded

£10 million

EPRG participants

David Reiner

Outside partners

Learn more about the Centre and its participants in the UKCCSRC.

The Electricity Policy Research Group (EPRG) was launched in May 2005 with funding under the ESRC’s Towards a Sustainable Energy Economy, to consolidate existing and fruitful research, to coordinate our future research programme, and to extend our network of Corporate and Institutional Members. The End of Award Report summarises our research undertaken during the past 5 years and also the development of the group through the research networks and co-funded projects we have attracted.

Duration

2005 Oct – 2010 Sep

Amount awarded

• ESRC TSEC: £2,382,683.65 (original funding) 2005-2010
• ESRC: £32,663.00 (supplement 24/04/06 for Research Associate employment)
• Newton Trust Award: £5,000 supplement May 2009 (for Ben Hobbs paid through TSEC)
• Re-indexation cut: -£3,367.84

EPRG participants

View a list of academic and support staff involved in the TSEC Project (PDF)

Outside partners

View key outputs from the TSEC Project (PDF)

The project disseminated the results of our 5-year ESRC project that addressed energy policy challenges in a carbon-constrained world, combining the economic analysis of markets and regulation with the specific characteristics of the electricity industry, measuring the impact of regulation and liberalisation on efficiency, investment, security of supply, and R&D.

Duration

2010 Oct – 2011 Sep

Amount awarded

£78,331.97

EPRG participants

• Michael Pollitt
• David Newbery
• other members of EPRG

The Future Network Technologies Consortium (FutureNet), which ran from 2003 to 2007, brought together engineers and social scientists from 8 UK universities. The consortium focused on researching the development of an electrical power network that would support and encourage renewable energy sources without compromising quality of service. The EPRG part of the research was on 2 work packages:

• System evolution
  Policy instruments and incentives to advance and deploy low carbon technologies
• Markets and service
  Market design and investment in generation technologies; implications of high levels of renewable penetration

Following on from the FutureNet Technology Workshop, the book Future Electricity Technologies and Systems (edited by Tooraj Jamasb, William Nuttall and Michael Pollitt) was published in 2006 by Cambridge University Press. The book is a result of collaboration between the Supergen FutureNet consortium and other Supergen consortia. It provides an overview of renewable and other electricity technologies and analyses a range of possible scenarios for the future of electricity in the UK. A second book combining TSEC and FutureNet research was published by CUP in 2008: Delivering a Low-Carbon Electricity System: Technologies, Economics and Policy (edited by Michael Grubb, Tooraj Jamasb and Michael Pollitt).

Duration

2003 – 2007

Amount awarded

£775,456 (EPSRC)

EPRG participants

• Karsten Neuhoff
• Michael Grubb
• Michael Pollitt
• William Nuttall
• Tooraj Jamasb
• Jonathan Köhler

FlexNet aims to build on the work of FutureNet by investigating the major technical, economic, policy and social developments that need to happen to make flexible networks a reality. Thorough analysis is combined with illustrations of specific outputs where possible, so that ideas can be taken up and implemented by the commercial sector, government and regulators.

EPRG work as part of FlexNet comes under the following work packages:

• Markets and investment
  Exploring the market design, investment incentives and policy changes necessary for companies to create a flexible energy system
• Customers, citizens and loads
  Analysing the potential, barriers and public acceptance issues surrounding greater contributions by customers to a more flexible energy system. A book entitled The Future of Electricity Demand: Customers, Citizens and Loads (edited by Tooraj Jamasb and Michael Pollitt) was published in 2011 by CUP.

