Energy Futures Lab: Future Energy Festival 2023

Every two years, Energy Futures Lab hosts the Future Energy Festival, a major showcase of energy research at Imperial College London. This event is open to the public and is an opportunity to learn about the amazing work our community is doing to address global and local energy challenges. This year’s festival will be in-person for the first time since 2019, and will include exhibits hosted by research groups from the Faculties of Engineering and Natural Sciences and the Imperial College Business School. The Festival will cover a diverse range of research areas, and will include everything from demonstrations of photocatalytic technologies to displays of work on electric vehicles. There will also be a series of lightning talks covering topics such as low-carbon building materials, integrated energy systems and much, much more! We will kick off the evening with a keynote lecture from Energy Futures Lab Co-director Peter Childs.

Programme

17:00: Exhibition opens

17:15 – 17:45: Lightning talks session 1 (please see below for more details)

18:00 – 19:00: Keynote lecture – Enablers for renewable energy production and energy-demand reduction, Prof. Peter Childs

19:00: Exhibition resumes

19:15 – 19:45: Lightning talks session 2 (please see below for more details)

21:00: Event ends

If you are interested in getting involved in the festival please contact l.mcdermott@imperial.ac.uk

Exhibitors

• Integrated Assessment of Air Quality and Net Zero Scenarios – Integrated Assesment Unit from the Centre for Environmental Policy
• Imperial Zero Pollution
• CLOVER: an open-source graphical model to accelerate improved access to energy and water
• Solar fuels for combating climate change
• Fuel Cells, Electrolysers and Batteries – Prof. Anthony Kucernak
• Up-scaling solar hydrogen production
• A Cool Way to Keep Warm: Phase Change Materials
• Intergrated Development of Low Carbon Energy (IDLES Programme)
• Shining a light on materials for solar energy conversion – Durant Group
• Developing an electric race car for Formula student – Imperial Formula Racing
• Sustainable Materials for Energy Storage and Energy Conversion
• New Nuclear: Safe, reliable and low-carbon – Centre for Nuclear Engineering

Keynote lecture: Enablers for renewable energy production and energy-demand reduction

In this lecture, Professor Peter Childs FREng will consider a range of enablers for significantly influencing our provision of renewable energy as well as tempering demand. Peter is a Professor at Imperial College London, Co-Director of Energy Futures Lab and was the founding head of the Dyson School of Design Engineering. He has been at Imperial for the past 15 years, before which he spent over 20 years at the University of Sussex. As well as academic interests in sustainability, creativity, design and robotics, he is Director and Board Chair at both Q-Bot Ltd, a thermal insulation company, and BladeBUG Ltd, which develops robots for wind turbine inspection repair and maintenance.

Lightning Talks session 1:

• 17:15 – 17:20: Kleio Zervidi – Direct air capture of CO2: a technology to combat climate change
• 17:20 – 17:25: Dr. Filip Podjaski – Solar energy storage concepts with photocharging materials
• 17:25 – 17:30: Dr. Chao Wu – Recycling Waste Wind Turbine Blades for Making Low Carbon Concrete
• 17:30 – 17:35: Prof. Emile Greenhalgh – Structural Power Composites
• 17:35 – 17:40: Dr. Ariane Millot – Power system planning in Kenya
• 17:40 – 17:45: Matthias Mersch – Optimal net-zero transition pathways for the integrated UK energy system

Lightning Talks session 2:

• 19:15 – 19:20: Dr. Gbemi Oluleye – Unpacking the Tipping Point in Clean Technology Adoption for Decarbonizing Hard-to-Abate Sectors
• 19:20 – 19:25: Dr. Michael K Leverentz – Royce Imperial: From Ideas to Devices
• 19:25 – 19:30: Nadin Moustafa – Advancing Low-Carbon Industrial Clusters and Decarbonisation Strategies
• 19:30 – 19:35: Prof. Stephen Skinner – Materials innovation for the hydrogen economy
• 19:35 – 19:40: Adam Ward – Computational design of adsorption-based post-combustion carbon capture processes
• 19:40 – 19:45: Alfredo Zafra – Hydrogen, the atom that can save the planet: Materials, Challenges, and Solutions

About Energy Futures Lab

Energy Futures Lab is one of seven Global Institutes at Imperial College London. The institute was established to address global energy challenges by identifying and leading new opportunities to serve industry, government and society at large through high quality research, evidence and advocacy for positive change. The institute aims to promote energy innovation and advance systemic solutions for a sustainable energy future by bringing together the science, engineering and policy expertise at Imperial and fostering collaboration with a wide variety of external partners.