Energetic future

In-Depth

As oil and gas prices soar, the UK launches a major initiative to address energy challenges of next 50 years.

London’s Imperial College has launched a multi-million-pound initiative to predict and address the energy challenges of the next 50 years.

The opening of the Energy Futures Laboratory comes as soaring oil and gas prices, security concerns, and uncertainty over the future of nuclear and renewable energy present the power industry with some of the biggest challenges it has ever faced.

‘Energy research has been neglected over the past couple of decades because the government assumed that if any were needed, it would be done by industry,’ said Lord Oxburgh, former Shell chairman and member of the Parliamentary Committee on Science and Technology, who opened the centre.

This, however, was not the case — although research has been carried out, it hasn’t been done in a focused, directed manner, involving all the different disciplines, he added.

One of the large projects the laboratory will tackle is a £4.5m initiative with BP to research the use of energy in cities, and how this affects the way it should be generated.

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