Duration

2007 Oct – 2011 Sep

Amount awarded

£644,690 (EPSRC)

EPRG participants

• Karsten Neuhoff
• Michael Pollitt
• Tooraj Jamasb
• Jevgenijs Steinbuks
• Ben Hobbs
• Aoife Brophy Haney
• Laura Platchkov
• Harry van der Weijde

UKSHEC (United Kingdom Sustainable Hydrogen Energy Consortium) is a research programme that aims to develop new energy systems based on hydrogen and foster the adoption of renewable technologies, notably biomass and marine energy. The Consortium is Universities of Bath, Oxford, Birmingham, Cambridge, Glasgow, Manchester, Nottingham, Salford, Strathclyde, University College London and the Science & Technology Facilities Council (STFC). EPRG are running the Sub-Working Package 1 of the UKSHEC PlusProgramme, about innovation processes and technologies, working on a multi-criteria decision model with stochastic learning rates which analyze the trade-off between cost and diversity in the UK energy mix in relation to the carbon reduction goals for 2050. The model is expected to provide useful information on the possible paths of UK energy portfolio towards 2050 and on the role of learning curves in relationship to future cost of renewable technologies such as wind, marine and biomass. In a following phase, results will be used by the UCL Energy Institute as inputs for their studies on UK energy system

Duration

2007 Oct – 2012 Jun

Amount awarded

£100,132 (EPSRC)

EPRG participants

• Michael Grubb
• Davide Cerruti

The aim of the UKCCSRC is to provide a national focal point for CCS research and development in order to bring together the user community and academics to analyse problems, devise and carry out world-leading research and share delivery, thus maximising impact. The amount of funding is £10M over 5 years from the EPSRC and RCUK Energy Programme, with additional funding of £3 million from DECC to establish new capital facilities that will support innovative research. David Reiner is involved in the Centre as the Coordination Group member responsible for social science research and serves as Research Area Champion for Policy, Economics and Finance. He is currently the Research Group Leader for Cross Cutting Issues.

Duration

2012 Apr – 2017 Mar

Amount awarded

£10 million

EPRG participants

David Reiner

Outside partners

Learn more about the Centre and its participants in the UKCCSRC.

The CESSA research programme was financed by the European Union (EC, DG Research) under the Sixth RTD Framework Programme. The main research objectives were to study the Economics and policy interfaces for gas and nuclear in the context of energy security of supply and a future hydrogen economy:

• Analysing economic mechanisms and assessing policy governance aspects of European energy policy
• Identifying barriers, prospects, policy issues and comparing with existing studies

Recommending measures to be taken at European level and elaborating it through consensus among academics and stakeholders. CESSA was coordinated by Armines – Ecole Des Mines, Paris. EPRG research focused on Nuclear Energy and Security of Supply. Other partners included DIW Berlin (on gas), University Pontifica Comillas (hydrogen) and University Paris Sud (security of supply). The research was written up and published as Security of Energy Supply in Europe (edited by François Lévêque, Jean-Michel Glachant, Julián Barquín, Christian von Hirschhausen, Franziska Holz, and William J Nuttall) in July 2010. The e-book went online in November 2010.

Duration

2007 – 2009

Amount awarded

£61,392 (EU)

EPRG participants

• David Newbery
• William Nuttall
• John Ash
• Raphael Heffron

The FP6 TOCSIN project has evaluated climate change mitigation options in China and India and the conditions for strategic cooperation on research, development and demonstration (RD&D) and technology transfer with the European Union. In particular, the project investigated the strategic dimensions of RD&D cooperation and the challenge of creating incentives to encourage the participation of developing countries in post-2012 GHG emissions reduction strategies and technological cooperation. Dissemination was conducted through policy briefs and a final conference in October 2009 in Leuven, Belgium. Other participants were: Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, (Coordinator); Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei, Italy; Tsinghua University, Hong Kong Baptist University, and the Indian Institute of Management, IIMVA.

Duration

2007 – 2009

Amount awarded

£62,828 (EU)

EPRG participants

• David Reiner
• Dabo Guan
• Xi Liang

This project involved working with a number of European regulators to undertake international benchmarking between their gas transmission utilities and similar gas transmission utilities in the US. The project resulted in a report to the CEER highlighting the theoretical benefits of such international benchmarking in terms of identifying the scope for efficiency improvements. However, it also demonstrated the practical difficulty of coordinating such benchmarking among European regulators and gaining the cooperation of incumbent European utilities.

Duration

2005 Oct – 2006 Jul

Amount awarded

€40,000 (Council of European Energy Regulators (CEER))

EPRG participants

• Tooraj Jamasb
• David Newbery
• Michael Pollitt
• Thomas Triebs

With funding from the then-UK Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), Cambridge was responsible for coordinating a global assessment of barriers and opportunities to CCS in a number of countries including China, South Africa, India and Japan. Cambridge was responsible for the fieldwork in China together with partners in the South China University of Technology and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and interviews were conducted in Beijing, Guangdong (South China) and Wuhan (central China). The project contributed to the CO2 Capture Project (CCP) and the IES Working Party on Fossil Fuels.

Duration

2006 – 2007

Amount awarded

£40,000

EPRG participants

• David Reiner
• Xi Liang

The aim of this report was to review the key economic issues, problems and potential solutions that the SFOE and any future Swiss regulator may face as Switzerland embarks on its reforms of the electricity sector and the EU takes further measures to create the Single Electricity Market. The report addresses the different means of encouraging appropriate transmission infrastructure development and was published by EPRG and the Swiss Federal Office of Energy.

Duration

Jan – Aug 2006

Amount awarded

SFR 50.000 (Swiss Federal Office of Energy)

EPRG participants

• Paul Twomey
• Karsten Neuhoff
• David Newbery

Domestic climate policies play an important part in shifting countries towards a low-carbon development trajectory. Six country case studies explore the domestic drivers and barriers for policies with climate (co-) benefits in developing countries. They were supported with analytic papers on intermediate indicators, lessons from the application of conditionality, the experience from EU accession process and twinning, the experience of compliance system design, and the role of policies and patents in technology transfer. The work was an early contribution to the discussions on Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions and their international support. It was presented at various UN meetings and subsequently published as special edition of Climate Policy (edited by Karsten Neuhoff) – International Support for Domestic Climate Policies in Developing Countries – in October 2009.

Duration

2008

Amount awarded

£50,000 (Climate Strategies)

EPRG participants

• Karsten Neuhoff
• Jim Cust
• Sarah Lester

This EPSRC responsive mode project concerned the economic and technical feasibility of a possible new type of nuclear power station fuelled with thorium and made functional by the addition of neutrons from a particle accelerator-based process. The work complemented to a wider set of UK activities coordinated by the Thorium Energy Amplifier Association (ThorEA) and disseminated through 3 working papers.

Amount awarded

£251,248 (EPRSC)

EPRG participants

• William Nuttall
• Stephen Steer
• Michel-Alexandre Cardin

The main assumption of the project is that communication on CCS should enable the public to develop their own well-considered opinions on the technologies, otherwise the strength with which the opinions on CCS are held will be very low and therefore these opinions will be very unstable. If public attitudes are very unstable they are worthless for predicting future support for CCS. Therefore, the aim of the project is to develop recommendations for the communication of CCS enabling the public to establish their own informed opinions. The project partners carried out a comparative study of the communication of CCS in 6 European countries: Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, Norway, Romania and the United Kingdom. The comparative approach is based on 2 main methods applied in all countries:

• a representative survey of citizens to investigate the awareness, knowledge and opinions of the public concerning climate change, energy technologies and CCS
• a study that compares the effectiveness of 2 different methods for communicating CCS (focus groups and Information-Choice Questionnaire) which both aim to enable lay persons to develop their own well-considered opinions

Duration

2009 – 2010

Amount awarded

£72,000 (DECC)

EPRG participants

• David Reiner
• Rebecca Firth
• Ioanna Boulouta
• Glenn Kristiansen

The purpose of this project is to develop effective strategies for:

• objective communication to stakeholders and the public at large about risks and advantages of CO2 capture and storage
• involving stakeholders and the public in local decision-making on CCS projects

Cambridge took the lead looking at drivers and determinants of public and stakeholder attitudes. As part of the project, surveys were conducted comparing the attitudes of national and regional publics and regional stakeholders to proposed CCS projects in 5 countries: UK, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland and Spain. Other aspects of the project included an experiment to investigate the impact of visual information, focus groups to assess responses to a CCS multimedia presentation developed by the project team, case studies of local involvement in deployment of both CCS and non-CCS projects across Europe and communications materials for use in projects.

Visit the Near CO2 website to find out more.

Duration

2009 Apr – 2011 Mar

Amount awarded

£179,964 (EC FP7)

EPRG participants

• David Reiner
• Hauke Riesch
• Xi Liang

The joint UK-China Near Zero Emissions Coal (NZEC) initiative addresses the challenge of increasing energy production from coal in China and the need to tackle growing CO2 emissions. The EU-China NZEC agreement was signed at the EU-China Summit under the UK’s presidency of the EU in September 2005 as part of the EU-China Partnership on Climate Change. The agreement has the objective of demonstrating advanced, near zero emissions coal technology through CCS in China and the EU by 2020. The UK-China bilateral NZEC initiative was developed in support of this wider agreement. The Cambridge element of the project focused on stakeholder attitudes towards CCS demonstration projects including technology, economics and finance. We developed an online survey instrument that allowed for responses from stakeholders in virtually every Chinese province and region. A study, Stakeholder perceptions of demonstrating CCS in China, was published in November 2009.

Duration

2008 Dec – 2009 Nov

Amount awarded

£38,851 (DECC)

EPRG participants

• David Reiner
• Xi Liang

The CAPPCCO project, led by Imperial College London with partners from both academia and industry in the UK and China had 3 broad goals, to:

1. develop and define options for integrating carbon dioxide capture plant with advanced Chinese pulverised coal power plants to allow a rapid transition to a high level of CO2 emission reductions
2. assess performance of advanced (non-CO2) pollutant control technologies on Chinese coals
3. identify and engage with key stakeholders to ensure that relevant information transfer takes place

Cambridge was responsible for the third objective, in particular, conducting surveys of Chinese stakeholders from industry, academia and government, in several regions.

Duration

2007 Dec – 2011 May

Amount awarded

£85,383 (DECC)

EPRG participants

• David Reiner
• Xi Liang

Supported with several hundred thousand pounds of internal Cambridge-MIT Institute resource the CMI-ESI boosted the University’s understanding of energy security issues. The Initiative worked in coordination with the EPRG and now EPRG possesses much in-house competence on energy security.

Duration

2005 – 2008

Amount awarded

£~300,000 (Cambridge-MIT Institute, University of Cambridge)

EPRG participants

• William Nuttall
• Jonathan Köhler
• Steve Connors

This project addresses the quality and availability of public communications materials on CCS and the possible sources of opposition to CCS. There are 2 main work packages:

• a compilation (into a searchable database) and assessment of public communications materials
• a study of how grassroots and NGO opposition to unabated coal-fired electricity generation may affect support for CCS, involving a series of workshops at ‘climate camps’ across Europe and at UK political party conferences

Duration

2010 May – 2011 May

Amount awarded

£139,220 (Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute/CSIRO)

EPRG participants

• David Reiner
• Olaf Corry

We published 3 working papers based on reports funded by Ofgem that examine various aspects of the future of network regulation. 0714 looked at the case for ownership unbundling of transmission networks. 0811 examined new ideas for the future of regulation drawing on EPRG research, particularly on constructive engagement by Littlechild. 0914 provided input to the RPI-X@20 on the scope for increased competition within and via how network services were provided.

Duration

2007 May – 2009 Mar

Amount awarded

£30,000 (Ofgem)

EPRG participants

Michael Pollitt

Duration

2017 Jul – 2021 Dec

Amount awarded

£296,000 (NERC/EPSRC/ESRC)

Duration

£507,000 (EPSRC/RCUK Energy Programme)

Amount awarded

2017 Apr – 2022 Dec

Duration

£225,000 (EPSRC)

Amount awarded

2016 Aug – 2019 Dec

Duration

£190,000 (Enel Foundation)

Amount awarded

2013 Oct – 2015 Sep